The Right Honourable Matt Hancock MP
Discussion
Smollet said:
I think if Hunt had been in charge we wouldn't be in quite the same mess as we are now. Probably still be in a mess but just not such a large one.
dont forget he was in charge when they decided to forget about preparing for a pandemic after 2016 exercise. he was a hopeless HS tooEdited by pavarotti1980 on Wednesday 30th December 12:04
Brave Fart said:
He sneers at a colleague's question ("I simply won't have it" in response to the Slough MP). He pretends to get emotional on TV. He tells us what is our "civic duty". He's incompetent (Nightingales, anyone?) and is a senior member of a government that, like him, is full of incompetent amateur bluffers with no more idea what to do next than my cat.
The scary thing is, he isn't even the worst of the current bunch. Patel, Jenrick, Sharma, Gove and of course Boris are even worse!
He also lost his The scary thing is, he isn't even the worst of the current bunch. Patel, Jenrick, Sharma, Gove and of course Boris are even worse!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/04/ma...
BlackLabel said:
He also lost his grandfather step-father's ex-wife's second husband to Covid.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/04/ma...
Crocodile tears.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/12/04/ma...
What I will never understand in all this, how the Tory spin machine is still working in overdrive, with stuff like this being an prime example, zero shame.
Why does Matt Hancock sit down like Woody in Toy Story when a human enters the room https://t.co/uJOrAWJiTU
Claptonian said:
numtumfutunch said:
ClaphamGT3 said:
This is the unsayable truth. The reason that the NHS is ‘stretched to breaking point’ by the current Covid situation is 100% down to them. Not the Govt for being incompetent- though that’s not helping - not the public for being ‘selfish’ but the Them for f
king away a six month long window to properly prepare for the current situation
Exactly how could the NHS have prepared better?king away a six month long window to properly prepare for the current situation The point is that a difficult winter being incoming was known about for months and nothing seems to have been done to prepare for it. It is for the organisation and those who fund and run it to work out how to prepare. Have they increased capacity to deal with the extra numbers? Were the Nightingales fit for purpose?
So what your saying is you don’t have a clue what is wrong, why it is wrong and how it could have been better but IT MUST BE WRONG!
Lord Marylebone said:
My summary of Hancock:
He is trying his best, bless him, but he is clearly well out of his depth and floundering.
He will absolutely get thrown under the bus as a scapegoat the second it suits BoJo to do it. Hancock has no idea this is coming, but it is.
I think he is one of the more honest and decent politicians we have. Somewhat incompetent but fundamentally decent.
I wholeheartedly agree, essentially though anyone would be out of their depth.He is trying his best, bless him, but he is clearly well out of his depth and floundering.
He will absolutely get thrown under the bus as a scapegoat the second it suits BoJo to do it. Hancock has no idea this is coming, but it is.
I think he is one of the more honest and decent politicians we have. Somewhat incompetent but fundamentally decent.
At least he tells it how it is, "don't expect to be through this anytime soon" Boris was more "bare with, normality by easters/summer/Christmas" or whatever else comes to mind at the time.
I've worked in frontline healthcare in the NHS for over 35 years, I've seen many, many health secretaries come and go in that time. The last substantial change that had a positive effect for patients was the abolition of the 12 (and then the 4) hour waits in A&E. Up until that time, patients waited in A&E for many, many hours. It was thought that the reduction in waiting times would be unachievable, but new systems were put in place and it did work (mostly).
Since then it's been tinkering around the edges. The pandemic has forced us all into new ways of working - which has impacted greatly on all aspects of giving care. One change has been the banning of visitors from the wards to reduce the spread of infection. At first glance it's a simple exercise. Sadly it also means that relatives are phoning the wards almost constantly asking for updates, this takes staff away from direct care. (And Tik Tok - grr. )
There are no extra staff - training took a massive hit a few years ago when bursaries were cut and student nurses had to take out loans to fund their degree. That's been rescinded now, but there's a noticeable dip in numbers of newly qualified staff. With Brexit and some of the toxicity surrounding that argument a lot of nurses from the EU have left, just at the time numbers were on a downward trend. Add in the demographic time bomb of senior nurses in their mid fifties able to take retirement with a full pension and it is a staffing crisis.
This crisis will extend to the Nightingale Hospitals. It's been put forward that they could be staffed by the military - many of whom are reservists with full time NHS jobs, so it's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Staffing was getting better, it took a few small hits which have been cumulative. Add in the fact that hospital staff get sick too - by the very nature of their role they are going to be exposed very closely to infectious diseases and will become ill from them.
I don't think that any health secretary could have done much better in the face of a global pandemic. Staffing was in his remit though and since there is at least a 3 year lag in training to qualification we should be looking backwards at Hunt and seeing what decisions were made that have now come back to haunt us.
SD.
Since then it's been tinkering around the edges. The pandemic has forced us all into new ways of working - which has impacted greatly on all aspects of giving care. One change has been the banning of visitors from the wards to reduce the spread of infection. At first glance it's a simple exercise. Sadly it also means that relatives are phoning the wards almost constantly asking for updates, this takes staff away from direct care. (And Tik Tok - grr. )
There are no extra staff - training took a massive hit a few years ago when bursaries were cut and student nurses had to take out loans to fund their degree. That's been rescinded now, but there's a noticeable dip in numbers of newly qualified staff. With Brexit and some of the toxicity surrounding that argument a lot of nurses from the EU have left, just at the time numbers were on a downward trend. Add in the demographic time bomb of senior nurses in their mid fifties able to take retirement with a full pension and it is a staffing crisis.
