23 February (Part 2) - Reclaim the NHS
Dave Putson
kindly let me know that Dr. Gill had to
defer his appearance at the monthly Cost of Living Crisis meeting
and that he had secured the services of Frances Hook who would deliver a similar address.
As I did with the doctor I Googled the new name and found an
octogenarian retired midwife and member of the Communist Party.
I am in no position to negatively pontificate on membership of the Communist Party because
two of my in-laws were best mates with Willie
Gallacher the former Communist MP for Clydebank and they were decent enough
people - for in-laws.
Dave had stressed that Frances should not be considered his second choice after
Bob Gill but a serious and knowledgeable campaigner in her own right - and he wasn’t wrong.
I was expecting the usual diatribe about the sorry state of the NHS to be the
fault of the evil Tories but the message was far wider than that. The decline,
she said, had started 30 years ago, accelerated under Blair and Brown and the Tories have followed their lead.
Once again I did not take notes and Frances was softly spoken and I hope the
following is accurate. She seemed to share my view of front line staff some of
whom she didn’t think were good enough to be employed in first world health systems.
Maybe she had in mind the ‘Nurse Specialist’ who wrote to my GP with a copy to
me including a load of inaccurate tosh. I wrote a reply and decided to hand deliver it to
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Urology Department. Having arrived there I said “this
letter is for Josephine” - not the real name. “Josephine is standing right there” I was told with
a finger pointing at a lady no more than four feet away. However Josephine said she could
not accept the letter as I had not made an appointment with her to hand it over.
Fortunately the nearby receptionist bearing a suitably bemused look was happy to
accept it from me.
Frances said that the Health and Care Bill which has received Royal Assent paves
the way for an American style Health Service, one which bankrupts half a million
citizens a year because they cannot pay their medical bills.
Some parts of QEH are already fully privatised,
I think A&E Triage may have
been mentioned but no doubt Dave will correct me if I am wrong. The NHS letters
I get quite regularly offering dental, optical and prescription services are all
from private companies who have bought the right to use the NHS logo in order to make
a profit from your ill-health.
Will a Labour government save the NHS? No chance
was the very definite message! Labour is
responsible for many of the present ills. The £52 billion interest bill on PFIs
etc. Frances the Commie shares the opinion of Malcolm the Tory about Starmer and
Co. Worse than Sunak in my opinion which one might think is an almost impossible feat to
achieve. I am pretty sure that Frances said that Starmer and his Health Shadow
Minister Wes Streeting have both accepted funds from American health providers.
There was an implication too that GPs have lost their way and Bexley Group
Practice is all too typical of their lack of care. (I have recently been made aware that
they are being pursued by an MP for their uselessnesI)
I picked up a few of Dave’s NHS leaflets and later today they will be
linked from here.
Doctor Bob Gill will be telling a similar story on 29th March.
It should be more than a little interesting.
Meanwhile I didn’t hear anything about the Cost of Living Crisis last night; its
subject was too close to being the ‘Cost of Dying’. Maybe I shouldn’t mention the 40 year old
friend with untreated kidney stones which are now causing liver failure and the
earliest hospital appointment he can get is mid-April. It’s enough to make anyone a Commie.