Tory tax cuts putting pressure on the NHS | Letters

‘Voters deserve no soundbites,’ Marr tells May

Whenever Theresa May finds herself in a corner over the NHS she repeats the mantra: you require a strong economy to have an NHS in the first place (Marr grills May, 1 May). That is a classic example of a necessary but not a sufficient condition. It obviously helps to have a strong economy but a nation has to get other decisions right.

The US has a strong economy but a seriously deficient public health service due to large reliance on insurance companies for facility and corporations providing health cover for employees.

Cuba has a weak economy but an excellent health service due to the right decision on prioritising public health.

In the UK the NHS is in difficulties due to the Tory government prioritising tax breaks for corporations and the better off instead of using the finance to meet the needs of an ageing population with increasing quantities and complexities of treatments required. PFI and privatisation have also not helped.
Nigel de Gruchy
Orpington, Kent

• The political shock-horror of the shortage of nurses misses the point of why so many NHS staff are not British or/and are leaving. At the weekend I had a cardiac physiologist to stay – ie, not a doctor or a nurse but an essential member of the team dealing with heart attacks on emergency call-out at night, and for checking heart problems during the day. The night on-call emergency rotas are made to follow a full day’s work, so no sleep for up to 24 hours is common. It is worse when you are sent home at about 4am and drop into an exhausted sleep only to be woken again to go to work an hour or two later (or not daring to sleep in case the phone rings). My guest says jobs are harder to fill in hospitals where you can be on call for a night in between two normal days – ie, up to 36 hours’ continuous working for patients who are in immediate danger of death.

These staff do not have the powerful BMA doctors’ union acting for them, and such practices have become normalised and in agreement with unions. Politicians claim to be making the best use of taxpayers’ money. Not in my name please! Sleep deprivation is the reason my guest and many others are looking to leave the job they otherwise found satisfying after years of training and building up their expertise.
Name and address supplied

• I wish to point out the connection between the two articles on cancer drugs and end-of-life care in Friday’s paper. In the cash-constrained NHS, expenditure in any area means that money cannot be spent elsewhere. So when £1.27bn goes on very expensive new cancer drugs (Report, 28 April), not curative and with zero or marginal outcome benefit, it cannot be spent on specialist palliative care or “hospice at home” services. The consequence is that those same patients, within weeks, cannot be supported in their wish to die at home (Report, 28 April). Many more people would have been helped by the latter investment.
Dr Charles Turton
Burgess Hill, West Sussex

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

Tory tax cuts putting pressure on the NHS | Letters

Putting HO! HO! HO! In Its Proper Perspective

Gift giving during Christmas time has become a worrisome experience for many people. The day before “Black Friday,” practically everyone is trying to figure out what I should get so-and-so for Christmas? What will make him or her happy? Maybe a bicycle? A flat screen TV? A new shirt? A pen? Something. Some THING. People go to the mall, look at all the displays and wonder, “Gee, will that make him happy?

Some individuals can’t decide all the way up to the last minute. They don’t really know what can make someone happy, so they put off buying gifts until the last minute. Then, during the last two days before Christmas, they join this big rush in the department stores where they just end up buying whatever, rationalizing that this will make a person happy. “After all, I spent enough money on it, so it’s going to satisfy him because, after all, the more expensive it is, the more satisfying it is supposed to be to whoever gets it”.

So, in an attempt to satisfy people during Christmas, most people go off and try to get so many things without really knowing what is going to make an individual happy. Of course, this is not a wise thing to do. After all, the idea behind gift giving is to succeed in making the person happy. But to know what will make a person happy, we first have to find out who they are and what they are.

For instance, when you go off and try to buy a gift for someone, you think of the person first. “What would he like? What does the need? What does he do? What are his likes and dislikes?” If he is a basketball player, he might like a basketball. If he is a stamp collector, he might like some rare stamps. A woman might like a bracelet or a dress. Obviously, a guy wouldn’t want a dress unless he’s a transvestite.

You think of the person. You think of who he is and then you think of what you can get him. Certainly you don’t get a basketball player boxing gloves or a boxer a basketball. What you should do is to look deeper into a person’s identity. See that in reality, all these external identities that you might be thinking people are is not what they really are. We’re not really basketball players, boxers, men, women or transvestites. These are all temporary material identities. We are not the material body we are the eternal living beings within these temporary bodies.

Unfortunately, most people perceive only people as temporary material identities and therefore wrongly conclude that material things will make them truly happy.

Especially at Christmas, people give so many material gifts in the attempt to make others happy. During Christmas time, material things are put in boxes and made to look very special. These gifts are nicely covered up to cause people to wonder, “Oh, what are in those little boxes under the tree?” In this way, people anticipate and want to enjoy whatever is in the boxes.

Gift-wrapped emptiness means that actually the only content of those nicely wrapped packages is emptiness. There is nothing of real substance there. It is just dead matter — material particles coming together — which in the due course of time will eventually fall apart. So, this dead matter in these packages will not really make anyone truly happy. Why, because we are not dead matter, we are not material. Therefore, material things will not make us truly happy.

When I was a kid, I made a point of opening all the presents that I got on Christmas morning. But before I opened a package I would think, “this is the one that will make me happy”. After I opened it, I would feel so excited and say, “Wow, this is really nice”. But not more than 30 seconds later, I got the feeling, “is that it?” And I would put down the gift and go to another package hoping “maybe this one will make me happy”. But the same thing happened, and I’d have to go to the next package and the next to see what was in there to see if that would make be happy. Pretty soon, all the packages got opened and I’d have all these presents sitting around me and still I’m not happy, I’m not satisfied. And then I would think, “I should be happy because of all the things that I have right now”. But I’m not. Why isn’t there happiness in having all these little things?

In the Bible, in Corinthians, it is stated:

“Look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not
seen, for the things which are seen are temporary but the things which are not seen are eternal. Seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth”.

We cannot be made truly happy by any material thing because we are not matter. We are not material; we are not the body; we are not the mind. We are the eternal spirit souls or living entities within these material bodies. We are the life force, not the body. Therefore, if we get material things, because we are not material, such material things cannot really satisfy us.

Now as soon as we can understand that we are actually sparks of God, children of God, then we will conclude that what will really make us happy, and therefore the best thing that a person can give us, is something that has to do with our spiritual nature.

For instance, if I can give you for Christmas or at any time, the gift of understanding that you are eternal – you are not temporary; that your body can die but you cannot die — then I’m giving you the gift of anxietylessness. In other words, I am making it so that you don’t need to be in anxiety about the death of the body.
If I give you the understanding that you are the eternal part and parcel of God, then this will make you actually happy. If I give you the gift of letting you know that God loves you unconditionally, that you can have Him as your Best Friend, and that He will actually give you protection – take good care of you – and that’s the greatest gift I can give you. If I can help you become attached to God, then that is actually the only thing I can give which will truly make you happy. Anything other than that will not make you truly happy.

People, basically feel obligated to go out and give other people material gifts. They feel they have to buy a person “things” in order to prove to them that they do love them. They are feeling that despite the fact that I cannot afford this, I’m going to buy it anyway because if I don’t then this person will think I don’t love him. And this is the mentality that exists.

And it’s all based on people thinking, “if so-and-so loves me, then this person will give me something which costs a lot of money, and this is the measure of their love”. What a perversion.

What is usually forgotten at Christmas time is the fact that it is a birthday. It is the birthday of the perfect example of someone who loves all of us unconditionally and who is giving us nothing material at all and yet loving us more than anyone else. So Jesus is the perfect example of someone who loves us unconditionally and giving us the greatest gift. He is teaching us that we should love God and emphasizing that this will make us happy. He is giving us perfect knowledge of our identity and our relationship with God.

Yet there are people out there that feel that unless God gives us something material then God doesn’t love me. These people are wrongly thinking towards God in the same way they are thinking towards other people. It’s the whole outlook in life in general, that material things will make me happy and therefore anyone who loves me will give me some sort of material enjoyment. Their friend is someone who makes it so they have some material gain and their enemy is someone who makes it so they have less material gain. And some of these people will even marry someone who will help them get more material gain and immediately leave that person when that person no longer gives them material enjoyment.

Let me clarify something. I don’t want to give people the impression that I’m against giving a gift to someone that I truly care about. There is nothing wrong with giving a gift as an expression of love. But the material gift is not the end in itself because it is material and therefore temporary. Yet, it tells the person that you care about them and would like to give them a token of that feeling.

The materialist’s symptoms of so-called happiness include alcoholism, drugs, suicide, cigarette chain-smoking, endless consumption and accumulation of more and more things without ever being satisfied.

Generally, the materialist experiences three fears: the fear of not having something; the fear of having it and being afraid they are going lose it; and the fear of if they lose it will they ever get it back. Another symptom of the materialist is false ownership. “This is my house; this is my car; this is my boat”. Never do they think of where the wood that built the house came from, where the metal that built the car came from, or where the products that built the boat came from. If they did they would realize but they were in a position of being caretakers, safeguarding someone else’s property – God’s.

If people thought like this there would never be wars because we would all realize that being brothers and sisters, all having the same Father, we are just caretaking His property. So if one part of the world was rich in oil and another part of the world was rich in grain, and each needed what the other had, wouldn’t we simply share our Fathers property with our distant brothers and sisters?

But what we have instead is conflict between countries. Each fighting for territories of influence and resources such as raw material and markets for goods. It is not an issue of ideology or freedom. Neither country is solely concerned with helping other people. Instead, each country is determined to build military strength. Military strength that enables them to go somewhere else and take what they do not have.

In America, People’s freedom is not really the simple interest of the United States government. Americans have their vested economic interests. And just as other countries are interested in dominating and exploiting, so are we. Nothing but big animals fighting over God’s property. And unless these governments can change their ways, God will eventually arrange these nations to cancel each other out with all their nuclear bombs.

It is clear why there is no peace in the world. People are simply not content with following the teachings of all the saintly persons. Sure, we all have different religious labels on our bodies but our consciousness is the same materialistic consciousness of dominating and exploiting what is God’s property — be it his children or the world.

The feeling is, “this is where we will get our happiness”. The goal then is to get as much sense gratification as we can. To do this we need more material objects; we need more control and more power in order to take hold of our property. Therefore, we conflict with other people who are trying to do the same thing.

People are fighting over God’s property because we all want to exploit it to enjoy our senses. Whether we look at it on an international level or an individual level, there is no peace because, practically speaking, we are against God. If we want peace and we want this world to be like the kingdom of God, we have to start being the servants of God – lovers of God – not the lovers of materialism and illusion.

People who love materialistic things are naturally selfish and cannot see this connection. Newspaper editorials state that the Christmas season is the time for joy in giving. Yet, why is there so much selfishness, corruption, crime, exploitation, etc., around? And yet, this same newspaper is always bursting with ads saying, “enjoy this and you’ll be happy”. And aren’t the selfish and corrupt citizens simply trying to follow the message of these ads?

So on one hand, people are encouraged to develop an increasingly materialistic, self-centered consciousness and on the other hand, they wonder why there is no peace in the valley. But it’s not really a big mystery. For the world to be peaceful, we have to be peaceful within ourselves. And we are not going to be satisfied or peaceful within as long as were acting as thieves acting against God. A thief can never be peaceful. He always knows he’s a criminal. Even if he’s not caught, he’s in anxiety that somehow he will be caught.

So, as long as we are trying to be false lords or enjoyers and as long as we see the world as a place for sensual exploitation, then we will be just like thieves who have stolen a pot of gold and are spending it here and there. We cannot be peaceful in this way. And as long as we are not peaceful, we cannot have a peaceful neighborhood, a peaceful society, or a peaceful world.

So on this Christmas Day and on every other Christmas day, see it for what it is – the birthday of the one person that genuinely and unconditionally tried to give us all love for God. And when you give a gift to a loved one, give it with a sense of sincere loving feelings for that person but realize it is your love that should make them happy and not some gift-wrapped emptiness.

Aloha!

To learn more about Hesh, listen to and read hundreds of health related radio shows and articles, and learn about how to stay healthy and reverse degenerative diseases through the use of organic sulfur crystals and the most incredible bee pollen ever, please visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com, or email me at heshgoldstein@gmail.com or call me at (808) 258-1177. Since going on the radio in 1981 these are the only products I began to sell because they work.
Oh yeah, going to www.asanediet.com will allow you to read various parts of my book – “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, containing a wonderful comment by Mike Adams.
In Hawaii, the TV stations interview local authors about the books they write and the newspapers all do book reviews. Not one would touch “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Why? Because it goes against their advertising dollars.

Putting HO! HO! HO! In Its Proper Perspective

Millions of patients putting strain on NHS with minor ailments

Millions of patients are putting unnecessary strain on the NHS by seeking medical help for minor complaints such as colds, insect bites and dandruff, according to a report.

Overloaded GP surgeries and A&E units are having to divert scarce resources into dealing with flu, sore backs and travel sickness, the Local Government Association said.

The LGA, which represents more than 370 local councils in England and Wales, is urging people suffering from minor ailments to think before they seek NHS help and get used to treating themselves.

“We need a new culture of care where people stop and think before calling the doctor,” said Cllr Izzi Seccombe, the chairman of the LGA’s community wellbeing board.

“GPs and A&E departments are already overstretched. However, many appointments are unnecessary and for minor conditions that a person could treat or manage themselves.”

There are 57m GP consultations every year for minor complaints, including 5.2m for blocked noses, 40,000 for dandruff and 20,000 for travel sickness, according to the LGA report. These appointments, together with 3.7m A&E visits for similar concerns, cost the NHS £2bn a year.

The 3.7m visits, 19% of A&E attendances, include people with a sprain (38%), flu (17%), colic (13%) and insect bites (13%).

Council leaders are advising patients affected by such ailments to visit a pharmacy or seek treatment advice from the NHS Choices website instead.

They say family doctors can play a key role by helping the many millions of people with a long-term condition such as diabetes or heart disease to learn how to manage their illness, reducing the need to seek professional medical help.

“Better self-management could make a huge difference to a person’s physical and mental wellbeing. Instead, the lack of knowledge among the general population about how they can do this is placing a huge burden on surgeries and hospitals,” said Seccombe, the Conservative leader of Warwickshire county council.

The Royal College of GPs backed the plan, but said long waiting times to see a GP can prompt people to seek help at A&E.

Prof Maureen Baker, the chair of the RCGP, said: “Minor ailments, including coughs and colds, can be distressing for patients and parents of young children, so it’s important that they are fully aware of the range of NHS services that are available to them in their local area.

“When patients in some areas of the country are having to wait for nearly a month to see their GP due to rocketing demand and not enough GPs to keep pace, it makes absolute sense to use alternatives, such as patients visiting their local pharmacist, who will be ideally placed to give them advice and discuss the various treatments available.”

Millions of patients putting strain on NHS with minor ailments

Mental health services cuts are putting sufferers at chance, BMA advised

‘At the quite time folks require assistance most, psychological overall health services are becoming cut,’ Dr Andrew Collier told the meeting. Photograph: Alamy

Mental wellness companies are in a “vital” state, with patients becoming put at danger by significant cuts, the British Health-related Association’s yearly meeting was informed.

In three years, mental overall health services in England have reduce beds by 9%, delegates heard. One particular trust has invested hundreds of thousands of pounds placing individuals up in bed and breakfast accommodation due to the fact no beds have been accessible.

Individuals were being shipped to all corners of the country for beds, far from friends and families.

Doctors have been being forced to discharge patients as swiftly as attainable to free beds – placing sufferers at chance, the conference in Harrogate was informed.

Dr Andrew Collier, co-chair of the BMA junior medical professionals committee, explained: “The companies we offer are beneath improved pressure.

“But at the very time individuals need to have support most, psychological overall health providers are becoming minimize. Current freedom of details requests have shown that considering that 2011 at least one,700 psychological well being beds have been closed. That represents a 9% reduction in the quantity of available beds.

“Time and once again we’re told that when beds are minimize it truly is element of an all round strategy to invest in better, improved services but I am beginning to feel that’s not the case.

“The scenario is now so negative that a quarter of junior medical doctors doing work in psychiatry have been advised that unless the patient is topic to the Mental Health Act, a bed will not be located.”

He mentioned that patients often had to travel massive distances to uncover care. “One psychological well being believe in has even spent £345,000 to place patients in bed and breakfast providers merely because there are no beds.

“The consistent fire-fighting due to the abysmal shortages we encounter has got to end. If the government is severe about attaining parity of esteem for psychological well being services these damaging cuts and closures should quit now.”

Dr Jason Holdcroft, psychiatry trainee, said he has noticed “ever-increasing” strain on companies over the last 4 years.

“Faced for considerably of the time with a chronic shortage of beds, neighborhood teams are forced to deal with ever far more unwell individuals at home with dwindling resources.

“In striving to free up beds more quickly there is pressure on in-patient teams to discharge patients as early as attainable into the care of local community psychological health teams who could have misplaced their occupational therapist, their psychologist, and usually a proportion of their nurses as well.

“The finish consequence of all of this is sometimes tragedy – avoidable deaths and suicides in which the method has not supplied the care that sufferers require.”

Mental health services cuts are putting sufferers at chance, BMA advised

Marriage in recovery: Intercourse and putting a sock in it

‘I am getting despicable, nitpicky, imply, ­no entertaining. But I am seething, still, mostly because I really do not know why I behave like this kind of an idiot.’

A skyload of sunlight floods our bedroom when I open the curtains. R is dozing, and I creep back into bed following to him, wishing I was capable to sleep previous 7am. The boys are downstairs viewing Saturday morning Tv, and our eldest is still having an adolescent lie-in that will possibly final until midday. R and I have time. These mornings are golden for a couple with younger kids: the serene quiet moments the place intercourse – the variety that was relegated to the evenings extended in the past – is something I can truly envision us possessing in the morning as soon as yet again.

Propped up with pillows, I read an report about mindfulness on the laptop, and although the word and notion fills me with pessimism and scepticism (anything that requires too much believed can be tedious and doesn’t appear to permit any room for spontaneity and healthy stress), I truly feel for when that I might really be performing some issues right. I am trying to live in the here and now I’m staying targeted on the present rather than lamenting the previous too considerably. What lies ahead is things I can loosely program for, but I am not fixating about things I can’t predict with glass-half-full visions of the future.

And then, with the feeling of smug warmth in my abdomen that only an write-up on mindfulness can elicit, I go and ruin it all. God is aware of I can zap all the great and calm out of a scenario with a couple of option, ill-timed words.

Just like that. At about the time that R commences to wake, when he picks up his warm, sleepy hand and will take it to the inside of my thigh, I set about destroying the probability of something loving at all. The corner of my eye catches a paper bag. It really is a fancy 1, the type you may possibly think twice about putting out with the recycling.

He’s been buying.

“What’s in the bag?” I say, lazily.

“Socks,” he says, nonetheless stroking my thigh and nuzzling his head into my chest. He is the king of socks. They are sprouting out of his drawers like stubborn weeds. He is like the bad man’s 50 Cent, who demands a box-fresh pair of trainers daily.

“Far more socks?” I say. “Shocked you have the cash. Those aren’t low-cost socks, you know.”

“Give it a break.”

And if you could hear by yourself now, I say to myself, digging my nails into the thigh that has extremely all of a sudden stopped becoming stroked by R’s hand. I am thinking desperately about how to revoke every single mad, crazy word I have said. If you could hear by yourself banging on about something as inane as bloody socks, on a morning that was, for a whilst, cloaked in bliss, then you would surely quit proper now.

But I continue to pick the scab.

“And you eat lunch out each and every day at function. Do you know how significantly that costs?”

“Oh do shut up.”

And I do, simply because he is proper. I am currently being despicable, nitpicky, indicate, no enjoyable. But I am seething, even now, mostly simply because I never know why I behave like such an idiot. What it looks like he’s mentioned by the way I’ve reacted is this: “Darling, I have just spent all of my month’s salary on medicines, booze and horse-racing and we have no cash to pay the mortgage.”

What I think I want is for R to say that he is a accountable particular person who is not going to get something for months, and he’ll shell out back his debts and hand over all accountability to me.

But then I think of myself, and my real fear of cash, and my penchant for very good coffee and two-for-1 deals on moisturiser that guarantees to make my skin dewy and tasty, and I believe, please, be quiet.

It is as well late, of program. Our bodies lie on the bed like distant islands at sea only seconds ago it seemed we could be a content empire.

“We have one particular treatment session left. I want you to mention this. When it was all about drink, and how you tried to management me. Now you want to know everything about money.”

But all I can think of is how sorry I am, and how – despite the fact that money is one thing we require to discuss – this kind of speak is ridiculous and controlling. Most of all, I come to feel sorry about the reality that I could not wait until finally after we’d had sex to mention the socks.

Marriage in recovery: Intercourse and putting a sock in it

Men below 20 and in excess of 64 putting themselves at threat of skin cancer

Youthful and older men know the least about how to shield themselves from the sun, a study has found Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Men aged underneath 20 and over 64 are at greater threat of establishing skin cancer than women simply because they are far a lot more probably to ignore warnings to shield themselves against sunshine by sporting suncream or a hat, a new research shows.

Males in individuals two age groups are the least very likely to heed suggestions about the want to minimise the dangerous results of UV radiation from sunlight, according to French analysis published in the British Journal of Dermatology primarily based on 2,215 French men and women detailing what steps they took to decrease their risk from the sun.

The identical two groups of guys also know the least about how to shield themselves and the risks they run from obtaining browned or burned skin.

By contrast, women aged amongst twenty and 64 demonstrated the most comprehending of how the sun’s rays could harm their skin and were most likely to wear protective clothes and use higher-element suncream.

It is already identified that death charges from malignant melanoma are 70% higher in males than girls. Although similar numbers of the two sexes create it – 6,200 men and 6,600 females a year – far much more men (1,300) than girls (900) die.

Death prices are rising amid males, but secure amongst females. Death have risen by 185% between men and 55% amongst women in excess of the last 40 years, largely as a consequence of the enhanced reputation of tanned skin, beach holidays and tanning salons.

Folks who are exposed to too a lot sunshine, or have pale skin and a high quantity of moles or have a family background of it are most probably to get skin cancer.

Sarah Williams, a overall health info officer at Cancer Analysis United kingdom, stated they could not draw firm conclusions from the research since it was carried out in France. But every person ought to be “sun-intelligent”, for instance by spending time in the shade and wearing the correct clothes when the sun is strong, she extra.

Men below 20 and in excess of 64 putting themselves at threat of skin cancer