Saturday 7 May 2011

That NHS Listening Exercise in Full

From the LRB blog,
"...there’s more to the listening exercise than a website. Paul Burstow, the care services minister, announced last month that 119 listening events had been planned. 119? Impressive. It would be nice to see a list. Apparently if you ask for the list you are told to contact NHS Future Forum. But it turns out that NHS Future Forum does not take incoming calls. Not, it would seem, that kind of listening exercise."
No need to even pretend to listen now, I'd say. It was always about keeping the junior partners in the coalition happy anyway. Those pesky Lib-Dems have been put back in their box via the AV vote and local elections, so Lansley is probably going to get a clear run at his intention of dancing on Nye Bevan's grave.

& hey- sometimes it really is true that you need to go ahead with a war because the railway timetables say so, as it were. At least that's what the NHS chief executive thinks.

Addendum: of course the really clever thing would be for Cameron to sack Lansley - and appoint Clegg to carry out Lansley's NHS plans which are now hurtling down the track towards reality.