Tattoos - A hidden cost!

[Bramblethorn]

It is the misuse of figures like this that gives Statistics a bad name. You take the amount spent by THREE NHS TRUSTS, for those not familiar with the UK system THAT AMOUNTS TO THREE HOSPITALS, and divide the amount spent by THE WHOLE POPULATION OF THE UK and say that is how much was spent on Tattoo removal per head. It may come as a surprise to you but we really do have hundreds if not thousands of hospitals in the UK.

Where are you getting this "three NHS trusts" from? The article clearly says:

BROKE NHS trusts have blown £203,499 on tattoo removals in four years, figures reveal... 56 of 144 trusts refused to hand over figures following a Freedom of Information request.

Of the 88 trusts who replied, half admitted to funding laser removals. North Lancashire was the worst offender, splashing out a whopping £139,828. Newcastle, Northumberland and North Tyneside spent £28,515.

(You will note that £139,828+£28,515 = £168,343; that leaves £35156 for the other 40-odd responding trusts.)

Next time you want to accuse somebody of "misuse of figures", maybe get your facts right first?

And while I don't claim to be an expert on UK healthcare, your "one trust = one hospital" claim seems questionable. Here's the website for one such trust; it notes that the trust serves a population of 1.4 million and works from over 100 sites.

In 2007 the NHS revealed that it had spent £5M on tattoo removal in one year alone and that figure would only rise. (check out the BBC news feeds you will find them more reliable and more accurate than "The Sun" "The Daily Mirror, and private blogs)

I searched on terms like 'nhs "tattoo removal" site:www.bbc.co.uk' but all I could find were a few articles about the removal process noting that it's rare for it to be paid for on the NHS. Nothing mentioning any figure like £5M. Got a link?

Now to the abuse point. Most Branding is done by amateurs often with a needle and ink, in much the same way as prison tattoos. This means that it goes too deep for normal laser removal and would need a skin graft. That comes under the heading of plastic surgery so it is not counted in the figures. In other words it is a complete RED HERRING.

May well be some that can't be removed by the laser, but certainly there are some that can. Here's an article about a laser tattoo removalist who removes tattoos from women who've been tattooed with their abuser's name.

(Granted, that one's from the USA; if you've got cites showing it never happens in the UK, I'll take a look.)

I would suggest that you learn a little more about a system before trying to quote figures, it only makes you look silly.

Says the guy who thinks half of 88 is 3.

 

[DeYaKen]

Where are you getting this "three NHS trusts" from? The article clearly says:

And while I don't claim to be an expert on UK healthcare, your "one trust = one hospital" claim seems questionable. Here's the website for one such trust; it notes that the trust serves a population of 1.4 million and works from over 100 sites.

Yes the main hospital has several satellites These are minor hospitals clinics and geriatric care establishments. All of these places are sites. As a general rule a trust caters for a specific area which will normally have one main hospital but treatment, not requiring specialist equipment is carried out at smaller sites

I searched on terms like 'nhs "tattoo removal" site:www.bbc.co.uk' but all I could find were a few articles about the removal process noting that it's rare for it to be paid for on the NHS. Nothing mentioning any figure like £5M. Got a link?

you are the one with all the time.

May well be some that can't be removed by the laser, but certainly there are some that can. Here's an article about a laser tattoo removalist who removes tattoos from women who've been tattooed with their abuser's name.

Pity she doesn't give us any idea of numbers only that it happens. We have a women's refuge in a town near here. In the course of my volunteer work I come into contact with a few of the women. ( I help them sort out their finances and make sure they can't be tracked through financial dealings.) I've been asked where to get many things, but, so far, never where they can get tattoos removed.

(Granted, that one's from the USA; if you've got cites showing it never happens in the UK, I'll take a look.)

You do realise that you've just asked me to prove a negative. Even when I went to school they taught us that it is impossible to prove a negative.

Says the guy who thinks half of 88 is 3.

Only 3 trusts were mentioned by name.

(You will note that £139,828+£28,515 = £168,343; that leaves £35156 for the other 40-odd responding trusts.)

Next time you want to accuse somebody of "misuse of figures", maybe get your facts right first?

So what about the other UK trusts, somewhere in the region of a thousand last time I checked. Assuming they are no greater than the mainly rural ones quoted,(the area covered is the most sparsely populated part of England) That brings you up to £!0 mil over four years. However, the number of tattoo parlors in urban areas are far higher so the number of people with tattoos will also be far higher. Ergo the number of tattoos to be removed will be higher.

The figure of £5 mil in a year is looking as if it might even be on the conservative side.

Why shouldn't I accuse you of misusing the figures, you did. You took some figures from a small part of the country, then divided it by the total population of the Brtitish Isles and tried to say that was the total cost to the taxpayer. That's misuse of the figures, unless of course, you made a mistake. But that couldn't be the case, because if it was, you would have apologised.

