News OnTheWight always welcomes a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers – unsurprisingly they don’t always reflect the views of this publication. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch and of course, your considered comments are welcome below.
This from R P James, Freshwater. Ed
Does the Government care about NHS nurses going on strike? Of course not. Instead they are quietly rubbing their hands with glee, because the disruption caused is simply aiding and abetting their agenda when it comes to our NHS.
Recently, the highly respected King’s Fund confirmed what many of us already know, quote, ‘the government has deliberately orchestrated ten years of decline in our National Health Service’.
Forcing patients towards private healthcare
Why would they want to do that I hear you ask? The answer is simple.
If you can gradually undermine NHS services, and better still, blame others, such as a global pandemic, bed blockers, winter pressures, nurses going on strike, etc, etc, then you can more easily make the case to embrace the private health sector. Indeed with over 7.2 million patients awaiting treatment it is estimated one in eight are already choosing to go private.
Active participation of enablers in influential positions
The strategy is one of using taxpayers money to build up the private health sector whilst simultaneously weakening our NHS. During a recent BBC Question Time we heard how healthcare agencies are charging NHS Trusts £25 per hour for healthcare assistants, who are paid by their agency £11 per hour. Where do you think the £14 is going?
In my view, all this of course requires the active participation of enablers in influential positions who sit on NHS Trusts, those who have quietly overseen years of decline, creating the conditions where they feel validated, once given the green light, to buy in services, like agency nurses at twice the price of an NHS nurse, in addition to refer NHS patients to the private sector for treatment paid for by the NHS, or more accurately, the taxpayer.
Exploiting and monetarising the NHS’s decline
NHS Trust’s readily trot out the same excuses, winter pressures, bed blocking, patient waiting lists, etc, etc, but over the years they have done precious little to address the fundamental issues underlying these annually recurring problems.
When David Cameron said the NHS was safe in Conservative hands, he was speaking the truth, what he didn’t explain was that it was only safe so the Tories could exploit and monetarise its decline.
Where’s the ‘extra’ £350 million a week for our NHS?
Many will recall Boris Johnson promising £350 million a week ‘extra’ for our NHS along with fixing social care, neither have been delivered because neither advance the Conservative Party’s agenda of diverting £billions of taxpayers money into the private health sector rather than our NHS, and more poignantly into the pockets of shareholders and those who hold lucrative directorships in these ‘for profit’ health service providers.
Who are they ‘really’ working for?
Three years ago the Island was awarded £48 million to improve health care. Has anyone seen any evidence of anything on the Island yet?
When it comes to securely your position on the NHS executive gravy train it is important to know which side your bread is buttered, and who you are ‘really’ working for, is it Patients, is it the Community, or is it those who hold the purse strings and pay your inflated NHS executive salary?
It’s the voting public’s fault
So let’s forget all the handwringing and verbal indignation over a situation that’s been years and years in the making, and reflect instead upon ourselves. The truth is, we, the voting General Public, en masse are responsible for what our NHS is today, where nurses are in such distress they feel the need to strike.
Shame on all of us.
Image: Tugce Gungormezler under CC BY 2.0
