Things that piss you off that shouldn't

[phily85]

Must be a labour thing destroyed the roads around here (Hull), with poor new layouts, bus lanes and reducing one of the main city centre roads to 1 lane with a bollard off area for a cycle "road".

They have just lost the local elections to lib dems 

[villa4europe]

not being able to transfer my money

i cant transfer my savings to my normal bank account and then i cant transfer it from my german bank account to my english bank account, daily limits, security, blah blah blah

by the time its all done no doubt the pound will have recovered, its going to take me at least 3 days, its my **** money just let me have it

edit - no its not its going to take me over a week because i have to do it in 2 goes and its a bank holiday here on monday

Edited September 26, 2022 by villa4europe

[bickster]

On 25/09/2022 at 12:43, phily85 said:

Must be a labour thing destroyed the roads around here (Hull), with poor new layouts, bus lanes and reducing one of the main city centre roads to 1 lane with a bollard off area for a cycle "road".

They have just lost the local elections to lib dems 

Yes ours did the covid cycle lane road reduction thing on quite a few arterial routes. Typically no cyclists used them because, well quite frankly there are shorter routes the pedallers of this world use.... One in particular, West Derby Road was utterly ignored by the cyclists because it was quicker and shorter to just cycle through the park

WHich brings me on to the dock road cycle lane. They've spent millions on building this from the city centre to, the boundary with neighbouring Sefton, heading north and to be fair, it is very well made so why aren't cyclists using this one? Well it's really an industrial traffic road and is often full of truacks at the one end queueing for the next ferry amonst the ones going into the docks for other dock / industrial reasons but even that isn't it, in the two or so miles it runs out of the city centre it goes past the new Everton Ground being built, right next to that (yes fact fans, Evetons ground really is being built next to....) a huge water treatment plant (they were called sewage farms if you are unsure) and just after you've left the shit cloud, round the bend is Nortons Scrap Metal Facility, where they do whatever it is they do on the one side of the road and then transfer it into mountains of shredded scrap metal on the dockside waiting for boats to take it away. How do they get the scrap from one side of the road to the other? Via a conveyor belt on a bridge which straddles the road, its not the best covered thing in the world and it really is puncture central. Still it was a nice photo op for Councillor Dick Small and his chums.

Morons run Liverpool Council and my Labour Authority Sefton aren't much better.

[StefanAVFC]

Welcome signs in the area I live. Removed the twin city in Russia from it, ok. That shows a severing of diplomatic ties. 
 

But removing ‘welcome’ in Russian is beyond idiotic. **** native non-Russian Russians I guess 

[il_serpente]

Not quite sure where to post this, but it ties in to the discussion on here about emergency services, so decided to put it here.

I had a close call last night.  I got hit by a car while riding home from work on my bike.  In the end, I'm ok.   No broken bones, just a lot of bruising, some abrasions and one stitch in my elbow.  My helmet likely saved me from a concussion, or possibly worse, as I felt and heard it hit the pavement with a thud.  But my head didn't hurt and I had no grogginess.   If you ride, wear a helmet.

The US ER experience:   The guy who hit me took me to urgent care vs ER at my request, as I was confident I had no broken bones or damaged joints and didn't want to tie up an ER bay or possibly sit for hours in a waiting room while more severe injuries and illness took precedence.  The urgent care said they were full and could take no more patients and if I wanted to be seen I needed to go the an ER, so off we went with me anticipating a long wait to be seen.  I was brought in within half an hour for a quick look-over and sent back to wait to be taken for x-rays, which was a 15-minute wait.  By the time they brought me back out they had a bed waiting.  They were probably cleaning my wounds within another half an hour.  If they'd had the lidocaine available when the doctor first came around to stitch me, I'd have been on my way in about 2 1/2 hours total.  In the end, it took almost another hour because she got tied up and didn't make it back to me for a while.

Compared to my other ER experiences in the US, it highlights the good and bad of the US health care system.  I live in a major metropolitan area, in one of the more upscale parts (Silicon Valley, lots of tech folks and professionals).  The ER was in excellent shape, hardly seemed understaffed, and the staff were efficient, competent and friendly.  I've also had significantly worse experiences at ER's in less upscale areas, so it's clear that who you are and where you live can make a big difference in the care you experience.  Also, I have good health insurance, so I'm not at all worried about the bill for this.  I imagine the charges at this particular hospital for someone with no insurance or a high-deductible plan would be a lot higher than at an urban public hospital.  You get what you pay for, or what you're able to pay for.  I imagine even something as simple as my treatment would cost into the thousands of dollars if I was paying out of pocket, and for a lot of people in these parts that would be a life-changing event.

