Adding Insult to Injury

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OK, NHS in turmoil, strikes across the board, twenty-five percent of adults (source: i) choose to go to A&E as they can't get GP appointments - a situation predating the strikes by some considerable way - ambulances and patients hung up outside hospitals waiting for space and staff to be available - again predating the strikes also by some considerable way: and what is the government's response? Give the striking staff forty-five minutes out of a scheduled one hour(!) in which to 'negotiate' a possible satisfactory outcome to this wholly justified industrial action: risible and insulting in itself; the substance of the meeting worse still: no negotiation on pay, just a one-off settlement in return for 'productivity' and 'efficiency' improvements.

This asked of a dedicated, skilled workforce who have been worked into the ground for years by understaffing, under-resourcing and piss-poor management trying to run a health service like a business at the behest of a government that couldn't run a market stall without going bankrupt, and probably taking their bank down with them. To top it off, today they have the brass neck to announce £250 million to be spent over the next three months, to dump patients into care-homes, pretty much handing another tranche of our cash to the private sector, yet again. The Tory strategy remains at least consistent in its approach: take what's not yours and offer your mates a no-risk deal on some of that easy money, and blame any and everyone but yourself for the mess you've made and presided over for thirteen years.

By the way, although £250 million in everyday terms is a very large sum of money, it represents around eighty million quid less than the cost of running the NHS per day. Does this sound like a government with any kind of a grip on things? Remember, this was the lot who handed billions over to Tory-connected companies during the pandemic - billions, handed out without so much as a by your leave to the friends and acquaintances of the self-proclaimed and mandated lords of the manor.

Remember all this if you're ever tempted to moan and bitch about the action being taken currently by our over-stretched workforce and their unions, whatever sector they work within: this government is out for one thing and one thing alone: to feather its collective extended nest with as much cash as possible before the shit really does hit the fan, as it inevitably will. But they won't be there to have to clean up the mountain of ordure: it will be the rest of us doing the shovelling, whilst they tax-haven their ill-gotten wealth and retire to spend our money in luxury in the Caymans.

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