Theresa May, our recently shoehorned into office, un-elected Prime Minister is backing that nice Jeremy Hunt to the hilt. Some of you may have noticed that hospitals are actually open seven days a week. The charge that you're more likely to die if you are admitted at the weekend is unproven. Jeremy Hunt knows this.
That's not to say that the possibility of there being some truth in it shouldn't be taken seriously, but if the aim is to make things better not worse then Hunt and now May are failing. I've long harboured the suspicion that for politicians it's largely about their own egos and being able to say look what I achieved come election time. Hunt is a prime candidate for suspicion.
Like many people I have huge sympathy for doctors. It is true that once they get on in their careers they stand to make a lot of money, but I feel that most people who enter medicine do so because they want a career where they can do some good in the world.
Then there are the risks, we've just seen an optometrist get a criminal record for making a mistake. The crime being negligence, which it may have been. Ever had a bad day yourself? Ever performed below par? I know I have, but I worked in advertising. A missed deadline meant a financial cost, embarrassment, even the risk of a sacking or losing a client, but nobody died and no one is going to make you a criminal.
Yes, I have a lot of sympathy for people in the medical profession. Even so, if Hunt and May were making things better I'd go along with them, but they're not. Germany and France spend more per capita on health than we do. After Brexit it's likely that reciprocal health arrangements will be lost and that the Tories will push creeping privatisation of the health service again.
So long as Labour are in disarray and the SNP are strong in Scotland there's no chance of getting the Tories out either. Not that I'd trust Labour, the SNP or the Greens with the economy. That only leaves the Liberals and we'd need a huge awakening of common sense to see them in power!
What the referendum here and the rise of Trump in the USA shows is that we are all Lemmings. Most of us have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, transport, education, healthcare, and some level of social security. My parents and grandparents didn't have all that and they had world wars. When I was born food was still rationed.
Yet people are getting more and more polarised and abandoning the middle ground because they think things are so bad! The more you've got, the more you want, that's the problem. We should celebrate what we have, avoid making things worse and then work to make them better still. Abandoning Europe and making war on Junior Doctors are just two of the huge errors we're making.
A hospital in the SW was recently criticised heavily in a report for not having enough doctors on duty. Doctors, believe it or not, don't grow on trees. We can't train enough doctors and twenty percent of UK doctors come from EUROPEAN countries. They pay taxes here and work in our beloved NHS, here, but they didn't get a vote in the referendum and I know how I'd feel if I was one of them.
Now, the government is also intent on destroying the morale of young motivated British doctors and deterring British students from taking up medicine as a career. Lemmings the lot of us. Oh and by the way, think about voting Liberal next time Eh, if you want to stop short of the cliff edge.
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