To ask the chicken and egg question: Which comes first with bureaucrats and politicians - do they learn to love fiddling because of the job they do or are they that way inclined and so become bureaucrats or politicians?
Today it is Lord Crisp who is at it. He wants to close hospitals to make the NHS better. That is like wanting to pull down houses so fewer people are homeless.
Yes it is sensible to help more patients to be treated in their homes but there are, as Lord Crisp should know, having been in charge of the NHS, that a huge number - running into hundreds of thousands if not millions a year - need hospital treatment.
If hospitals are closed, where will they get it? Miles away to hospitals that are over-stretched, where staff are hassled and stressed, waiting lists longer and treatment inadequate.
One of the great lies peddled by the Tories and much of the media is that the NHS is in a terrible state. On the contrary, with a few awful exceptions, it is a magnificent service and vastly improved on its condition of a decade ago.
What it - and those who work in it and those who use it - need is money and support. Not another reorganisation aimed purely at saving money.
Take Me To Your Leader Writer
- David Seymour
- ...has written more leaders (newspaper editorials) than anyone alive or dead, an honour still to be recognised by the Guiness Book of Records or the Nobel judges. I have produced them for the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Sunday Mirror, Today, the Sunday People, the Evening Post (Hemel Hempstead), the Caithness Courier and the Student (Edinburgh). My creed is: Have opinions, Will travel.
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