The Telegraph is at it again. I’m just watching the review of tomorrow’s papers on Sky News (I know, but it’s the only news channel in this hotel!) and tomorrow’s Telegraph has a massive front-page banner about ‘death pathways’ in the NHS (update: the exact headline is ‘NHS pay out millions for controversial care pathway’). Even the reviewers are saying that the headline is intended to shock but the story itself is a ‘so what’ or ‘that’s fine’. (Update: you can read the whole article online now here, but the online version doesn’t do justice to the massiveness of the print headline and they’ve changed the wording from ‘death pathway’ to ‘care pathway’!)
As I’ve pointed out before, the Telegraph is the arch-accomplice of the government and its private-healthcare backers when it comes to trying to prepare the minds of the electorate for whatever is the government’s latest push in its ideological attack on the NHS, pitching misleading headlines and even inserting negative stories into completely unrelated stories in its eagerness to tar and feather the NHS ready for burning, going so far as to issue instructions to sub-editors that the ‘cuckoo’ section mustn’t be removed (and then leaving it in by mistake!).
I can’t insert a picture of the actual print headline they were showing tonight, as the paper isn’t out yet – but you can see a picture of the dodgy article with the instructions not to remove the irrelevant and sneaky attack by clicking on the link just above. Suffice to say the print version is massive and far more inflammatory.
I don’t have any information yet on what the government’s planning that the Telegraph is preparing the ground for, but you can be sure it’s coming. Probably the next step in rationalising NHS care into large regional centres so that the sick have to travel miles for treatment, or more hospital closures. Or, most likely, given the topic of tomorrow’s headline, the next step in Hunt’s known aim of concentrating care in the (wealthy) areas that have most elderly people, rather than in the areas where people’s poor health means fewer live to get that old in the first place.
Or something else. Just be sure it’s coming. The Telegraph is a rag, but it’s reliable in its collusion with the enemies of the NHS.