‘It’s disgusting, I’ve got to wait 12 weeks for physiotherapy!’
‘I completely agree with you, please write to your MP to complain.’
‘My out-patient appointment has been cancelled twice already, it’s a disgrace!’
‘I agree it is, please write to Jeremy Hunt and ask him why.’
We have little over a month to hammer home to patients that the upcoming snap election is their chance to vote for a party that won’t keep slashing at the public sector budgets with the ferocity of an unscrupulous palm oil producer in an Indonesian rainforest. Our message should be simple – the more blue rosettes in Westminster the worse the NHS is going to get.
I struggle to understand why the poor vote Conservatives
I totally understand why the rich would vote Conservative, but I really struggle to understand why the poor do. Yet a lot of the same people who’ll be moaning to us about waiting lists in the months and years ahead are the very same people who will have put their cross next to the name of a wealthy Tory.
Judging by the results of the last election, there appears to be a critical mass of people in this country who are incapable of making the connection between conservatives getting in to power and less money for the NHS.
On paper the Tories should lose. Of all the public sector organisations, the NHS is the one organisation that virtually everybody will use in their lifetime and it is the one institution that so many people seem to hold most dear. Yet come election day so many of these people will still vote for a party that is doing its damnedest to undermine doctors while simultaneously flogging off the health service piecemeal to the private sector like a fruit stall holder at the end of the day’s trading.
It is true that none of the opposition parties is perfect, but on balance, can anybody really say that any of the alternatives are not likely to savage the NHS less than the Tories?
However, if there is one truism in life it is never underestimate people’s ignorance, so I won’t be holding my breath. Just don’t come in moaning to me about waiting times.
Dr David Turner is a GP in west London
