Tag Archives: waiting

120000 patients have died waiting for NHS treatment on Rishi Sunak’s watch

Where being a patient gets you: 120000 people have died before getting this far with the NHS that the Tories have starved of resources.

Freedom of Information responses have indicated that 121000 people have died while waiting for treatment by the National Health Service in England – despite UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s promise to get waiting lists down.

The number of deaths is higher even than at the height of the Covid-19 crisis – and double the number of deaths before the pandemic.

According to The Mirror, the Labour Party sent Freedom of Information requests to every trust in England. Although only 35 out of 138 trusts responded, it was possible to extrapolate an overall number of deaths from the figure they provided – 30611. It came in at 120695.

That is more than the 117000 who died during the Covid pandemic in 2021, more than twice the 60000 deaths in 2017-18, and more than three times the 38000 or so recorded in 2012-13.

This is at a time when England has the longest waiting lists in the history of the National Health Service, with 7.6 million people registered as waiting for treatment.

It is important to remember that when Rishi Sunak became prime minister, he promised to cut waiting lists – but there are 600000 more people waiting for treatment now than there were then.

We should also give weight to the words of a health service spokesperson, who suggested that the figure is misleading because the sample size is too small. But no accurate, verified figures have been forthcoming from that source

This in turn suggests that the true figure may in fact be much higher.

The Mirror article quotes Sir Julian Hartley, chief executive at NHS Providers, which represents hospital bosses, who blamed “historic underfunding … a pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, workforce shortages and now industrial action” for piling pressure on the health service.

The historic increases in waiting lists – and deaths while on those lists – have come after successive Conservative governments deprived the NHS of vital funding, gave much of what little there was to private providers who frittered it away in share dividends, and ran underpaid medical staff into the ground.

So we can understand the responses of the pundits on ITV on August 30, when Owen Jones said the evidence suggests a conscious decision by the Tories to prioritise profits for rich businesspeople over the health of the nation…

… and with Labour, under leader Keir Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, saying it will not end privatisation, it seems the agony will continue indefinitely.

Labour’s plan to cut waiting lists is to divert even more money to the private sector, to use their spare capacity. But this is just throwing good money after bad, for the reason described by Saul Staniforth, below:

Private health businesses work by taking medical staff away from the NHS, to work for the profit of corporate shareholders.

If any government – Tory, Labour or whatever – puts money into private firms to carry out treatment, then much of that cash won’t actually go towards making people healthier at all; it will simply boost already bloated shareholder bank accounts.

What’s the solution?

It isn’t hard to see.

For a start, privatisation of healthcare should be reversed, so money that currently enriches those shareholders can be put back where it belongs – making people healthier.

The defunding of the NHS must also be reversed, so that medical staff can be paid what they are worth, and are given a renewed sense of the value of their work. This Writer saw a meme today (September 1) pointing out that doctors and nurses are not 25 per cent less valuable than they were 15 years ago, so they should not have lost that much pay, in real terms.

Above all, UK politicians must accept that privatisation is a failed experiment that has killed thousands of people unnecessarily.

If that lesson doesn’t get through, and needs to be hammered home, then bereaved families now or in the future will always have recourse to one option:

They can put the evidence together, showing how political decisions led to the deaths of their relatives – and they can prosecute the politicians who pushed them through.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Squirm, Barclay! Health sec skewered over delay in clearing legionella-hit prison barge

The denial machine: puppet Steve Barclay (front) doesn’t have a brain of his own and can only repeat the nonsense he’s been told by Tory HQ, with his boss Rishi Sunak behind him, pulling his strings.

The absolute state of this.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay squirms as the BBC’s Sally Nugent points out that the Home Office was informed on August 7 that the prison barge for asylum-seekers, Bibby Stockholm, was infected with legionella.

People were sent on board the following day. It wasn’t until August 10 that the decision was made to clear the vessel of human inhabitants and decontaminate it.

Don’t you love the nervous tic that gives Barclay away – his repetition of the word “precaution” or “precautionary”. It’s likely to have been part of a speech he’d been told to rehearse beforehand, and when he was pressed on the subject he had nothing else to say.

As Ms Nugent said, he’s the Health Secretary; he should know how dangerous legionella is and how important it is to act urgently if it is discovered.

Ms Nugent has also won praise after she “eviscerated” the Tory Health Secretary for lying about waiting lists:

Metro published the full exchange:

The politician replied: ‘What really matters is patients waiting for treatment. Commitment to getting waiting times down. We’re making big progress on the longest waits. In England we’ve virtually eliminated waits of over 18 months, whereas in Wales for example, there’s over 70,000 waiting more than 18 months.

