This is a spoof, but the point is well-made.

The BBC wants you to feel happy – “Waiting times in A&E units in England have improved to their best level since November” – but it can’t hide the facts: “The target is still being missed.

“A total of 92.4% of patients were seen in four hours in the seven days up until Sunday. The target is 95% and has been missed on a weekly basis since the start of October.” This is the target that the Coalition reduced from 98 per cent under Labour – the NHS hasn’t managed anything close to that since the Coalition took over.

The Labour Party remains incandescent with rage that the Conservative-led Coalition has let people down so badly – possibly because the Tories used to whine if the 98 per cent target was missed (which did happen – but not continually for more than two years, as has happened with the Coalition’s – lowered – target).

How do you feel about the fact that the Coalition has not met its own target for A&E services since October-December 2012?

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham had this to say: “Hospitals all over England remain at their limits and are sailing dangerously close to the wind. The Tory A&E crisis shows no sign of easing and too many patients continue to suffer poor care.

“”David Cameron … has failed to produce a plan to turn things around and his complacency cannot continue. The Government is gambling with patient safety and allowing far too many patients to be exposed to far too much risk – proof you can’t trust the Tories with the NHS.”

… But he’s a politician. If you’d like to know what real people think, we have the responses to last night’s (January 22) BBC Question Time discussion, from Twitter.

Here’s comedian and National Health Action Party ex-candidate Rufus Hound: “There are so many more people using hospitals, Esther [McVey, one of the panellists], coz your mob have underfunded all the support services, so hospitals bear the brunt.”

The Daily Mirror’s politics desk got in on the action: “Best question of the night from audience to [Esther McVey] ‘If what you’re doing is working so well, why is NHS in such crisis?'”

Here’s the answer, from ‘X-ray Vision’: “The NHS is being systematically starved of funding and deliberately mismanaged to gear it towards privatisation. Everyone knows this.”

Are you going to let that happen?

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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