As for the Daily Mail's campaign against the NHS in Wales, no one believes a word of that.
As much as anything else, appearing in the Mail does not in itself affect the vote of anyone, or at least of anyone who might ever have considered voting Labour.
That paper wanted it, and wants it, to be taken up by the BBC. It hasn't been. It won't be.
Labour wins on the NHS simply by existing at all, simply by being the Labour Party. Likewise, the Tories lose on the NHS simply by existing at all, simply by being the Tories.
Them's the rules. Always have been. Always will be.
With the deficit up again, it is anyone's guess what, if anything, is the corresponding strong point for the Conservative Party. Frankly, there is not one.
With the deficit up again, it is anyone's guess what, if anything, is the corresponding strong point for the Conservative Party. Frankly, there is not one.
"Nobody believes a word of that".
ReplyDeleteYou're obviously not a journalist (nor are ever likely to be one) but did you think to check basic facts before writing here?
Everything the Mail said is based on publicly-available facts. See a few samples below.
–"House of Commons library figures show that, at the end of July 2014, the proportion of patients waiting over six weeks for a cystoscopy was 56.5 per cent in Wales and 5.4 per cent in England. For a colonoscopy the figures were 46.3 per cent in Wales and 3.5 per cent in England, for a gastroscopy 47.1 per cent in Wales and 3 per cent in England and for a flexi sigmoidoscopy 43.9 per cent in Wales and 2.5 per cent in England.
– In March, a Parliamentary answer to Simon Burns MP revealed that 15,450 Welsh cancer patients cross the border to England each year for treatment.
‘Thousands are going private or even moving to rented accommodation in England to bypass long waiting lists for heart scans or hip operations.’
– The Welsh Government’s own figures, published this weekend, show that 31,626 people went across the border to have treatment in England in the 2012/13 year.
– On July 26, 2013, the RCS released the findings of a visit to Cardiff and Vale University Health Board last April. It described services at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff as dangerous and warned that patients awaiting heart operations were dying regularly.
An RCS team visited again on April 25, 2014. It found evidence the health board had taken its concerns seriously and undertaken work to address the issues, but said there was still substantial work to do.
‘The Royal College of Emergency Medicine… warned last year that Wales’s A&E departments were at the point of meltdown.’
– A letter was sent by the College to Welsh health minister Mark Drakeford in March 2013. It reads: ‘Our emergency departments are at the point of meltdown. Most days, they are seriously overcrowded. This jeopardises safety and puts patients at risk… This is happening right here, right now, across Wales.’
‘The Welsh Government has until recently been cutting NHS funding by 1 per cent a year, even as the rest of Britain increases it by the same amount.
‘Gareth Williams [wrote] to senior Labour politicians urging them to look at “deliberate deceits and cover-ups”, but claims to have been largely ignored.’
– In June 2012, Mr Williams wrote to Labour’s Welsh first minister Carwyn Jones asking him to ensure there was a full investigation into ‘deliberate deceits and cover-ups’ after his mother suffered alleged neglect in hospital.
‘Sir Bruce Keogh of NHS England wrote to his Welsh counterpart last November warning six hospitals should be probed over persistently high mortality rates.’
– On November 28, 2013, NHS England medical director Professor Sir Bruce Keogh sent an email to his Welsh counterpart Dr Chris Jones. He wrote: ‘There are six hospitals [in Wales] with a persistently high mortality which warrant investigating.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2800672/the-welsh-government-claims-ten-inaccuracies-mail-s-coverage-nhs-explain-fact-correct.html#ixzz3GmS8mLE1
I never said that it wasn't true. I said that nobody believed it. Nor will they.
DeleteNor will they even hear about it unless the BBC picks it up, and that, too, is not going to happen.
The Tories cannot win on the NHS. They just can't. Or, rather, Labour just can't lose on the NHS, simply because it is the Labour Party. The public trust is unconditional.
The Tories no longer have anything like that. Not the economy, Nor defence. Not law and order. Nothing.
No-one in England cares what happens in Wales anyhow. That includes the BBC.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, no-one but Labour can win on the NHS, the Tories and the Mail(!!) shouldn't even try, it only makes people hate them even more.
Precisely.
DeleteAs Peter Hain puts it:
"We've come to expect the Mail to cash in on miss information, but this week’s belligerent attacks on the Welsh NHS is some of the most destructive Tory propaganda I have witnessed.
The Welsh NHS has been lumbered with the consequences of over £1.5 billion in cuts in the Welsh Government’s budget from the Tory/Lib Dems who are destroying and privatising the NHS in England.
Of course there are faults in the NHS both sides of the border, but our Welsh NHS still provides a fantastic service to the vast majority of patients and the Daily Mail’s attacks, orchestrated by the Tories, use misleading statistics are an insult to all our hard-working doctors, nurses and NHS staff."
If the Tories economic record were so despised they wouldn't consistently outpoll Labour in terms of who is trusted with the economy. Labour usually wins on the NHS (though it shouldn't after this week) the Tories always win on the economy.
ReplyDeleteLabour went into the 97 election aping Tory policy on the euro-they only offered a referendum after the Tories did-and aping Tory policy on tax and spending.
Of course as Peter Hitchens and John Redwood noted, this concealed their true Left wing radicalism which was constitutional revolution rather economic revolution.
But they were among the few who noticed that at the time and wrote about it.
Labour usually wins on the NHS
ReplyDeleteIt always wins on the NHS, and it always will.
the Tories always win on the economy
Not now that the BBC has decided to run with the deficit story (as if people needed to be told), they won't.
It's all over.