‘In fact, many of your listeners will be surprised to learn that there’s four times as many patients waiting over a year for treatment in Wales compared to in England, and that’s despite Keir Starmer saying that Wales is the blueprint for what we would do in England.’

However, as the politician was finishing what he was saying, Sally interjected, stressing that the figures comparing waiting times in England and Wales required further context.

‘Can I just stop you there, because actually those… – can I please just stop you there for a moment, because the figures are actually collated in a different way, so that’s not particularly relevant. We also know that long waiting times are falling every month in Wales. They’ve actually more than halved in the last year,’ she stated.

However, the MP disagreed, adding: ‘No, people waiting more than 18 months in Wales is over 70,000 there. There’s over 30,000 waiting more than two years.’

Yet again, Sally pointed out the difference in the statistics’ relevance, telling the programme’s guest and their viewers: ‘They include more referrals in their statistics than England does, so they’re not really comparable figures, are they?’

The news provider also published reactions from the social media, with one person describing the interview as a “metaphorical evisceration” and another saying Ms Nugent “skewered him”.

But you wouldn’t know that from the propaganda clip put out by the Conservatives’ press office, that just regurgitates the lies and cuts out all of Ms Nugent’s contradictions – her only comment in the Tory clip is, “Yes”. Take a look if you can stomach it:

What a rotten liar.

And how sad that there are people who will swallow this pigswill gratefully.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Javid expects NHS waiting list of 13 MILLION because government Covid policy ‘successful’

All for show: current social distancing rules will continue in the House of Commons until Parliament goes into recess on July 22. Javid and his fellow MPs are making sure they stay safe!

As I was typing this story, news just in: government scientists say summer Covid-19 wave could reach between 100 and 200 deaths a day.

Covid-19-related hospital admissions are likely to be between 1,000 and 2,000 a day.

We already know that infections are likely to be 100 thousand a day by the same time – mid-August.

And Sajid Javid reckons the NHS waiting list backlog could rise from five million to 13 million – nearly tripling.

He attributes these disastrous figures to the success of the vaccination programme – did I get that right?

The vaccination programme is, of course, failing – because Boris Johnson allowed the Delta, and now the Lambda, variants into the UK and the new strains of the virus are evolving to beat the vaccines. This means increasing numbers of people are catching the disease despite having been “double-jabbed”.

Here’s some evidence:

Some of these tweets are a couple of days old by now – but do you honestly expect the current figures to be an improvement?

If you are in England, your government is dragging you to your doom – and is actually talking you through every step because Johnson, Javid and the other cronies have nothing else for you but contempt.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Covid test waiting time soars as IT failure hits private ‘lighthouse’ testing lab

Using an ad-blocker? PLEASE SWITCH IT OFF

My ads don’t cost you anything but they do provide me the money I need to live.

Using an ad-blocker on this site is as bad as stealing.

Matt Hancock: this is the brain-dead nincompoop who thought it would be a good idea to let private companies try to make a profit from a deadly pandemic virus. Nothing works properly and we all remain in deadly danger six months after Covid-19 arrived in the UK.

Once again private profiteers have failed the people of the UK.

An “IT systems failure” at a ‘Lighthouse’ mega-laboratory in Cheshire “resulted in a delay to the processing of results,” the government said.

“In addition, the increase of tests across all routes has resulted in backlogs in some laboratories.”

The labs were built in April, in a partnership between the Department of Health and Social Care, Medicines Discovery Catapult, UK Biocentre and the University of Glasgow, supported by pharma companies GSK and AstraZeneca.

It means just seven per cent of people who took a test at a “satellite centre” got their results within 48 hours in the week to August 12 – down from 75 per cent two weeks earlier.

And only 28 per cent of people who were posted home testing kits got the result within 48 hours – down from 72 per cent.

This is what happens when you commit the health of the nation to the hands of people who want to make a profit from it: nothing works.

Source: New coronavirus chaos as test result waiting times soar due to IT malfunction – Mirror Online

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

As routine NHS care grinds to a halt, pray you don’t need tests for cancer

Here’s how you work out how badly the government’s Covid-19 strategy has failed the NHS and the people of the UK.

The waiting list to be tested for conditions including cancer is now 16 times longer than it was before the crisis began.

Here are the figures, courtesy of the Mirror:

Patients waiting more than six weeks have increased from 30,000 to 469,000 as routine NHS care ground to a halt during the coronavirus crisis.

Those waiting for lifesaving Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans to detect tumours throughout the body increased from 5,733 to 78,932.

Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth said: “Ministers tell us the NHS has ‘coped’ through the Covid-19 peak but that was on the back of cancelled operations, delayed scans and diagnostic tests.

“Estimates suggest two million people are waiting for cancer screening, tests or treatment and that 1,600 cases of cancer are currently left undiagnosed every month.”