 

[NickiC]

Yes they are because if you don't know the artist and their hygienic practices there is the very real threat of Hep C. Okay that is a semi joke but it is not cheap to go to someone who is actually an artist. The only ones I don't like are the ones with cheap art work, prison tats and just all around not creative. My cousin has a beautiful sleeve with meaning and good ink. I understand tattoos and I really think they should have a reason. I have none but I can respect it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I searched on terms like 'nhs "tattoo removal" site:www.bbc.co.uk' but all I could find were a few articles about the removal process noting that it's rare for it to be paid for on the NHS. Nothing mentioning any figure like £5M. Got a link?

you are the one with all the time.

I'll take that as a "no".

You do realise that you've just asked me to prove a negative. Even when I went to school they taught us that it is impossible to prove a negative.

I don't know why that factoid is so popular. The "impossible to prove a negative" thing is rubbish, always has been, always will be, and it should be obviously so to anybody who's given it a moment's thought. There are plenty of negative statements that can be proven very easily: "there is no even integer in between 2 and 4", "I am not twelve feet tall", "balloons are not bullet-proof". Don't take my word for it, here's a philosophy professor.

http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf

But if you're telling me that you can't prove the assertion you made about tattoo removal being irrelevant to abuse situations, then I'm willing to accept that.

Only 3 trusts were mentioned by name.

Which is utterly irrelevant to the fact that you took a figure clearly identified as being a total for forty-odd trusts and represented it as a figure for three.

So what about the other UK trusts, somewhere in the region of a thousand last time I checked.

http://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/key-statistics-on-the-nhs

In the NHS there are currently in England (unless stated):

211 clinical commissioning groups (including 198 now authorised without conditions)
160 acute trusts (including 102 foundation trusts) [acute trusts aka "hospital trusts" by my understanding - B
56 mental health trusts (including 41 foundation trusts)
34 community providers (16 NHS trusts, 2 foundation trusts and 16 social enterprises)
10 ambulance trusts (including 5 foundation trusts)

It also notes ca. 2300 hospitals and 8000 GPs, but these aren't identified as trusts; my understanding, based on this page, is that the 160 "acute trusts" mentioned above cover those 2300 hospitals between them.

I make that a total of 244 trusts total, but of course that's only for England. Perhaps there are three times as many again in Scotland and Wales, but I'd be a little surprised.

Given that some of those trusts have specialised roles that wouldn't include tattoo removal, seems like the 144 trusts mentioned in the previous link would be a good chunk of the relevant total. And seeing as it comes from somebody trying to whip up outrage about the issue, it's hard to see why he'd want to understate that.

Assuming they are no greater than the mainly rural ones quoted,(the area covered is the most sparsely populated part of England) That brings you up to £!0 mil over four years. However, the number of tattoo parlors in urban areas are far higher so the number of people with tattoos will also be far higher. Ergo the number of tattoos to be removed will be higher.

That's some weapons-grade speculation there. But if you can find that BBC article supporting your claim of £5m/year, do go ahead and post it.

 

[DeYaKen]

I don't know why that factoid is so popular. The "impossible to prove a negative" thing is rubbish, always has been, always will be, and it should be obviously so to anybody who's given it a moment's thought. There are plenty of negative statements that can be proven very easily: "there is no even integer in between 2 and 4", "I am not twelve feet tall", "balloons are not bullet-proof". Don't take my word for it, here's a philosophy professor.

http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articlepdf/proveanegative.pdf

But if you're telling me that you can't prove the assertion you made about tattoo removal being irrelevant to abuse situations, then I'm willing to accept that.

It's popular because it's true.
Without knowing everything you cannot PROVE that something does not exist. You can show that it is statistically unlikely. You cannot prove that there is not a single case.

You want to try, it's simple. Prove to me that God does not exist. The mere fact that no one has seem him or her does not prove the non-existence merely that no one has observed them . That is what philosophy is all about, belief.

Show me a physics professor who can prove that we are the only intelligent life form in the universe. Or to put it in your favoured negative form PROVE that no other intelligent life exists in the universe.

I notice that you have stopped denying that you misused figures to try and make your point valid and are now resorting to a smokescreen to avoid apologising. Politics would seem to be your best employment option.

BTW
Results of a single google search
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6125022.stm
http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2011/.../FOI/RequestAndResponseRegister/2010/2157.pdf
http://www.publications.parliament....pdvn/lds06/text/61025-0002.htm#06102571000061
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2006-10-25b.1207.3

Either you didn't look very hard or you chose not to post because it shoots you down in flames.
Of Course you can always say that Hansard the official record of the business of the house of commons is wrong.

Don't have time for anymore of this rubbish Good bye

 

[Rozalin_0123]

And maybe some interested in writing a story that includes tattoos as a story element. You can make this about you, LC. Tell us (again) about your tattoos.

And then maybe Roz can gush over you for a couple of posts.

For the record, I only gush over SR-71 Pilots. I've yet to encounter one though.

 

[lovecraft68]

And maybe some interested in writing a story that includes tattoos as a story element. You can make this about you, LC. Tell us (again) about your tattoos.

And then maybe Roz can gush over you for a couple of posts.

Maybe you can create another alt and do here what you do at home.

Gush all over yourself.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think it was Steven Wright who had the line

"I want to get a life size tattoo of myself....only bigger."

