Here Come the Cuts

What better week to announce the closure of four A&Es in London (including Charing Cross hospital) than the week that the nasty doctors went on strike? Talk about the doctors' strike all week, put out the announcement of the closures at the weekend and no one will notice. Until they turn up at the hospital with an emergency, that is..

Oh The Jobs You'll Create!

Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You'll Create! from Marketplace on Vimeo.




A salutory warning from the USA?

Is it Just Me?

Last week the BMA finally decided to go on strike. About time too, many would say. And I would have been one of them. I know what the government are trying to do; basically they are trying to raid a money pot that does not belong to them, to plug gaps elsewhere. I understand that this is wrong and that our junior doctors in particular need supported, because they are going to be carrying much bigger debts than previous medical graduates. I understand. And yet..

I feel let down. Let me explain why. For the past fifteen months, we have been fighting the introduction of the Health and Social Care Bill. I have made my own poor contribution to that; writing letters to Lords, blogging on it, explaining it to punters and alerting my own party to the consequences of the bill if it was passed in England. It is a monstrous bill; a clear and deliberate attempt to turn the NHS into a franchise. It has huge implications for students as well; who is going to do training, terms and conditions in different trusts, possible breakup of the deanery system, closure of hospital departments to shore up funding and so on. And you knew this. And you could not pull together to strike on the bill, at a time when it was really, really needed. Now that the Queen's assent has been given and the damage has been done, you're going to strike about pensions? Are you joking? What possible effect do you think that is going to have now, given that the wholesale destruction of the NHS has been bulldozered through? After all of that has gone through, do you think the government is going to be impressed by a strike about pensions? It's a gift to them. See, that's the greedy doctors that only care about themselves and lining their pockets, they'll shout. Your (valid) argument about pensions is going to to be lost in the shouts of those right now who have no jobs or very poor ones, whose pension funds have already been raided. They look on you as fortunate and they will look on your strike as self-serving in a time of austerity. Had you instead struck on defending the NHS from privateers, you might have got some sympathy. And you might have had a chance of changing things. That time, I fear, has now gone.

Then again, maybe it's just me.