Cameron's attack on the poor!

[I1L2T3]

The truth is somewhere between the two positions. Mecky is right that these schemes exist. MrSmith is right that there is evidence of abuse. I have friends who work in hospitals and they see quite a few foreign nurses being brought in. They also see newly qualified nurses trained in Britain struggling to get jobs.

 

I would side with MrSmith on this. Having worked in a couple of industries where government sponsorship/visa schemes are Trojan horses used to bring in many workers with rules stretched to (and beyond) limits with the effect of bringing advantages to the foreign workers, I strongly feel that the system is abused and British workers lose out.

 

It's just more evidence of government policy not being joined-up. Why train people when there are no jobs at the end of it? The worse thing now is that students have to pay massive fees - if the jobs aren't there how do you persuade people to pay to train themselves?

[Mecky]

More often than not we are poaching staff from countries that can't afford to lose them.

http://www.unison.org.uk/

With nursing shortages in the NHS rarely far from the headlines, it's time for some new thinking to prevent a widening of the staffing crisis.

 

One of the solutions has been to fill places in the UK with qualified nurses from abroad. This has had a positive effect on diversity within the NHS and has proved to be essential to running an effective health service, with internationally recruited nurses accounting for 40% in some hospitals.

 

However, this process throws up particular questions, not least whether it is ethical to undertake blanket recruitment of nurses from developing countries when their own health services are desperately in need of staff.

 

Of course you know it all don't you?

[Mecky]

I see the Business Secretary Vince Cable has now blamed the banks for throttling UK recovery. Is there anyone the government haven't blamed?

[I1L2T3]

Of course you know it all don't you?

 

If you are responding to the bit highlighted in bold then it is one of the key criticisms of the NHS overseas recruitment policy.

[Mecky]

If you are responding to the bit highlighted in bold then it is one of the key criticisms of the NHS overseas recruitment policy.

 

You mean in post 124? I'm not saying it's write or wrong in what the UK does but the fact reminds, few immigrants come here with the proper standard of qualification or experience so they come to study medical sciences and are often sponsored by their own governments to do so. A better question would be what is the UK getting from allowing this to happen and I suspect the answer will be something like trade deals and building international relation for whatever reasons.

[Rupert_Baehr]

Maybe qualified by their own countries standards, which is not really good enough. That's why they sometimes sponsor them to come here.

 

You don't half write some twaddle, Mecky.

 

Are you seriously saying that the NHS uses inadequately-qualified foreign nurses?

 

Do you really think the 'foreigners' can't train medical personnel? Why is that? (Isn't that racist?)

 

There may well be foreign student nurses training in the UK - just as there are British nurses training overseas - but they are students - not NHS employees.

 

I've been told that there are insufficient training places for nurses and insufficient post-grad training places in the UK for doctors. I accept what I've been told is true, but there are training places available in foreign universities - universities which award qualifications accepted by the UK (and by most other countries, too.)

 

The UK is far from being the only country to 'poach' medical personnel from other countries. When my MIL (who didn't speak any German) was admitted to a German hospital in 2005, I thought "No problem - most Germans speak English as a second language." They do - but for most of the nursing staff in that hospital German was their second language. Most of them spoke Polish or Russian.

 

If there is a lack of medical places in British Universities, why is that? There seems to be no shortage of places on underwater basket-weaving and flower-arranging courses. The universities have to attract students and if there is a shortage of applicants for 'hard' courses, can you blame them for recruiting students for 'easy' courses?

 

It may be that the shortage of places is a part of the reason that the NHS has to recruit from overseas, but the efflux of doctors and nurses probably doesn't help, either. - Which brings me back to the reason why I challenged Anna's (apparent) suggestion that the people who were leaving the UK were wealthy tax-dodgers.

 

I met a lot of doctors and nurses during the first few months of this year. I was in hospital for 2 days. There were 6 nurses on my ward during that visit. Two of them were Brits.

 

Do you think they were British millionaires who fled the country to save a fortune on taxes?

