"What we have in Wales at the moment is the priorities of the crachach (the elite) and not the werin (ordinary people)."
Don Houig, Labour MP, less than impressed with the Labour Plaid-coalition; he also said that the convention for more powers for the Assembly was ""as relevant to people in Wales as "saying we can farm the moon"."
Yes, perhaps ever so slightly more relevant to Welsh people is the feeling that they are now being treated as second-class citizens by our Balkanised Health Service.
5 comments:
I know you have been going on about this NHS thing for the past few days but as I have pointed out before even before devolution the UK was four different health services.
Pace my post about how prescriptions were processed in the Scotland and the different bureaucracies. Different prescription forms for each country - FP10 for England, GP10 for Scotland, NH1 for NI.
It has to be pointed out that the NHS was set up by no less than three Acts of Parliament. