Heroic NHS needs a tonic at the top
EVERYBODY is going on about social care, the NHS, Covid… it’s getting to be like a broken record, as my friend Nanny would say. The problem is quite simple though: successive governments are all to blame because they are frightened to admit that the management of the NHS needs a bit of an overhaul.
Waiting lists are extreme, and in some cases higher than in other European countries. Here everybody is overly fond of saying that we have the best health service in the world. We certainly have some of the best doctors, nurses and other clinicians but they’re all too often battling against top-heavy management and poor political decisions.
Before we stick more money into the NHS, there needs to be a debate about how it’s managed and how those people who can afford to pay should be prepared to do so .Whether you take out your own private insurance or pay cash, if you have the money then maybe that should be something to consider.
Everybody is getting upset about tax rises, but we never expected the pandemic, so obviously we have to pay sooner or later to help get down the bill of billions it has cost the nation.
Even then we know that in this country if you don’t have the money, you will still get treatment. I think we should tell the politicians the truth – that the NHS needs to be completely re-organised. We can’t always have everything for nothing, so let’s remember it’s not the Government who are paying – it’s us.
The NHS is great and the people who work in it are keeping me alive, but they need the back-up of a decent management and better direction. So let’s stop being scared to admit that it’s time to change.
I’M WRITING this before the reshuffle, but while we wait can anybody tell me why Gavin Williamson has still got his job? The Education Secretary seems to not live in the real world or is at least surrounded by incompetent advisers.
And while I’m thinking about people and their jobs in high places, I see that Dame Cressida Dick, the boss of the Metropolitan Police in London, has just been given an extension to her contract. I just have no idea why this is seen as a good decision.