He said it was vital that ministers must bring forward a plan to tackle the backlog but you know they won’t.

Remember: Matt Hancock is the Health Secretary and he is on record as responding to 66,000 Covid-19 deaths by saying, “Our plan is working”!

The message is as clear as it was in the 1980s when then-Labour leader Neil Kinnock gave this chilling warning about life under a Conservative government:

“Don’t get sick.”

Source: Coronavirus prompts NHS cancer test backlog as soaring number wait six weeks – Mirror Online

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tory response to NHS waiting time failure: HIDE THE EVIDENCE

This was a corridor in an English hospital’s Accident & Emergency department in early 2017 – and now the situation is worse.

Tory Health Secretary Matt Hancock has admitted not only that he can’t fix the NHS waiting time crisis – he won’t even bother to try.

Instead, it seems he’ll get rid of the four-hour target for patients to be seen. In other words, he’ll hide the evidence.

Of course he’ll say it’s only a coincidence that the proportion of patients attending A&E who were seen within the four-hour limit has been falling steadily since the Tories took over government in 2010.

Before then, under Labour, it was well within the target of 95 per cent.

And I’m sure he’ll say it’s also just a coincidence that attendances at A&E last month had increased by 400,000 since 2010.

It’s nothing to do with the return of so-called “Victorian diseases” brought by the Tory “starve the poor” policies of 2010 onwards – obviously. And it’s nothing to do with the increased health problems faced by benefit claimants who the Tories (wrongly) said could live on less.

And if you believe that, you’re stupid and gullible enough to deserve the pathetic service you’re getting.

You probably even believe Hancock when he says the NHS is getting its biggest cash injection ever, when in real terms the £33.9 billion promised is nowhere near the biggest, once inflation has been taken into account.

One person who isn’t going to be gulled is Professor Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, who said last year: “In our expert opinion scrapping the four-hour target will have a near-catastrophic impact on patient safety.”

As a reader of Vox Political, I’m willing to bet that you are neither gullible nor stupid.

So, who do you believe?

Matt Hancock has signalled that four-hour waiting targets for A&E are likely to be scrapped for the NHS in England after the worst figures on record this winter.

The health secretary said it would be better if targets were “clinically appropriate” and the “right targets”, as he defended the NHS’s failure to meet the standard that 95% of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

The target was put under review by Theresa May’s government and the NHS unveiled plans last March to pilot changes that would prioritise patients with serious conditions while patients with minor problems could wait longer than four hours.

A decision about the flagship four-hour target is due to be taken by NHS England in the coming months.

Source: Matt Hancock signals A&E waiting targets likely to be scrapped | Society | The Guardian

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Dire NHS performance shows Labour’s plan for huge health service expansion is desperately needed

Wow. The NHS in England is performing worse than ever after nine years of Tory mismanagement.

Figures provided by NHS England itself are the worst since targets were introduced more than a decade ago. None of the three key hospital targets have been met for more than three years, and the target to start cancer treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral is also being missed.

Suddenly NHS Wales – much lambasted by Tory prime ministers – is looking far more efficient, isn’t it?

The figures show:

  • 83.6% of A&E patients were admitted or transferred in four hours – below the 95% target
  • 76.9% of cancer patients started treatment in 62 days in September – below the 85% target
  • 84.8% of patients on the waiting list for hospital treatment waiting under 18 weeks – below the 92% target

Labour announced a £26 billion plan to restore the health service to the high point it had reached in 2010, when the Tories took over and started wrecking it.

Here it is in a nutshell:

A great indication of what needs to be done – and who’s best placed to do it – is in this tweet from Labour candidate Joyce Still, who is herself a nurse:

Bizarrely, Conservative health secretary Matt Hancock has said the figures – that show a disastrous decline under his own stewardship of the health service and that of his forerunners including Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt – indicate that Labour is to blame and must be kept out of government.

Is that so his party can finish the job and ruin our health service forever?

That’s what I get from this train-crash interview by Boris Johnson:

He’s desperate to bring in a fully-privatised, profit-making corporate health system, modelled on the US system that bankrupts more people than it cures.

The message – from the figures and the campaign rhetoric – is clear:

If you want a healthy future, you want to vote Labour.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Tories are failing the NHS with huge increases in waiting times for English patients

This was a corridor in an English hospital’s Accident & Emergency department in early 2017. What will it look like next January?

No wonder Boris Johnson has announced a huge modernisation programme for the NHS in England, if these damning figures are any indicator of his party’s performance in government.

(Nobody knows whether the investment he has promised will actually happen, though.)