 

I see 3 consultants. One is an American, the other two speak with marked English accents. My cardiologist originally came from Pakistan (and qualified there too) and my Endocrinologist came from India. Both had practised in the UK and both decided to go elsewhere.

 

They may (or may not) be millionaires. They both work pretty hard. I know why they left (both told me ) It wasn't because they felt they were underpaid [consultants aren't paid shabbily in the UK], it wasn't for tax reasons, nor was it because they were overworked.

 

They felt that they were not appreciated.

 

Perhaps it's about long past time that somebody (or a panel of somebodies; preferably somebodies who were independent of the government) looked seriously at the haemorrhage of skilled and talented people from the UK and did something about it. - You can't (unless you are North Korea) forbid people to leave, but you can make life sufficiently attractive that they wouldn't want to leave.

 

Who is leaving?

Why are they leaving?

What can we do to encourage them to stay?

 

I think you might find that although there are some who leave to avoid taxes (and that number is tiny compared tothe number who do leave) the majority are leaving/have left because they were dissatisfied with (or extremely anxious about) life in the UK.

 

I've no personal axe to grind. (In fact, you could argue that the fact that the UK has driven (is driving?) people away is in my interest. - If the 2 doctors I see hadn't been 'encouraged' to leave the UK, I wouldn't have been able to benefit from their (considerable) skills.

[Mummytwo]

Yes but Eric Sykes wrote it for him.

 

Sorry to be off topic again but how is that possible?

 

Oscar wilde - 16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900

 

Eric sykes - 4 May 1923 – 4 July 2012

 

In order to avoid more off topic posts perhaps we could discuss in PM?

[mumkin]

You don't half write some twaddle, Mecky.

 

Are you seriously saying that the NHS uses inadequately-qualified foreign nurses?

 

Do you really think the 'foreigners' can't train medical personnel? Why is that? (Isn't that racist?)

 

There may well be foreign student nurses training in the UK - just as there are British nurses training overseas - but they are students - not NHS employees.

 

I've been told that there are insufficient training places for nurses and insufficient post-grad training places in the UK for doctors. I accept what I've been told is true, but there are training places available in foreign universities - universities which award qualifications accepted by the UK (and by most other countries, too.)

 

The UK is far from being the only country to 'poach' medical personnel from other countries. When my MIL (who didn't speak any German) was admitted to a German hospital in 2005, I thought "No problem - most Germans speak English as a second language." They do - but for most of the nursing staff in that hospital German was their second language. Most of them spoke Polish or Russian.

 

If there is a lack of medical places in British Universities, why is that? There seems to be no shortage of places on underwater basket-weaving and flower-arranging courses. The universities have to attract students and if there is a shortage of applicants for 'hard' courses, can you blame them for recruiting students for 'easy' courses?

 

It may be that the shortage of places is a part of the reason that the NHS has to recruit from overseas, but the efflux of doctors and nurses probably doesn't help, either. - Which brings me back to the reason why I challenged Anna's (apparent) suggestion that the people who were leaving the UK were wealthy tax-dodgers.

 

I met a lot of doctors and nurses during the first few months of this year. I was in hospital for 2 days. There were 6 nurses on my ward during that visit. Two of them were Brits.

 

Do you think they were British millionaires who fled the country to save a fortune on taxes?

 

I see 3 consultants. One is an American, the other two speak with marked English accents. My cardiologist originally came from Pakistan (and qualified there too) and my Endocrinologist came from India. Both had practised in the UK and both decided to go elsewhere.

 

They may (or may not) be millionaires. They both work pretty hard. I know why they left (both told me ) It wasn't because they felt they were underpaid [consultants aren't paid shabbily in the UK], it wasn't for tax reasons, nor was it because they were overworked.

 

They felt that they were not appreciated.

 

Perhaps it's about long past time that somebody (or a panel of somebodies; preferably somebodies who were independent of the government) looked seriously at the haemorrhage of skilled and talented people from the UK and did something about it. - You can't (unless you are North Korea) forbid people to leave, but you can make life sufficiently attractive that they wouldn't want to leave.

 

Who is leaving?