It sounds like the NHS has gone downhill in recent years, but at the moment I'm contrasting a horribly inequitable system in the US where you get great, timely care if you're lucky, but that will bankrupt you if you have no insurance, to a "free" system in the UK that potentially provides uniformly shitty care to everyone.   That's a sad state of affairs.  I know there are other western countries with public healthcare that's much better than what's been described, and I'm a big supporter of adopting a single-payer system in the US, but I also know none of those systems are without their own issues.   I don't know what the answer is, but I'm not sure the world has found it yet.

[Ingram85]

44 minutes ago, il_serpente said:

Not quite sure where to post this, but it ties in to the discussion on here about emergency services, so decided to put it here.

I had a close call last night.  I got hit by a car while riding home from work on my bike.  In the end, I'm ok.   No broken bones, just a lot of bruising, some abrasions and one stitch in my elbow.  My helmet likely saved me from a concussion, or possibly worse, as I felt and heard it hit the pavement with a thud.  But my head didn't hurt and I had no grogginess.   If you ride, wear a helmet.

The US ER experience:   The guy who hit me took me to urgent care vs ER at my request, as I was confident I had no broken bones or damaged joints and didn't want to tie up an ER bay or possibly sit for hours in a waiting room while more severe injuries and illness took precedence.  The urgent care said they were full and could take no more patients and if I wanted to be seen I needed to go the an ER, so off we went with me anticipating a long wait to be seen.  I was brought in within half an hour for a quick look-over and sent back to wait to be taken for x-rays, which was a 15-minute wait.  By the time they brought me back out they had a bed waiting.  They were probably cleaning my wounds within another half an hour.  If they'd had the lidocaine available when the doctor first came around to stitch me, I'd have been on my way in about 2 1/2 hours total.  In the end, it took almost another hour because she got tied up and didn't make it back to me for a while.

Compared to my other ER experiences in the US, it highlights the good and bad of the US health care system.  I live in a major metropolitan area, in one of the more upscale parts (Silicon Valley, lots of tech folks and professionals).  The ER was in excellent shape, hardly seemed understaffed, and the staff were efficient, competent and friendly.  I've also had significantly worse experiences at ER's in less upscale areas, so it's clear that who you are and where you live can make a big difference in the care you experience.  Also, I have good health insurance, so I'm not at all worried about the bill for this.  I imagine the charges at this particular hospital for someone with no insurance or a high-deductible plan would be a lot higher than at an urban public hospital.  You get what you pay for, or what you're able to pay for.  I imagine even something as simple as my treatment would cost into the thousands of dollars if I was paying out of pocket, and for a lot of people in these parts that would be a life-changing event.

It sounds like the NHS has gone downhill in recent years, but at the moment I'm contrasting a horribly inequitable system in the US where you get great, timely care if you're lucky, but that will bankrupt you if you have no insurance, to a "free" system in the UK that potentially provides uniformly shitty care to everyone.   That's a sad state of affairs.  I know there are other western countries with public healthcare that's much better than what's been described, and I'm a big supporter of adopting a single-payer system in the US, but I also know none of those systems are without their own issues.   I don't know what the answer is, but I'm not sure the world has found it yet.

First off, glad you are ok. Secondly, uniformly shitty is not true whatsoever.

[blandy]

9 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

First off, glad you are ok. Secondly, uniformly shitty is not true whatsoever.

Agree with both parts.

That said it is sadly not uniformly excellent in the UK either. I mean quite obviously 2 week waits to see a GP, massive waits for ambulances, people being stuck in ambulances outside hospitals, people on trolleys in corridors, a massive staff shortage and all the rest of it means we’ve got a second class health service, with probably a third class level of funding. So it exceeds expectations against resources, but it’s quite heads or tails if the treatment we get, or don’t get, is what we’d want, or what the people working in the NHS want to be able to provide.

if that’s tldr: eff the tories.

[Seat68]

I had 2 months of worrying health issues, one after the other and the NHS was fantastic, quick to see the doctors, quick into hospital, quick with follow up appointments. Quick with the conclusion that there was **** all wrong with me. 

[il_serpente]

30 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

First off, glad you are ok. Secondly, uniformly shitty is not true whatsoever.

