Thursday, November 02, 2006

NHS in crisis

RidiculousPolitics has a timely reminder of what a truly rotten government can inflict on the NHS.

Headlines from November 1996:

The Times
2 November: ‘Hospital crisis’

The Mirror
18 November: ‘Scandal of lost NHS operations...’
18 November: ‘One in seven operations… cancelled due to cutbacks in NHS’

The Record
15 November: ‘700 clinical jobs, from consultants to nurses, will be axed’ – at a single hospital

The Independent:
4 November: ‘Hospital trusts go broke as NHS is bled dry’
20 November: ‘Hospitals warn of worst fund crisis for years’ and warns of ‘“emergency only” service this winter’

People on the left sometimes complain that Labour has done too little to change the political culture. But it’s a sign of success here (albeit an inconvenient and frustrating sign) that people’s expectations of the NHS are now so much higher than ten years ago that its present condition is seen as inadequate. Not to mention the fact that the Tories no longer dare wave the axe around (not in public, at least).

And it’s worth remembering that people who actually use the NHS have a much higher opinion of it than people who base their opinions on what the media say.

2 comments:

Hughes Views said...

It's a 'shame' that so few people have to use the NHS, particularly its acute services. That's why the media are able to spread such gloomy stories and have them believed. Perhaps HMG needs to make people iller!

Tom Freeman said...

Hmmm, "Labour makes your children ill to indoctrinate you into paying more tax"

The fallout from the explosion at the Daily Mail offices would increase the bile content of the atmosphere to well over the 550 parts per million limit that scientists think would lead to global frothing...