This crisis will extend to the Nightingale Hospitals. It's been put forward that they could be staffed by the military - many of whom are reservists with full time NHS jobs, so it's robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Staffing was getting better, it took a few small hits which have been cumulative. Add in the fact that hospital staff get sick too - by the very nature of their role they are going to be exposed very closely to infectious diseases and will become ill from them.
I don't think that any health secretary could have done much better in the face of a global pandemic. Staffing was in his remit though and since there is at least a 3 year lag in training to qualification we should be looking backwards at Hunt and seeing what decisions were made that have now come back to haunt us.
SD.
rscott said:
Why does Matt Hancock sit down like Woody in Toy Story when a human enters the room https://t.co/uJOrAWJiTU
numtumfutunch said:
ClaphamGT3 said:
This is the unsayable truth. The reason that the NHS is ‘stretched to breaking point’ by the current Covid situation is 100% down to them. Not the Govt for being incompetent- though that’s not helping - not the public for being ‘selfish’ but the Them for fking away a six month long window to properly prepare for the current situation
Exactly how could the NHS have prepared better?king away a six month long window to properly prepare for the current situation Then, when they are not being used because they are not needed, we could shut them down again.....
Stay in Bed Instead said:
He was on TV this morning.
Protect the NHS. Protect the NHS. Protect the NHS.
Well how about the NHS uses the billions it receives every year to protect us for a change?
Exactly this. The management of the NHS is responsible for the mess they have got themselves into. Protect the NHS. Protect the NHS. Protect the NHS.
Well how about the NHS uses the billions it receives every year to protect us for a change?
Anyway since this is about Mr Hancock - the words I have to describe him would, I suspect, lead to a long ban.
In the infamous words of Oliver Cromwell- “in the name of God - go”
Alucidnation said:
johnboy1975 said:
Lord Marylebone said:
He is trying his best, bless him, but he is clearly well out of his depth and floundering.
.
.
Having to deal with knuckle draggers like ‘Max’.
He's paid to do a decent job by the people he is blindly/uncaringly s
tting on. fk him.Edited to add...
speedyguy said:
Lord Marylebone said:
My summary of Hancock:
I think he is one of the more honest and decent politicians we have. Somewhat fundamentally decent.
Is that you Matt ?I think he is one of the more honest and decent politicians we have. Somewhat fundamentally decent.
Edited by MikeT66 on Wednesday 30th December 13:14
Jasandjules said:
numtumfutunch said:
ClaphamGT3 said:
This is the unsayable truth. The reason that the NHS is ‘stretched to breaking point’ by the current Covid situation is 100% down to them. Not the Govt for being incompetent- though that’s not helping - not the public for being ‘selfish’ but the Them for fking away a six month long window to properly prepare for the current situation
Exactly how could the NHS have prepared better?king away a six month long window to properly prepare for the current situation Then, when they are not being used because they are not needed, we could shut them down again.....
Lord Marylebone said:
My summary of Hancock:
He is trying his best, bless him, but he is clearly well out of his depth and floundering.
He will absolutely get thrown under the bus as a scapegoat the second it suits BoJo to do it. Hancock has no idea this is coming, but it is.
I think he is one of the more honest and decent politicians we have. Somewhat incompetent but fundamentally decent.
Basically agree with this, with the added caveat that to visibly struggle at something intrinsically difficult isn’t necessarily evidence of being out of one’s depth. He is trying his best, bless him, but he is clearly well out of his depth and floundering.
He will absolutely get thrown under the bus as a scapegoat the second it suits BoJo to do it. Hancock has no idea this is coming, but it is.
I think he is one of the more honest and decent politicians we have. Somewhat incompetent but fundamentally decent.
Compare to say, Sunak, who is generally thought to have performed well. The mechanisms open to Sunak are pretty well understood, he just needed to decide whether to pull various spending triggers. It’s not so clear cut with health.
numtumfutunch said:
Exactly how could the NHS have prepared better?
Ok, here’s an idea. You know how a lot of people in these forums have been saying “winter might be a problem” - mainly because it usually is. Given that we are pretty unqualified in the main, you would have thought that proper NHS managers might have thought of this. So, the the world where I am in charge, at the beginning of last Uni term, the training for every student nurse and doctor would be tweaked so that the bits on “how to monitor and keep a Covid patient alive” would be prioritised. Nothing added, just reordered. Easy.
Roll on 4 months where we are allegedly facing a crisis, yet they are closing the Nightingales for lack of staff. Right, time to draft the students. Clearly they’d be supervised by proper doctors, but those doctors could look after huge numbers of patients with an army of qualified helpers.
Instead what they have actually done on staffing is, er, nothing.
Smollet said:
Greenmantle said:
Should we compare Hancock with his predecessor?
Obviously Jeremy did not have to deal with the Covid B*ll*cks but being in the job for over 8 years is pretty good going.
I think if Hunt had been in charge we wouldn't be in quite the same mess as we are now. Probably still be in a mess but just not such a large one.Obviously Jeremy did not have to deal with the Covid B*ll*cks but being in the job for over 8 years is pretty good going.
Hancock’s also been hampered by having Boris and Cummings in charge though and the fact that he’s mainly an easily replaceable yes man.
Hancock’s deserves a reward for the amount of interviews and flak he’s taken for Boris. I expect Boris will reward him by kicking him out in a post covid cabinet reshuffle. Not many of the cabinet will look good in the enquiry afterwards, if it ever happens.
rscott said:
Why does Matt Hancock sit down like Woody in Toy Story when a human enters the room https://t.co/uJOrAWJiTU
That...really is quite weird 
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