An open letter to Rob Wilson

Dear Mr Wilson,

Congratulations. Thank goodness you are no longer cock of the walk hereabouts.

I call you dear because I observe the protocols, but you are far from dear to me. In my house your name is, justifiably, mud. A more self-servicing and heartless personality would be hard to find.

You would turn up for the opening of a tin of sardines if it involved a press photo opportunity. As to good deeds, whether presentation of a charity cheque was anything to do with your personal efforts or not, there you would be grinning broadly for the camera, muscling in to get your photo in the local paper for the umpteenth time and be the most prominent. Hogging the limelight and cosying up to the giant facsimile of a tidy sum for a good cause had become tedious to say the least. For a public figure to be visible is essential, but not under false pretences and spurred on by naked pitiless ambition.

Unforgivable was your lightbulb moment of wishing to commandeer the North Block of the Royal Berkshire Hospital for a school annexe. Thereafter the sight of you smugly posing made me feel sick. For several years I had had cause to visit the dialysis wards, in North Block, and can assure you the terrible suffering was heartbreaking to witness. The dedication and professionalism of the NHS staff was awesome. Preparation to wreck the NHS has been stealthy and lethal. the well established

Battle Hospital was seen off. Much trumpeting about pouring more funds in the RBH was a sham.

Not that I believe for one moment you were passionately keen to extend the educational venue of Maiden Erlegh School. It was the opening salvo in the longer term conspiracy to close down the whole hospital and plague patients (no, not customers, patients for pity’s sake). Had the wretched school idea succeeded, it would have been short lived and thereafter I have no doubt the whole hospital would have been whittled away, and the cause of such private companies as the Circle given a huge boost.

As it is, much finance due to the

NHS has been diverted to these private hospitals.

I have seen a list of Circle private charges and, once the NHS totally neutered, the American system would pounce and private insurance companies would laugh all the way to the bank.

I suspect Jeremy Hunt would be dangling brownie points for any halfbaked ideas to destroy public health care or reduce it to pauper conditions.

Thatcher was obsessed with “rolling back the state”. She also announced “there is no such thing as society”. Victorian values? Workhouses still existed well into the 20th century.

Visionaries (Aneurin Bevan in particular introduced a health service that was the envy of the world, not a stick to beat the sick with as is privatisation. There has been an obvious (to the observant) campaign to drive the highly trained medical staff, schooled by the state, into the jaws of the private sharks. Yes, you can fool some of the people some of the time. I have never been gulled into believing the attempted coup at the Royal Berks was anything but a land grab to enrich the cronies and spivs.

You announced yourself “proud of my record” post-election. Well … bully for you! Narcissus would be proud of you too. You hung around school gate petitioning parents to clamour to have the hospital premises purloined. Until you pestered them they had never dreamed of such an outrage. Their children would have but a few years on your stolen premises. Decades lie before young people and on the cards that one day their need for a local hospital would far exceed the benefits of occupying space the hospital was robbed of.

A very wealthy American sportsman was injured in Great Britain. On TB was rhapsodising on the NHS treatment he received. He added, yes, there is similar brilliant nursing in America, but the insurance premiums would cripple the majority. He admitted he could only afford them because he was massively wealthy.

The nasty party (Mrs May once identified it thus) have been closing A&Es left, right and centre. What sort of people are you? Asset strippers without a conscience.