What’s the point in building new hospitals, they can’t get staff for the ones they’ve got. 7 nightingales, 4 never used at all the others used barely, for different things.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Would people have been happier, if we hadn't built the Nightingale hospitals, and there had been bodies on the streets waiting for hospital beds? No one knew what to expect, we planned for the worst, it didn't happen, but it was fairly bad, wasn't it?
How can you lie there and think of England When you don't even know who's in the team
Is any form of heating eco friendly? Electrickery seems to be mainly from coal powered power stations round here, since they shut the pits, it comes from far far away by ship. Gas is fossil fuel also., a lot of it from Norway. Same with oil fired central heating boilers. Unless we all want to spend most of the winter under wool filled duvets and get our heat from the compost heaps, it all gets a bit silly. I thought the fact that we live in a cold wet country and hope to have all mod conveniences means that we have to use fossil fuels. Living off the grid for anyone who isn't rich enough to buy a large piece of land to install large heat pumps, hydroelectric, and pay for solar panels and windmills is just a pipedream. I'm just about to run a hot bath, heated by my gas boiler, and have a long luxurious soak.
The current electricity grid carbon intensity is about 220 as I type. It's often lower than that, especially in summer, it's sometimes higher when demand is very high. It fluctuates all the time but the average is still dropping quite sharply. 10 years ago it was around 500. This year overall is expected to be under 200 but I haven't seen the data yet. Carbon Intensity This is the total amount of carbon emitted from the mix of all the different sources that are being used at a given point in time. Coal has been used this year for the first time in quite a long time. Usually the UK is running predominantly on gas (around half in the winter, much less in summer), nuclear and renewables.
So no, electricity isn't perfectly clean. It is, on average cleaner than gas and if you use a heat pump you only need a third of a unit of electricity to get one unit of heat, whereas a gas boiler is less than one to one. So 1 unit heat from the boiler emits 200 units of carbon. 1 unit of heat from a heat pump emits 70 or 80 units of carbon. Therefore, using electricity the right way is, whilst not clean, much cleaner. The expectation now is that the grid will continue to decarbonise. Gas won't change. Therefore the difference will get bigger. The real trick is to use less of it, of course. Insulation and better windows and better ventilation.
Therefore this "the fact that we live in a cold wet country and hope to have all mod conveniences means that we have to use fossil fuels" isn't true. Even when you don't live in a windmill
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
I hate the term ' bed blockers' but surely the nightingales could be used to accommodate patients who no longer need treatment by the highly qualified medical staff or access to sophisticated technology but could be looked after by suitably trained carers .
Where are they getting the carers though? There needs to be a massive overhaul of all services. It stands to reason that, with an ageing population, and not enough staff [of all types] things will only worsen. In the coming weeks [months?] staff shortages due to Covid and it's variants, are the tip of a very large iceberg.
Oh - I forgot. There's all those thousands of doctors [5,000 was it? ] that David Cameron said in 2015, that we'd have by 2020. You'd think someone would have informed of the time to takes to train them, but that's a minor detail when you're in charge...
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Our Exeter Nightingale has been repurposed. Started life as a temporary facility in the local exhibition centre, then moved to a vacant Homebase store. They’ve installed an MRI and a CT scanner, to relive pressures at the main hospital, and are just adding two operating theatres and a recovery ward. It appears they’ve been using it for urgent oncology appointments, plus some nurse training. The only thing I didn’t see was any parking facilities. I wonder if one is expected to walk from the nearby Wickes, B and Q, or services car parks, and risk a fine for misusing customer only parking?
Our GP practice has a smallish underground carpark (about 20 spaces at a guess) but has an arrangement with the big shopping mall across the road which has a vast two storey underground car park ... get your parking ticket stamped by the Doctor's Receptionist and you get an hour's free parking. Works here. Maybe they've got a similar set up and if not, perhaps they should.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Posts
7 nightingales, 4 never used at all the others used barely, for different things.
No one knew what to expect, we planned for the worst, it didn't happen, but it was fairly bad, wasn't it?
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Carbon Intensity
This is the total amount of carbon emitted from the mix of all the different sources that are being used at a given point in time. Coal has been used this year for the first time in quite a long time. Usually the UK is running predominantly on gas (around half in the winter, much less in summer), nuclear and renewables.
So no, electricity isn't perfectly clean. It is, on average cleaner than gas and if you use a heat pump you only need a third of a unit of electricity to get one unit of heat, whereas a gas boiler is less than one to one. So 1 unit heat from the boiler emits 200 units of carbon. 1 unit of heat from a heat pump emits 70 or 80 units of carbon. Therefore, using electricity the right way is, whilst not clean, much cleaner. The expectation now is that the grid will continue to decarbonise. Gas won't change. Therefore the difference will get bigger. The real trick is to use less of it, of course. Insulation and better windows and better ventilation.
Therefore this "the fact that we live in a cold wet country and hope to have all mod conveniences means that we have to use fossil fuels" isn't true. Even when you don't live in a windmill
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
There needs to be a massive overhaul of all services. It stands to reason that, with an ageing population, and not enough staff [of all types] things will only worsen.
In the coming weeks [months?] staff shortages due to Covid and it's variants, are the tip of a very large iceberg.
Oh - I forgot. There's all those thousands of doctors [5,000 was it? ] that David Cameron said in 2015, that we'd have by 2020.
You'd think someone would have informed of the time to takes to train them, but that's a minor detail when you're in charge...
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.