Sorry, didn't mean to condemn the NHS or anyone who works for them.  Poor choice of words, as I certainly didn't mean to imply that everything about the care is shitty, but rather that it seems those aspects that are shitty are experienced similarly by everyone because everyone has the same "insurance" and provider.  I was also only speaking about emergency care, as that's the only comparison I have, and the experiences shared by posters on here certainly come across as shitty.  I don't think it's a stretch to assume that some of the issues described with emergency care, apparently resulting from severe underfunding, would show up in other aspects of care as well.  Similarly, the gross inequities in the US system apply to all aspects of the health care system.

[tinker]

43 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

First off, glad you are ok. Secondly, uniformly shitty is not true whatsoever.

The difference between Heartlands AE and Goodhope AE was massive from my recent experiences. Goodhope is the one to head for if you have a choice. 

[il_serpente]

21 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

I had 2 months of worrying health issues, one after the other and the NHS was fantastic, quick to see the doctors, quick into hospital, quick with follow up appointments. Quick with the conclusion that there was **** all wrong with me. 

Glad you're back and ok.  I'd noticed your absence and was hoping there was nothing wrong.

[Anthony]

24 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

I had 2 months of worrying health issues, one after the other and the NHS was fantastic, quick to see the doctors, quick into hospital, quick with follow up appointments. Quick with the conclusion that there was **** all wrong with me. 

Should have disclosed that you're a Villa fan from the off. Would've saved 2 months of NHS resource.

[Seat68]

30 minutes ago, il_serpente said:

Glad you're back and ok.  I'd noticed your absence and was hoping there was nothing wrong.

Thanks, but multiple issues dealt with professionally but ultimately me draining their resources. I still have the bloody rash though. 

[sidcow]

I've generally found The NHS to be excellent once you're in the system. Outpatients appointments for routine things seem efficient and smooth and of course you're seeing an expert for free. 

The problems seem to be in no particular order:

1. Manpower on wards leading to poor care. I've seen this particularly in geriatric wards and it sounds like it's the same in paediatrics so probably across most wards. 
2. Getting a GP appointment. It's SO difficult but once you've jumped through a few hoops and probably been triaged you can generally get an appointment and reasonably quickly. But you've got very little chance of phoning up/turning up and just seeing a doctor like you used to. 
3. NHS Dentistry seems to have pretty much ended for over 18s now. 
4. The wait for operations, especially non urgent ones.  Can be years. 
5. Care for the elderly is just utterly broken. How much time in that Ambulance programme is spent just dealing with the elderly? Just ferrying them to A&E for them to take up time and space before being sent home again before being repeated again the next day and the next day because there is just nowhere else for them to go. 
6. A&E again massively understaffed and basically having to cater for SO much stuff which should be taken care of elsewhere causing a double whammy.  And it's such a false economy because A&E is the most expensive place to run. 

However, generally speaking you will get seen and treated free of charge by an expert for free. 

We have been spending time at The Eye hospital A&E because Mrs Sidcow developed an eye problem. She was very concerned and the fact is we had to spend hours and hours just hanging around.  We saw SO many people just lose their rag with the staff.  

Our view was it's just the way it is.  We waited patiently between each procedure, understood when we went back we would be there for hours again.  Despite being worried Mrs Sidcow just said at the end of the day we are being seen by the right people and it was costing us nothing.  Think about people with the same problem in 3rd world countries who had zero chance of seeing anyone (they would almost certainly end up blind) or people who have to pay huge amounts of money they can't afford to get treatment.

Anyway the last appointment was as an outpatient away from the A&E and guess what, we were in and out in an hour. 

Her last appointment is next month when she sees the consultant, one of the top eye specialists in the country who hopefully signs her off as she's basically almost back to normal now, he just wants a look see as what she had is unusual to happen in both eyes at once. 

So yes, the NHS has some really shit and broken bits, and some excellent bits, but most of the time and especially when the backs are against the wall you will get sorted out by some world class medical staff and it won't cost a bean.

Edited September 27, 2022 by sidcow

[villa4europe]

Germany's is good to be fair to them but same as when i lived in the UK i dont really use it (touch wood) apart from having 2 kids here

it works on a private and / or public insurance system and everyone has to have it, its a requirement for employment but your employer contributes towards it, you split the cost between you and the cost is a percentage of your salary which is capped, if you don't earn enough then your employer and the government pay it all, or if you earn over £50k a year you can opt out of the government scheme and go completely private but either way you have to have it

what I've then got in the city, which is the build up of more or less all cities in the west, its townhouses which doctors buy or rent, on my street there's a dr a dentist and a physio, there's another dr around the corner from me and another one with a 5 minute walk, i can pick which one i want to go see, all of them just scan your card and treat you, that's probably the weirdest thing, there's obviously hospitals but there's no centralised GP, they're called house doctors and they're scattered everywhere, a dr is a private business here and they set up wherever they can on an individual or shared basis usually in converted apartments

