Letters From A Tory

“Can’t we just set all this true confessions stuff to one side and talk about things that are really important to people?”

- Health Secretary Alan Johnson, eloquently describing why we should leave the biographies to one side and focus on the numerous breaches of trust committed by Labour instead

“You see, what Peter should have done is hide his list of third party donations in one of these, like I did”

Dear Alan Johnson,

I always thought politics was a battle for the limelight, but you seem to be lingering in the darkness at the moment.  My question to you is how long can you take the strain?

Only a few weeks back, Uncle Gordon stepped in like a true fatherly figure and stole your announcement about a new 5-year cancer treatment plan, making you look pretty stupid and negating your entire role.  Now, this morning, he’s done it again and snatched another supposedly major (although slightly gimmicky) announcement about a new NHS screening programme.  I’m just wondering how it feels to be so irrelevant, seeing as you were presumably thrilled to keep a senior cabinet position in Uncle Gordon’s government, only to find yourself excess to requirements?

Poor man.

*smirk*

A.Tory

Dear Alan Johnson,

It is hard to know where to direct this letter, seeing as the current situation with regard to GP’s pay has been building up for years.  Even so, your tough talking on the latest pay increase for GPs will ultimately be fruitless unless you bribe them with even more taxpayers’ money.

Let’s start by reiterating a few important points.  In 2004 GPs worked shorter hours for 25% more pay thanks to a new government contract, and in 2006 the average earnings of GPs increased by nearly 10% to more than £110,000 in just one year.  If you are trying to tell me that GP’s are working 35% longer hours or seeing 35% more patients than they were in 2004, you deserve to be taken out the back and given a metaphorical kicking.  The latest bribe of £150m is apparently designed to be a sweetener for GPs to work longer hours, which shows how completely out of control GP’s pay and conditions are.

When the government is in charge of the NHS, this is the kind of ridiculously one-sided ‘negotiation’ that the taxpayer faces.  If GPs don’t get what they want, they refuse to reform their practices.  Value for money with regard to GPs will only be achieved when the NHS is handed over to independent firms who will only pay doctors, nurses, consultants and everyone else in the NHS for the work they do and the quality of service they provide.  This is why the consumer must have the power in the NHS and not the government.  If you read my NHS paper uploaded onto this blog, you might begin to understand why this is so important - but I suppose you are too busy trying to bribe GPs to worry about long-term solutions.

Yours in frustration,

A.Tory

Dear Alan Johnson,

Talk about disregard for the public’s intelligence.  Your latest initiative to try and convince us you are doing something to combat obesity is absolutely laughable.  Turning ‘eco-towns’ into ‘fit towns’ is going to have little or no effect on obesity in this country, trust me.

Regular weigh-ins at school will not change children’s diet or parents’ attitudes.  Cycle lanes take up space on already crowded roads so will be impossible to expand in crowded areas (which is most of the country) and the same goes for safe walking routes to school.  School programmes to “inspire” children to eating healthy food, learn to cook and play more sport sound half-decent, but seeing as you have already robbed the primary school curriculum of any creative or sports time thanks to mismanagement of education I seriously doubt that these programmes will ever happen.  Putting GP practices on the high street sounds nice in theory, but surely you know that the government has no control over GP’s and where they place their practices - so I’d like to see you try and implement this one.  ”Larger parks, modern playgrounds and improved leisure centres” will also suffer a quick and agonising death because any spare patch of land has flats built on it and local councils need the money desperately so will have no incentive to take up plots of land with playgrounds.

Honestly, what a pile of rubbish.

Yours in irritation,

A.Tory

Dear Alan Johnson,

Another complete no-show from you today, despite the publication of the Dentistry Watch survey that outlines the number of people who go without NHS dental treatment either because they can’t afford it, can’t understand it or can’t even find an NHS dentist.

When I moved flat a couple of years ago, I found ONE dentist in the local area who was accepting NHS patients out of around 15 practices.  All the others were only taking on private patients.  Dentists, like GPs, know how to get what they want.  If they can’t see any money for them in a deal with the government, they are under no obligation to treat NHS patients as they can make more money elsewhere.  According to the survey today, 45% of practices are not accepting NHS patients.  The problem here is that with the government still controlling the NHS, the dentists can demand pretty much whatever they want.  Couple that with crap and half-hearted negotiation skills on the part of the Department of Health, and you have the making of the mess we’re in now.  Of course, if you did the obvious thing and handed the NHS over to independent competitive healthcare providers, this would no longer be an issue because the independent providers would employ dentists and they would have to take on NHS patients (should the system be designed correctly).  It might not look like it on the surface, but GP’s and dentists refusing to treat taxpayers is symptomatic of an NHS that is on its last legs.  If people can’t have guaranteed access to a dentist, what is the point of the NHS?

