As we reach the end of another tumultuous year in the political life of the United Kingdom it is good to know that the dreadful handling of the NHS has been recognised by the King’s Fund in a recent report on the Conservative’s record as being due to ‘a decade of neglect…leaving it with too few staff; too little equipment, and too many outdated buildings to perform the amount of surgery needed.’
Bear in mind this is the Department of Health and Social Care’s own report, ordered just a few months ago!
Embarrassing or what?
The report goes on to contrast unfavourably with the tactics used by the Blair/Brown Labour Government of the late 1990s in chasing down the horrendously long waits for both care and operations at that time which that Government found on taking office in 1997.
Whilst Rishi Sunak is throwing everything at the waiting times problem, it is only having a limited effect.
Those 10 years of Tory/Lib.Dem ‘austerity’  have come back to bite him!
Sunak would be entitled to quietly curse David Cameron and Theresa May.
With the NHS cracking up under the strain of the Covid epidemic it has to be said that those years of neglect together with loss of staff through ‘burn-out’, return of staff to Europe following Brexit, together with the huge deficiency of nursing and doctoral staff due to this Tory government’s inability to recruit and train enough staff has led to this current impasse with the administration – and is it small wonder that the bubble has burst over the ridiculous pay offer made by the so-called ‘independent’ pay review body.
This is a fight this government is totally unable to win.
They should call for pay talks with the unions now as this dispute shows signs of becoming nasty… and let’s not forget the nurses are the ‘darlings and heroes’ of the Covid days of two years ago and polls show there is still overwhelming support
for this strike.

Rishi Sunak says we cannot keep inflation down with such pay deals being done.
I say without upping the pay offer already on the table there will be no NHS left.
This is a pretty weak argument from this government stuffed full of billionaires and millionaires and given the billions of pounds that were lost in rotten PPE deals for Covid and the £40billion lost by the disastrous Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng short-lived premiership.

So, roll on 2023 when we will be getting closer than ever to the next Labour government, this time under Keir Starmer’s control.
A Happy New Year to all our readers.