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However, pay is not the only reason nurses choose to leave the NHS.
“Another important reason is to do with conditions, so we want to see more family-friendly policies and more flexibility,” said an RCN spokeswoman.
“Some nurses choose to work for an agency because it gives them more flexibility whereas in the NHS in a lot of areas that sort of flexibility doesn’t exist.”
Recent changes in training have also been attacked for putting too much emphasis on academic qualifications and too little on practical skills.
This has been said to be intimidating to would-be nurses with less academic interest in the profession.
It has also led to fewer trainee nurses being available on the wards.
A study from the Social Affairs Unit, a British think tank, said that bedside training had been replaced by university lessons.
This puts too much emphasis on status, managerial skills and technical competence with hospital machinery and ignores the basic skills of caring for patients, it said.
The report also said that nurses’ traditional role of comforting, feeding and bathing the sick had been replaced by the hospital manager focusing on “cost centres” rather than patient care.
This makes nursing a less attractive profession to new recruits, it said.
Nurses attacked the report, saying that low pay and poor working conditions were to blame for recruitment problems.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
The NHS row over pensioner Rose Addis has taken a bad-tempered turn with Tony Blair using a speech to accuse the Tories of denigrating “everything in the public services”.
That prompted Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith to hit back at the prime minister, branding Mr Blair’s attack in a keynote speech on public services as “pathetic”.
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy called on both men to stop using Mrs Addis as a “political pawn”.
The 94-year-old became the centre of a political row over the state of the NHS under Labour after Mr Duncan Smith was contacted by Mrs Addis’s family, who alleged she had been neglected at a north London hospital.
The Tory leader raised the issue at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.
In a keynote speech in Newcastle on Friday, Mr Blair called for greater support for public sector workers, saying most patients got excellent care even if the NHS was not perfect.
He argued the Conservatives were trying to run down public services so people thought investment in them was wasted – a charge denied by the Tories.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change has said there are “increased violent” attacks on its party members.
MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said a top official was stopped and beaten up by militants from President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF on Tuesday morning.
His warning comes a few days after an MDC residence was raided by police.
Zanu-PF has described the comments as “cheap propaganda” following the MDC’s decision to end co-operation in the unity government formed in February.
Mr Chamisa told journalists in the capital, Harare, that acts of violence against MDC supporters had started happening in both urban and rural areas.
The pattern of violence was reminiscent of the attacks on MDC supporters during last year’s elections, he said.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, boycotted a cabinet meeting for a second time in as many weeks in protest at Zanu-PF’s perceived failure to implement measures agreed to as a part of the power-sharing deal.
The MDC has threatened to call for fresh elections if a meeting of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) later this week fails to break the deadlock.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Mobile phone giant Nokia has cut back sharply its growth forecast for handset sales – for the second time in as many months.
The world’s largest maker of mobile phones said sales would rise by not more than 10%. Earlier this year the firm had confidently predicted a growth rate of at least 15%.
Profits, however, would not be affected, the firm told investors at its mid-year strategy meeting.
The cutback in future growth is portrayed as a sign of overall market weakness, with Nokia’s management insisting that the Finnish company will hold on to its 40% share of the mobile phone market.
Nokia believes that over the year the industry will still be able to sell between 400m and 420m handsets.
During 2001, customers bought 380m mobile phones worldwide. It was the first time since 1990 that phone sales had dropped year-on-year.
Fancy phones and smart phones will be key to staying number one, Nokia believes. Gadget lovers are promised that by year-end they can choose between up to 10 different Nokia models featuring colour screens.
High-end smart phones – complete with organiser, e-mail, internet access and other features – are another area of expansion, with Nokia boss Jorma Ollila predicting monthly sales of such phones to surpass the one million mark by October.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
The American President Barack Obama says the latest economic statistics are an important sign the United States is heading in the right direction. President Obama said the economy had done measurably better than expected, but with an unemployment report due next week, he acknowledged there wouldn’t be a real recovery as long as job losses continued.
“As far as I‘m concerned, we won’t have a recovery as long as we keep losing jobs, and I will not rest until every American who wants a job can find one. But history does show that you need to have economic growth before you have job growth, and today’s GDP is an important sign that the economy is heading in the right direction and that business investment which had been plummeting in last several months is showing signs of stabilizing. This means that eventually, businesses will start growing and they’ll start hiring again.”
The US House of Representatives has approved a law designed to keep a tighter rein on excessive pay and bonuses paid to bankers and other financial executives. It will allow government regulators to limit executive pay deals which, in their view, encourage inappropriate risk and give shareholders a bigger advisory role in pay packages. The bill now has to go to the Senate.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Quiz show host Chris Tarrant has said he is “outraged” after an arson attack destroyed his motor launch on the River Thames.
