One hoped that a new team at the MoD and government in general would curb some of the excessive media management that so characterised the Labour government.
Sitting and watching the TV or reading the news online this week it would seem that old habits die hard.
Splashed all over the media was the excellent news about the new National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Centre for Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. The reports also featured the fact that the NHS has benefited from techniques pioneered in Afghanistan by the medics in theatre, many of whom are NHS employees.
Absolutely brilliant news, the synergy between military and civilian medicine being realised for the benefit of all.
What better time to release news about a significant reduction in allowances for service personnel.
I don’t think anyone was surprised by the cuts and many of them are anachronisms anyway, the whole system has needed simplification for a long time but it will hit many people hard.
But the timing is pretty shoddy.
In particular as the package was supposed to have been announced well before Christmas. The changes to CEA (Boarding School allowance) was sneaked out on the Friday before the majority of people went on Christmas leave and the rest has been held at a very senior level until appearing, with little fanfare, on the MOD Intranet on Thursday. It could all be taken as a sickening lack of moral courage by our political leaders….
It was reported that one of the techniques the NHS benefited from was putting torniquets back into NHS ambulances.
I was amazed by that one, it seems unbelieveable that they wouldn’t carry things like that.
The reductions aren’t that bad – understandable in the current financial climate. Can’t speak for the other two but it could have been a lot worse in the Senior Service. Hopefully there will be fewer officers ripping off the system and putting their kids through private school.
Brian Black
Torniquets were banned yonks ago.
Better you bleed to death than lose a leg but live.
Seriously.
DomJ – get with the program dude, Torniquets were re-introduced years ago. The use of them has advanced considerably due to Iraq and Afghanistan. Torniquet kits are issued, and people taught how to apply them – I guess this has filtered back into the NHS.
If you watch any of the many “fly on the wall” programmes you will see many of the guys actually going out of the gate with torniquets applied (loosely) at the top of each leg.
My unit has just had a briefing from our CO on allowance changes, none of which we knew about in advance.
Fortunately we’ve managed to come away pretty unscathed, which is good. Based on what i’ve seen a lot of the changes actually make some sense, stopping the higher rank (not the sort of person who’d end up in theatre too often) and RAF boys (who claim for everything under the sun) from claiming for all sorts of things that they really don’t need. For once the troops aren’t taking too much of the brunt of this so i’m not too unhappy.
Oh and on the subject of Tourniquets:
Every member of the army deployed to theatre is issued a Tourniquet alongside their field dressings and morphine and taught to use them on themselves and others, along with the information that the use will cause the loss of a limb but could well save a life.
Hi Grim, nice to see you around these parts again
Jed
I meant in a civil capacity not a military one.
I’m googling for it but having no luck, pretty sure Doctors who used them and saved lives got into proper trouble, like
struck off level, after the ban.
Rather stupid of course, but it is the NHS