Statistics published today by the National Health Service show that

  • 85.4 per cent of patients were seen within four hours in A&E this September, compared with 89.1 per cent in September 2018
  • 64,921 patients were left stranded on hospital trolleys for four hours or longer in September 2019 compared with 44,582 last year.
  • Five out of eight of the cancer waiting time targets were missed in August, including the 62 day waiting time target which has not been met since December 2015.
  • The number of patients on the waiting list in England at the end of August 2019 was 4.4 million. Taking account of trusts not submitting data, the waiting list increased by 4.8 per cent over August 2018.

The fact that five out of eight cancer waiting times were missed is particularly damning after Theresa May spent so much of her Prime Minister’s Questions time slating the Welsh NHS for failing to reach targets in respect of that disease.

“Today’s figures blow apart bogus claims from the Tories that they are the party of the NHS,” said Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth.

“Under the Tories, more and more patients are waiting for treatment and languishing on trolleys in overwhelmed A&E departments. Behind every statistic is a patient in pain and distress.

“The facts speak for themselves and no amount of spin can hide the reality that the Tories simply don’t care about the NHS.”

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

A&E hospital waiting times are worst since NHS records began. What were the Tories saying about it?

Not one week ago, the Conservatives were attacking a Labour political broadcast for featuring actors – implying it was full of lies.

It wasn’t – this article had the details.

Now we see that matters are worse than the Labour clip stated – because the latest figures hadn’t been released when it was made.

The new figures make it absolutely clear that Conservative stewardship of the National Health Service is an utter, unmitigated disaster.

Here‘s The Independent:

Waits at A&E departments in England have hit their worst levels since records began, official NHS statistics have shown.

Despite pressures from flu and bad weather so far this winter being significantly lower than in 2018, performance against the flagship four hour target in January hit its lowest level since its introduction in 2004.

While more patients than ever are being seen at A&E departments, just 84.4 per cent were seen, admitted or sent home within four hours of arrival – well below the target of 95 per cent.

This is worse than the 84.6 per cent mark set in in March 2018 after the Beast from the East storm – the previous lowest figures on record.

While more than half a million patients were admitted to hospital from A&E last month, more than 80,000 waited over four hours for a bed to be found, and 600 patients had to wait over 12 hours.

Waits were even worse at major emergency departments, the 24-hour units in hospitals known as type one A&Es. Although the national four hour target also considers smaller minor injury units and walk-in centres, at type one units across England just 76.1 per cent of patients were seen within four hours.

There are more figures in the article. Visit it and read them for yourself.

No doubt the Tories will respond by saying they are investing £20 billion in the NHS.

This doesn’t make a dent in the fact that their NHS spending increases have been lower than any previous UK administration.

And, of course, some of that money is supposed to be coming from a mythical “Brexit dividend” – cash coming back to the UK after we leave the European Union. All the evidence suggests Brexit will cost money.

The evidence is incontrovertible: The Conservatives are bad for your health.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Theresa May lied to Parliament about Accident & Emergency waiting times

Theresa May has been rebuked by the UK’s statistics watchdog for using a misleading comparison between the health services of England and Wales.

Sir David Norgrove said the minority prime minister had used two different measures to compare the waiting times in Accident & Emergency services in England and Wales.

She was trying to make Wales look bad in comparison to England.

Here’s his letter to the First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones:

It says: “Thank you for your letter of 25 January, where you raised concerns about the Prime Minister’s comparison of accident and emergency performance in England and Wales.

“You are right to say that the comparison is not valid. The figure used for England refers to the accident and emergency wait time from the decision to admit to admission into another part of the health service. The figure used for Wales represents the entire time patients wait from arriving to leaving accident and emergency services, including the time from decision to admit to actual admission.

“Waiting time comparisons between UK countries are difficult, for a variety of reasons, including differences in data collection and in health service structure, the use of walk-in centres for example.

“It is clearly important to be able to compare health and social care service performance across the UK, particularly to learn lessons from different ways of doing things. I welcome current efforts to improve accessibility of the data and their comparability but strongly urge the need for faster progress.”

Of course, we know why Mrs May lied, don’t we? Or at least we can guess.

She wants to soften us up to the idea that the part-privatised English NHS is more efficient than the wholly-nationalised Welsh version. That way, she hopes to convince the public that private healthcare is a better option.

If the only way she thinks she can win the argument is by lying, then she has already lost.

The NHS is at its most efficient as a wholly-nationalised organisation, with funds pumped into providing the best healthcare possible for the people of the UK, rather than being funnelled into the pockets of rich executives and their shareholders who see health as a profit-making exercise for themselves, not a service to the country.

It is to be hoped that Opposition MPs remember this, next time Mrs May thinks it’s clever to commit contempt of Parliament by deliberately lying to her fellow MPs – and the public – and puts her on the spot for it.


Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.


The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook