NHS Spends £1.4 Billion on Net Zero With Zero Results
The NHS has spent £1.4 billion of taxpayers’ money on Net Zero schemes without reducing its carbon footprint at all. The Telegraph has the story.
The health service ploughed the funds into green initiatives, such as rolling out electric ambulances, adopting ‘climate-friendly pain relief’ that does not contain greenhouse gases, and putting environmental credentials at the heart of decisions around medicines and supplies.
But despite these efforts, the total carbon emissions from the health service are the same as they were five years ago when the ‘Greener NHS’ project was launched.
The service has now unveiled a series of new schemes it claims will reduce emissions, including making its plates and bowls blue, hiring Net Zero managers and reducing the 63 million pieces of paper it prints each year.
Hundreds of millions of pounds will be spent on making the health service’s fleet of vehicles electric, while Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, is ploughing more than a quarter of a billion pounds into installing solar panels at 260 NHS sites, as well as schools and military sites.
This week, Sir Keir Starmer attended the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, flying more than 9,000 miles to “restore the UK as a global leader on climate action”.
Meanwhile, the NHS backlog has risen three months in a row to 7.41 million, A&E leaders are prepared for the worst winter on record, and junior doctors will stage yet another five-day walkout this month, with other staff threatening to follow suit.
Critics have questioned the priorities of NHS leaders and labelled some of the initiatives as “insane”. …
Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Security Minister, described the [blue plate] initiative as “total insanity”. She said: “Who is picking up the bill? Taxpayers. NHS managers should focus less on meeting Ed Miliband’s mad targets and more on cutting their waiting lists.”
She added that the Conservatives’ cheap power plan “would cut the electricity bills of the public sector by 20% instantly”.
Worth reading in full.
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Yeah, but, see… Imagine how much worse they would be if they hadn’t
pissed awayspent that £1.4bnI had to look up the blue plates thing. Apparently, in trials changing from the old (grey) plates to cornflower blue plates resulted in a 20% reduction in food waste by making the food look more appealing. I cannot find out what happened to the grey plates – perhaps they went to environment-friendly landfill? But this kind of result sounds very fishy to me. Must investigate further.
I was wondering about that. Making the food look more appealing would be a good trick. I had the unfortunate need for 10 days or so in hospital in 2008. I particularly recall a portion of ‘cottage pie’ which looked uncannily like a cowpat. I don’t imagine a cowpat would be that salty though.
Based on my experience of hospital food it’ll take far more than changing the colour of the plate to make it look more appealing let alone making it more edible.
Here is some advice. Have your family and friends bring in your food. They do this in third world countries. Britain is officially a third world country. Why not?
Hospital food, is just that, hospital food. Bring in your own home cooked meals from family and friends if the hospital food is inedible. Better yet, stay the hell away from a hospital. A recent friend in hospital for three weeks to get a pacemaker. Another one, now in for the past three weeks to start chemotherapy. Fascinating,
According to research from the association of plate manufacturers blue plates reduce food wastage and create jobs in China.
I wish I could be do flippant about the £££ spent by the nhs. But when you are powerless, I guess that is what you do.
You see, these are the silly things that take a year or two to approve are now what the general public is focusing in on. Meanwhile….Rome is burning.
On 31 August 2023, Coutinho was appointed as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
Please do tell us Ms Coutinho what your contribution to combating Nut Zero has been then? No? Thought not. Shut your trap then.
In our election on Thursday the guy from the residents group won to coninue you our non Uniparty council. In second from nothing was Reform ahead of an independent who was looking to replace the independent that resigned. In 4th came Coutinho’s Tories above the Ed Davey Clown Party and Labour. In a second seat a Clown Party person won what had been Tory with Reform in second. Not looking good for Coutinho in 2029 which explains their desire to stop the May county council election.
Not zero results at all – some grifters within and outside the NHS are not richer, with our money, grifters who will probably continue to support Labour and other Big Government Socialist parties.
Remove State monopoly on health care – by allowing opt-out of paying any tax towards it – and allow a competitive, private market in health insurance and provision to develop.
Facts.
Up until the 1911 National Insurance Act – which the population didn’t want – 75% of the population (miners, railway workers, factory workers, etc) had private health insurance. This was stopped by the Act which made payment into the National scam compulsory.
1948 – pre-NHS, 2 750 hospitals most built prior to 20th Century, NHS today, 1 600 hospitals.
1948 – pre-NHS, 480 000 beds, NHS today 145 000 beds.
1948 – pre-NHS, 400 000 on waiting list, NHS today, 7 million.
Bang those pans – recycled, renewable from sustainable, responsable sources of course.
It depends what you mean by monopoly, but there are many features of NHS hospitals that are not monopolistic in the normal concept. Lots of them have private segments, either in the same building, or just next door. Then there are workers (consultants) that are allowed to work on both sides simultaneously, more or less. Who hasn’t seen a specialist privately more quickly than waiting for longer under the NHS to see exactly the same person? Then there are dental practices that offer both explicitly private and NHS services in the same premises, sometimes by the same person.
Arrangements like that are unusual, and often explicitly banned in some firms, in as much as one is not allowed to compete against one’s employer. The NHS arrangement emerged from it’s creation under Aneurin Bevan, who was the Minister at the time of it’s creation.
It’s close to a monopoly and we are all forced to pay for it irrespective of whether we use it or not
Precisely. That’s what monopoly means – you can only spend your money with one supplier.
There are private suppliers, for people who have enough money left over after the state has taken its unfair share.
Bevan “created”” nothing, except ruin. The State took over by nationalisation what already existed, like coal mining, railways and the rest. The UK already had a national health service run by diverse providers, it just wasn’t run by the State. (Ironically – Bevan resigned from his post as Health Minister in 1950 because the Labour Government was using the National Insurance payments to fund the re-equipment and modernisation of the military. It’s all been a scam since Day 1.) There are three kinds of monopoly. Natural monopoly, like sewage/drainage where it is logistically impractical and too expensive to have competing companies. Contestable monopolies which are subject to free market competition. The monopolist can be challenged, Aldi can say to the consumer, don’t spend your money with Tesco, spend it with me. Non-contestable monopolies – these are always the result of State intervention, legislation and regulation, whereby other enterprises cannot say spend your money with me instead of the other outfit. That’s the NHS, the BBC, education and other public services. It was not always so. Even if a UK citizen buys private care, they must still pay the NHS, private health companies cannot say pay me instead of the NHS.… Read more »
The NHS is a bloated bureaucracy that wastes tens of billions of pounds a year. We need to look at other European countries to figure out the best way of funding healthcare. It might be a mix of public and private or purely private with help for people on low incomes so they can afford medical insurance. Would insurance companies be allowed to adjust their premiums based on a person’s lifestyle, previous medical history, genetic testing etc or would the government cap insurance premiums?
There’s loads more questions that need to be asked about funding health care, the only one I can provide a definite answer for, a resounding no, is whether simply chucking more money at the NHS will produce better results.
How many have they got at Cop 30……all in business class no doubt.
I thought Net Zero meant Zero Results.
Are they addressing single use plastics in the NHS. The number of plastic syringes etc used must be vast.
The bureaucracy in the nhs, similar to that in the entire gov’t from National to local, is staggering. Looking in as an outsider, it is clear, this will not change. Accept it, it has always been this way and it will not change.
It’s not their money, so why should they care?
People need to understand that organisations, institutions and corporations do not indulge in this stuff because they agree with it, or have some burning to desire to save the planet. They do so to make sure their ESG score is kept high. They have no interest as such in reducing CO2 emissions, but they know that unless they submit to this tyranny that measures virtue first and performance last they will be accused of being anti environment and against progress. The result is that while the management class gain approval for ticking all the right boxes, the ordinary workers below them and citizens depending on first class service suffer as resources are diverted to alignment with all the fashionable causes. Funding will go not to where it is needed but to where it is virtuous. —-All must declare their NET ZERO pledge and denounce all the heretics who question the framework —ESG. (Environmental and Social Governance)