His vessel, the Ben Gunn, which was moored at East Molesey, Surrey, was gutted in the fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The 53-year-old presenter said his family often slept on the craft, which he bought 10 years ago.
A statement issued on his behalf said the Who Wants To be A Millionaire? presenter was “outraged at the stupidity of the attack”.
He later told the Daily Mail: “I am absolutely disgusted by this act of hooliganism. It’s potentially put my family in danger because they regularly sleep in the boat.
“My little boy of eight uses it a lot. He could have been killed. I feel depressed and disgusted by it.”
Tarrant rose to fame in the mid-1970s presenting the anarchic ITV children’s show Tiswas.
For the past 13 years, he has presented the top-rated breakfast show on London radio station Capital FM, while his TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? has won huge ratings for ITV, as well as awards from Bafta and the Royal Television Society.
Its format has also been sold around the world.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
It goes something like this: You get some money, buy a few bags of cement and you start.
When the foundation has been done, you celebrate, and when by the next year, the block-work reaches the window level, you celebrate with a few friends.
Then, slowly, ever so slowly you add on until one day, you finish, or not as the case might be and your children take it up and finish when you are gone.
If you are building a really posh house and you manage to line up a World Bank official or an oil-company employee to agree to rent it for the next five years, the bank might be persuaded to lend you some money to finish it when you get stuck half way through the roofing stage. The loan is at a commercial rate.
But mortgages really are not part of our housing scene.
Very few people have mortgages of any kind and as for a collapse in the housing market, there is no housing market.
Building is such a traumatic undertaking, very few people actually sell their houses once they have finished building them.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell is in Jerusalem as part of the latest efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
He intends to lay the groundwork ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders starting on Saturday.
A key sticking point is Israel’s refusal to freeze settlement building on the occupied West Bank.
Disunity between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah is also a major issue.
Mr Mitchell is holding preparatory talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian officials who have yet to be identified.
Mrs Clinton is due to meet Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas separately, before meeting other Arab leaders in Morocco on Monday.
US President Barak Obama has made addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict a cornerstone of his administration, but despite intensive shuttle diplomacy by Mr Mitchell, there has yet to be a breakthrough.
Negotiations are further complicated by divisions between Mr Abbas’s Fatah faction in the West Bank and Hamas which runs the Gaza Strip.
On Wednesday, Hamas told Palestinians in its jurisdiction not to take part in elections called by Mr Abbas on 24 January 2009.
Bitter rivalry in Gaza resulted in Hamas driving Fatah out in 2007 and the two factions remain at loggerheads.
Posted 9 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Before his meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier on Friday, Mr Barroso had said negotiations on a new EU-Russia framework agreement were under way.
He said the nine commissioners accompanying him on the visit represented “the many issues we need to discuss so that we can deepen our relationship”.
Mr Barroso said the gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine, which caused severe gas shortages in several EU states after Russia halted supplies, was one of the issues and reiterated his disappointment at the incident.
“It is important now to create conditions for this kind of crisis not to happen again. We believe energy security is a very important sphere of interest for Russia and the European Union,” he said.
“And this positive interdependence is more important now than ever because we are facing a very serious global financial crisis,” he said.
Mr Medvedev said there needed to be a “fully-fledged international legal system” to prevent a recurrence.
Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine on New Year’s Day, saying it would pump only enough for customers further down the pipeline. But it then accused Kiev of siphoning off gas intended for third countries.
Ukraine denied the claim, but the flow of Russian gas ceased completely on 7 January.
Hundreds of thousands of people went without heating in Eastern and South-Eastern. Bulgaria, one of the hardest hit countries and a historical ally of Russia, had to close schools and public buildings.
Gas flows were resumed on 20 January after Russia and Ukraine finally agreed prices at which Ukraine would buy gas, and ship it to Europe. The EU sent monitors to their borders to check the flow of gas.
Posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago. Add a comment
But police said there was no evidence to support the allegation, so within a year of his arrest, he was transferred to a psychiatric institution.
“It seems the police just forgot about him thereafter,” says Assamese human rights activist Sanjay Borbora.
In 1967, the authorities at the institution certified Mr Lalung as “fully fit” and said that they intended to release him.
But instead of being freed, police transferred him to another jail.
“Even at this point, the police did not send him to court to face trial, they just kept him in prison,” Mr Borbora said.
Strangely, even his relatives and family members forgot about Machang Lalung.
Last year, local human rights activists brought Machang’s case to the attention of the National Human Rights Commission, which took up the case immediately and sought his release.
He was finally freed last week after paying a token personal bond of one rupee (two cents).
Posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago. Add a comment