Why are they leaving?

What can we do to encourage them to stay?

 

I think you might find that although there are some who leave to avoid taxes (and that number is tiny compared tothe number who do leave) the majority are leaving/have left because they were dissatisfied with (or extremely anxious about) life in the UK.

 

I've no personal axe to grind. (In fact, you could argue that the fact that the UK has driven (is driving?) people away is in my interest. - If the 2 doctors I see hadn't been 'encouraged' to leave the UK, I wouldn't have been able to benefit from their (considerable) skills.

 

 

How dare you speak sense!! Mecky will be very cross:D

[Anna B]

I've just watched Panorama -'Britain on the Brink.' It gave a very good balanced overview of the situation we're in, and why.

 

Watch it if you can on iplayer, or it's repeated on Thursday 12.15am, BBC1. On a bit late, but well worth watching.

 

Now watching 'Riots - The Aftershock' on BBC3 (Freeview 7) about what's happened since the riots. Interesting.

[Mecky]

You don't half write some twaddle, Mecky.

 

Are you seriously saying that the NHS uses inadequately-qualified foreign nurses?

 

Do you really think the 'foreigners' can't train medical personnel? Why is that? (Isn't that racist?)

 

There may well be foreign student nurses training in the UK - just as there are British nurses training overseas - but they are students - not NHS employees.

 

I've been told that there are insufficient training places for nurses and insufficient post-grad training places in the UK for doctors. I accept what I've been told is true, but there are training places available in foreign universities - universities which award qualifications accepted by the UK (and by most other countries, too.)

 

The UK is far from being the only country to 'poach' medical personnel from other countries. When my MIL (who didn't speak any German) was admitted to a German hospital in 2005, I thought "No problem - most Germans speak English as a second language." They do - but for most of the nursing staff in that hospital German was their second language. Most of them spoke Polish or Russian.

 

If there is a lack of medical places in British Universities, why is that? There seems to be no shortage of places on underwater basket-weaving and flower-arranging courses. The universities have to attract students and if there is a shortage of applicants for 'hard' courses, can you blame them for recruiting students for 'easy' courses?

 

It may be that the shortage of places is a part of the reason that the NHS has to recruit from overseas, but the efflux of doctors and nurses probably doesn't help, either. - Which brings me back to the reason why I challenged Anna's (apparent) suggestion that the people who were leaving the UK were wealthy tax-dodgers.

 

I met a lot of doctors and nurses during the first few months of this year. I was in hospital for 2 days. There were 6 nurses on my ward during that visit. Two of them were Brits.

 

Do you think they were British millionaires who fled the country to save a fortune on taxes?

 

I see 3 consultants. One is an American, the other two speak with marked English accents. My cardiologist originally came from Pakistan (and qualified there too) and my Endocrinologist came from India. Both had practised in the UK and both decided to go elsewhere.

 

They may (or may not) be millionaires. They both work pretty hard. I know why they left (both told me ) It wasn't because they felt they were underpaid [consultants aren't paid shabbily in the UK], it wasn't for tax reasons, nor was it because they were overworked.

 

They felt that they were not appreciated.

 

Perhaps it's about long past time that somebody (or a panel of somebodies; preferably somebodies who were independent of the government) looked seriously at the haemorrhage of skilled and talented people from the UK and did something about it. - You can't (unless you are North Korea) forbid people to leave, but you can make life sufficiently attractive that they wouldn't want to leave.

 

Who is leaving?

Why are they leaving?

What can we do to encourage them to stay?

 

I think you might find that although there are some who leave to avoid taxes (and that number is tiny compared tothe number who do leave) the majority are leaving/have left because they were dissatisfied with (or extremely anxious about) life in the UK.

 

I've no personal axe to grind. (In fact, you could argue that the fact that the UK has driven (is driving?) people away is in my interest. - If the 2 doctors I see hadn't been 'encouraged' to leave the UK, I wouldn't have been able to benefit from their (considerable) skills.

 

Good grief, I thought it was bad enough when I was teaching to see students trying to do assignments without reading the brief. Now read again