The Tories attempt to spin the NHS crisis as ‘not a crisis’ failed abysmally, as the evidence of countless images, tweets and testimonies of medical professionals shows it to be self-evidently untrue.
An alternative line the government is using is “This happens every year“. The evidence against that ‘fake news’ is clear from a quick look at the annual Accident and Emergency (A&E) performance figures. The NHS publishes quarterly reports for A&E waiting times and the percentage of patients waiting more than four hours to be checked, treated and admitted/discharged since 2004 are depicted in the chart below:
Once Labour started its major investment in the NHS in 2003, the percentage of people waiting fell rapidly and never reached four percent again under Labour government – not even in winter.
As soon as the Tories entered Downing Street in 2010 that quarterly figure rose rapidly, reaching over 18% and not dropping below 14% in the last couple of years – and the monthly figure is currently 23%.
As a medical professional said recently,
We don’t need a debate about funding. We just need funding.
The deceleration in NHS investment under the Tories has inflicted serious damage on the NHS. As the above figures show, it began as soon as they began to govern again – in spite of false campaign promises that it was ‘safe in [their] hands’.
The claim that the winter crisis is simply a routine yearly event is fake news by the Tories and their media allies – it has become routine under them. But it a situation of their making.
And it’s a situation that costs lives as well as causing huge suffering.
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Sent this to Guardian Letters today. Not holding my breath
It is not just the NHS that is in crisis (This is not a nasty bout of flu, Mrs May, this is the NHS in crisis, 12 January), it is Mrs May and her party’s seventy year old plan to replace public services delivered by the state with delivery by the market which is in crisis. When your austerity strategy designed as a smoke screen to clinch your neoliberal agenda creates such suffering year on year how long can you keep it up? Hence the desperate attempt to introduce Accountable Care Organisations, modelled on the American insurance based business model and currently facing a crowdfunded Judicial Review.
Every labour MP should carry this graph with them, so when the MSM say there was a crisis every year with labour, they can shut them up with proof. This is happening every time there’s an interview and they don’t give good enough answers.
Tories love to confuse issues, such as a winter crisis, when A&E in Gloucester Royal has had ambulances queuing all year round, with patients in corridors.
This is their crisis deliberately done to put pressure on people to demand private care, the problem is even if people wanted to, they just don’t earn enough to pay for it.
Tories are not fit to govern.
So, in Toryworld, the fact it happens every year (their claim) makes it alright then?
You, dear citizens have to sell your labour to live. You, in fact with your labour create the wealth and in every country make societies work.
“As they walked into the factory.
The machines they all were dead.
Then the workers turned the bloody things on.
And the owners they were fed!”
Labour’s greatest victory perhaps was in 1945; we had the nationalisation of some industries but this was at the time more efficient for capitalism (and we had the same bosses in control, strict conditions for workers and no say for workers and communities) so we need to learn from this and need DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC OWNERSHIP with the opposite of all this. Then to come to the NHS, a wonderful achievement which was fought for by our forefathers and mothers but we all pay for through national insurance and capital was happy; all these healthy workers for free – the rich and powerful scroungers want everything for free. So the reality is in a Neo- Liberal capitalist society if they can’t exploit you because of your ill health YOU ARE SURPLUS TO REQUIREMENTS! The Tories are debating increasing taxing on us more to pay for capital’s hidden subsidy but perhaps we need to cut the UPPER CLASS WELFARE STATE – rich corporations £93b tax subsidies, end the £120b in tax avoidance by the rich, close illicit ofshore banking – 10 trillion dollars stashed globally by the RICH SCROUNGERS TO AVOID GIVING TO SOCIETIES! Plus let’s have a 1% financial transaction tax plus windfall taxes on Big Business would help! Solidarity!
You can get a version of this graph for your local trust from the Socialist Health Association: https://twitter.com/SocialistHealth/status/951823200358486016
https://www.facebook.com/martin.rathfelder/posts/10159703045830461