Jeremy Hunt spoke to the Tory conference in Manchester today about the NHS. It was a bizarre spectacle.
Hunt gave the Tories the credit for the fact that we have an NHS. He said he would increase the number of nurse training places – ignoring the fact that there aren’t enough student nurses filling courses now, thanks to the Tories’ decision to scrap bursaries for nursing students. And he tried to claim patient satisfaction levels are at an all-time high in an NHS that’s falling down around our ears amid ever-lengthening waiting times and hospitals running at record deficits.
But his nonsense entered the realm of the surreal when, after calling for a hypocritical round of applause for heroic medical staff who risked their lives to save others in the Manchester and London terror attacks, he said he planned to show nurses how valued they were and to help them manage their family commitments.
With an app.
And he screwed up and let slip that the ‘flexible working app’ he plans to make available is actually for NHS Trusts to be able to get their staff to work extra hours at short notice:
It’s the equivalent of a selfish, idiot husband buying his wife a new iron or vacuum cleaner so she can do ‘her’ chores more efficiently – and expecting her to be pleased at the ‘romantic’ gesture.
Except this is an idiot Health Secretary insulting well over a million NHS workers, If he hadn’t already been the most despised in the history of the NHS, he would be now.
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