 

[ishtat]

Hi Lovecraft. I noticed that Colddiesel after a bit of 'harrumphing' with Bramblethorn posted the substantive reply to your position at post 65. However, you did not respond, merely suggesting more 'writerly' threads at post 70. Subsequently you have shifted to familiar territory, knocking, or trying to knock pieces off Pilot.

I think it was Elfin who asked the question "why do you get tattooed." I would amend that slightly and ask "why do you get heavily/multiple tattoos?"

I can understand why the British Prime ministers wife has a small dolphin on her foot, (decorative?) or Winston Churchill had an anchor on his forearm (Naval interest), but the motive for major body decoration eludes me. The psychologists seem to suggest that it is some sort of attempt to 'enlarge' ones personality, either to appear a larger persona, (Or even 'badder doggie' perhaps?) or is it an attempt to subsume the individual into the more powerful group (gang), thus empowering the individual?

I confess that I find it almost impossible to view standard or adaptations of stencilled images as 'art' at all.

And whilst confessing , I am well aware of my own conflict, and that is whilst I don't undertand the motive for heavy tattooing I have an interest in it, because my investment in the Tattoos removals business has returned a handsome 16 to 17% per annum!

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's popular because it's true.
Without knowing everything you cannot PROVE that something does not exist. You can show that it is statistically unlikely. You cannot prove that there is not a single case.

Bullshit. If my friend Bob claims there's a giant invisible squirrel called Neville who's omnipresent, omniscient, and instantly devours anybody who types the letter "q", there's a very obvious way to prove that Neville as described doesn't exist. (Indeed, I've already done so twice in this post.)

What you may be confused about here is that some specific types of non-existence statements are difficult to prove (cf Russell's teapot). But the blanket statement "it's impossible to prove a negative" is incorrect.

BTW
Results of a single google search
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6125022.stm
http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2011/10/14/over-600000-spent-on-tattoo-removal-by-nhs/
[quote edited to repair broken links - B]
http://www.nhslothian.scot.nhs.uk/YourRights/FOI/RequestAndResponseRegister/2010/2157.pdf
http://www.publications.parliament....pdvn/lds06/text/61025-0002.htm#06102571000061
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2006-10-25b.1207.3

Either you didn't look very hard or you chose not to post because it shoots you down in flames.

Cool. Let's go through those links and see how far they support your claim that "In 2007 the NHS revealed that it had spent £5M on tattoo removal in one year alone".

The first link says:

Health minister Rosie Winterton said in October that 187,063 tattoos had been removed last year. Some experts later estimated this could have cost £300m. But the department now says the figure was a mistaken estimate and that the true amount was not known... it is not possible from the existing data sets to say with any precision how many tattoos are removed by the NHS each year

The second link gives a figure of "£600,000 in the past five years" for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. That's £120k/year, which falls a bit short the £5,000,000 you claimed. Perhaps there's another £4,880,000 elsewhere in the NHS, but you haven't shown it.

(And given that all your other links indicate that the NHS coding system doesn't allow splitting out of tattoo removal costs separate from other procedures, I'm curious as to how they got that figure - would be interesting to see the FOI on which the story's based and check whether they're representing it accurately.)

The third link says:

Q: In the past five years (October 2005 – present) how many patients have requested have (sic) a tattoo removed in your NHS board? In the same period, how many people have had tattoos removed in your NHS board?

A: I am advised that it is not possible to provide a complete answer to your request as details of tattoo removal are not coded separately from other cosmetic procedures. Tattoo removal comes under the cosmetic procedures within the OPCS4 code (Surgical Operations and Procedures, 4th Revision), S09.1 - Laser excision of skin lesion (head or neck) and S09.2 - Laser excision of skin lesions (elsewhere). Only a small number of these cases are for actual tattoo removals

The fourth link (Hansard - Lords) covers the same ground as the first BBC link: it mentions that a previous estimate of tattoo removal costs was "was incorrect by a substantial margin owing to a significant number of errors in coding usage" and that the true figures would be "very, very, very substantially lower" but doesn't say what those true figures would be.

The fifth link is the same Hansard as #4.

So: none of them even come close to supporting your claim of £5,000,000/year. Several of them say that the figure is not known because the code that covers tattoo removal also includes other procedures, and that tattoo removal would only be a small part of costs under that code. Also, the Hansard and BBC links date from 2006, so it seems rather bizarre to claim they have info about how much was spent in 2007.

I don't know whether you were misrepresenting these links in the hope that I wouldn't bother checking, or if you really aren't capable of understanding the difference between "not possible to provide a complete answer" and "£5,000,000/year". But either way, I don't see much point in trying to continue this discussion with you.

 

[sr71plt]

The psychologists seem to suggest that it is some sort of attempt to 'enlarge' ones personality, either to appear a larger persona, (Or even 'badder doggie' perhaps?) or is it an attempt to subsume the individual into the more powerful group (gang), thus empowering the individual?

I think that's probably right. To some extent the curtain that the "wish I were" wizard of Oz is sitting behind.