Yours in frustration,

A.Tory

Dear Alan Johnson,

Nice try, but I’m not falling for it.  One of the most consistent behaviours of the Labour government since 1997 has been their desire to jump to quick conclusions and speedily release a new initiative to make it look like they were doing something (a similar point was made to Ed Balls earlier today).  I would much prefer it if you tried to understand the problem better rather than ‘putting a sticky plaster on a gaping wound’, to coin a phrase used by David Cameron a little while back.

The death of 90 hospital patients through infection is a tragic loss of life and has been covered in detail by the media.  So what is your solution?  Look at the funding arrangements for hospital cleaning?  Investigate how hospitals decide on allocating money to cleaning?  Interview hospital staff to gain a better understanding of what pressures they are under?  Consult the unions for medical professions?  Nope - just use the Chief Executive as a scapegoat and pretend that it’s nothing to do with the government.  The moral standards of the Labour Party just keep on sinking, don’t they.  Seeing as patients are not allowed to choose who provides their healthcare, we cannot just walk away from dirty, disgusting hospitals as the NHS has a monopoly in almost every corner of the country.  If patients had the ability to walk away from unclean hospitals, the problem would disappear along with the superbugs as the hospital would run out of patients and funding, forcing it to close.  I’m sure the Chief Executive had to squeeze the budget over many years, and cleaning and other services such as hospital food will always be the first casualties so don’t try and make out as if this lady is the only factor in the death of these patients.  Even if it is found that she acted inappropriately in some way, the Labour government’s obsession with controlling healthcare services from Whitehall will still ultimately be responsible for the death of those patients.

Yours in derision,

A.Tory

Dear Alan Johnson,

How stupid do you think we are, seriously?  I was considering being constructive in this letter to you about the future of the NHS, but after your speech yesterday I have no choice but to be extremely blunt about my feelings on the issue.

The policies you outlined in your speech are the most insulting suggestions you could have come up with, as they all fall under the one of the following two categories:

1. ’Why the hell haven’t you done this already?’

Apparently you are now keen to move away from “top-down structural change”.  Well, congratulations.  Everyone in the NHS could have told you how damaging government targets and interventions are in providing health services, but Labour blindly crashed on with their plans regardless of how destructive they were.  Of course the NHS should be “clinically driven and locally led” - that goes for any health service in an industrialised country.  Honestly, just pathetic. 

2. ‘It’s Labour’s fault this happened in the first place!’

The reason GP surgeries will NOT open “at times and in locations that suit the patient, not the practice” is because your negotiations over GP contracts were so poor that they now work fewer hours for more pay than they did under the last Conservative government, so don’t you dare lecture the public about how you will improve GP services when Labour have created the problem in the first place.  For you to then say you didn’t want a confrontational approach with the GPs is unbelievable, seeing as you are still struggling to control their pay demands (which have swallowed most of the new investment in the NHS that Labour have been so “proud” of) and are completely at their mercy thanks to your poor management.  I’d love to see you try and force them to put more GP surgeries in deprived areas as well.   The fact that you want a regulator to oversee cleanliness in hospital wards is yet another example of top-down control!  If you squeeze NHS budgets, cleaning services are always going to be hit because hospitals will find the cheapest contractor available, which completely undermines any attempt by matrons and nurses to combat infection.

For you to suggest that the Conservatives are a “major risk” to the NHS when they want to remove the government from the running of services and scrap your stupid government targets shows how desperate you are to make an impact.  The sooner Labour are removed the sooner, the sooner the Conservatives can get on with saving it.

Yours in disgust.

A.Tory

Dear Alan Johnson,

I read through the articles about the effect of additives with great interest this morning.  It is yet another piece of scientific evidence that some additives from food and drinks can lead to hyperactive behaviour in children, in addition to huge amounts of the previous anecdotal evidence.  So what are you going to do about it?

I’m not one for the government getting unnecessarily involved in people’s lives, but we are talking about the health of children being damaged by additives that the Food Standards Agency (a government department) has approved for use - how on earth is that possible?  Surely you should at least take the precaution of banning them until we have more evidence concerning their effects, rather than just letting them be?  As far as I could tell, the study from Southampton University only looked at short-term changes in behaviour and yet they still found “that the deterioration in behaviour after consuming the additives occurred in children in the general population, not just in those identified as suffering from hyperactivity”.  Can you imagine how damaging these additives would be if children are taking them several times a day for several years?!

Sort this out, Mr Johnson.  You’ve done nothing so far as Health Secretary so it’s about time you did something useful.  We cannot allow these additives to be placed in food and drink, knowing what effects they have.  I can only hope that the lobbyists in the Food and Drink industry won’t prevent you from doing the right thing.

Yours in anticipation,

A.Tory