which is then where the system isn't perfect...i've not got huge amounts of experience with either but I think UK GPs do more (trust me that's a common theme between the 2 countries...) a house doctor doesnt specialise in anything just treats fevers, coughs and colds (and now covid), if you've got a problem with say your kidney they will send you to a kidney dr, if its your eyes then they send you to an eye dr etc etc the problem is that its all based on a referral system, if I've got conjunctivitis i have to go to my house dr who will give me a pink referral slip which lets me go to an eye dr, add to that my kids are registered with a specialist kids dr and for lady things my wife has a womans dr, the house dr cant do either of those things either, when my wife was pregnant we saw 6 different drs in 6 different places and germany being germany you can imagine there's paperwork for the paperwork - which is maybe a surprising underrated aspect of the NHS, there's no centralised medical record of people here, if you bounce around different drs then you have to register which each one and fill in a load of questionnaires but they dont know you, not even your insurance keeps it - with the freedom the insurance set up offers and the number of drs available there are almost certainly appointments quicker and it all works and the quality of the facilities and the care is good but its still a ball ache for a different reason...and there is so much paperwork...

would also say surprisingly given the quality of the english spoken at like cafes and shops etc the english in hospitals is some of the poorest I've come across, hardly any nurses spoke it, my wifes woman dr couldnt speak english when i first went for an ultrasound but the girl who works in the bakery around the corner speaks better english than me

[mjmooney]

3 hours ago, villa4europe said:

I think UK GPs do more (trust me that's a common theme between the 2 countries...) a house doctor doesnt specialise in anything just treats fevers, coughs and colds (and now covid), if you've got a problem with say your kidney they will send you to a kidney dr, if its your eyes then they send you to an eye dr etc etc the problem is that its all based on a referral system

Describes my UK GP to a 't'. 

[Genie]

Same. If you go with anything that can’t be cured with rest or antibiotics the GP will refer you to a specialist 

[blandy]

3 hours ago, villa4europe said:

if you've got a problem with say your kidney they will send you to a kidney dr, if its your eyes then they send you to an eye dr etc etc the problem is that its all based on a referral system, if I've got conjunctivitis i have to go to my house dr who will give me a pink referral slip which lets me go to an eye dr, add to that my kids are registered with a specialist kids dr and for lady things my wife has a womans dr, the house dr cant do either of those things either, when my wife was pregnant we saw 6 different drs in 6 different places and germany being germany you can imagine there's paperwork for the paperwork - which is maybe a surprising underrated aspect of the NHS

It's not that different here in my experience in the practical sense. For example, a few years ago my knee was causing pain, so initially I went to the physio at work (not NHS), who diagnosed it as a typical knee problem - torn cartilage. He said, it needs an MRI scan, so go to your GP tell them that I sent you and get the GP to arrange for an MRI scan.

So I booked a GP appointment. She said, OK, I can't book you a scan, but I can get the scan place to contact you. So I got a letter from the NHS saying "contact this number to book an appointment to book a scan". So I contacted the number and booked a time slot in which to book a scan. Then at the appointed time I contacted the scan place to book a scan. Then I got a letter confirming the scan time. Then I got a letter telling me not to miss the appointment or else. Then I went and got scanned, and was told - now book a slot with your GP to review the results. So I did that. Then I went to see the GP at the allotted time to review the scan results. The GP said "I'm not a knee doctor, you need to see the knee specialist". So I had to book yet another appointment to see the knee specialist. Then I saw the knee specialist. That process took about 7 months in all. Took up multiple appointments, letters, paperwork, a disc of the MRI scan results...

How it could be - see Physio (a proper chartered physio btw), physio determines scan needed. book scan. scan results sent to Knee specialist for review. If necessary he then sees the patient (it was) /says "no issue with the knee" and sends that info to the patient. Surely much more simple, cost effective and efficient and quicker? No appointments for appointments, no wasted GP appointments...no multiple letters and paperwork.

 

[bickster]

16 hours ago, Seat68 said:

Quick with the conclusion that there was **** all wrong with me.

I'd get a second opinion, it's obvious you are a count...ry music fan  

(WB and glad you are ok)

[lapal_fan]

One thing I've been annoyed about this year is I had a vasectomy in February, after 3 months and loads of spanks you're meant to be running clear.. I only received the letter to go donate a sample in August and then it's taken until last week to get a letter saying "well done captain sterile, now go bang like your life depends on it".

Now all I have to do is convince the wife to let me put my willy in her muffin.