Nhs

We all think pretty highly of ourselves these days, free from old-fashioned ideas about sin. We’re good people. And yet… I read in a letter in a local newspaper recently a description of an event in the writer’s own home which shows that we might also be becoming monsters. The letter-writer, Jane, was a lady in her late fifties who cared at home for a husband, Fred, with terminal brain cancer. As Jane’s letter explained, Fred had fallen recently on to the bathroom floor, and as she was unable to lift him, she telephoned for help. Seven medics arrived and rushed to the scene. All seven then stalled. Though Fred

This morning, we wake up to the news that the government is now serious about collecting money from health tourists – those who come to the UK to use the NHS without being entitled to it. We have, alas, heard this before. For weeks now, we have been reading about a crisis in A&E — a symptom, we’re told, of a funding crisis in the National Health Service more generally. Since I started working for the NHS almost 45 years ago, this has been a familiar theme: the system is creaking, but a bit more tax money should suffice. To many of us who have seen the system close at

An old acquaintance died recently. A friend of mine, who was closer to him than I was, rang to tell me. She’d known him for 40 years and looked after him at various times when he fell ill. He was diagnosed with cancer three weeks ago and died suddenly in hospital last week. She tried to find out what happened, but as she is not next of kin (he had no relations) she will probably never know. Within the monolith of the NHS, patients, particularly the elderly, are able to disappear from view as effectively as prisoners in the Soviet gulag. If they don’t re-emerge alive, no except a close

The language of the left is a truly transformative grammar, so I suppose Noam Chomsky would heartily approve. There are words which, when uttered by a leftie, lose all sense of themselves — such as ‘diverse’ and ‘vibrant’ and ‘racist’. It is not simply that these words can mean different things to different people — it is that when the left uses them they are at best a euphemism and at worst a downright lie. And from that you have to draw the conclusion that their whole political edifice is built upon a perpetually shifting succession of imaginative falsehoods. Such as when they tell you you’re a ‘denier’ of something

With the NHS in the midst of a ‘humanitarian crisis’ according to the Red Cross, No 10 appeared to try to pass some of the blame onto NHS chief Simon Stevens this morning, with reports that Theresa May’s senior aides think he is ‘insufficiently enthusiastic and responsive’ when it comes to reducing spending. So, it was bad-timing — or perhaps a case of Downing Street wanting to strike the first blow — that Stevens was hauled before the Public Accounts Committee this afternoon to discuss the problems facing the NHS. Setting the tone for a feisty testimony, Stevens began by contradicting the Prime Minister’s claim that the NHS was given more funding than he

One of the supposed rules of modern politics is that you shouldn’t tell the voters they are wrong. So, Jeremy Hunt saying that a large part of the problem at A&E is people turning up who shouldn’t, is going to come in for some criticism. One can almost hear Labour readying its denunciation of the Health Secretary for trying to blame patients for the NHS crisis that Tory cuts have caused. But Hunt is right about people turning up to hospital too readily. He cites NHS England’s numbers which show that up to 30 per cent of those attending A&E don’t need to be there. It should be noted, though,

Today’s warning from every former Health Secretary from the past 20 years about inadequate mental health provision raises a number of questions. The first is whether the government really is serious about its pledge to make parity of esteem between physical and mental health a priority. Mental health has become more of a political issue in recent years, which is a good thing: parties now worry about their standing on the issue because society has become better at talking about mental illness, and therefore more people are aware of the shockingly inadequate treatment that their friends and family are receiving when they fall ill. The Tories became anxious in 2015

The Israeli chef and I have become firm friends since he moved out of my flat. He has his own place now, and is trying to find a job. I take him horse riding at the weekends. On the way down the A3 he asks me all sorts of questions about his new life in Britain and the things he is struggling to make sense of. Like why he can’t get a work visa. He is very upset about this. ‘You have to understand,’ I explain, ‘that the mistake you made was to come here legally and apply to the system honestly and openly, stating clearly that you wanted to

Mark Carney’s appointment in 2013 as Governor of the Bank of England was almost universally applauded. Yet more recently Carney has become something of a divisive figure. His interventions during the referendum campaign angered many. While his economic policies have also come in for criticism, leading some to call for Carney to quit. So should the Bank of England chief listen to his critics or is it best for Britain’s economy that he stays put? The Daily Telegraph says Carney has been hit by ‘referendum shockwaves’ and suggests that the attacks levied against him during the referendum – whether true or not – have undoubtedly placed him in an uncomfortable position.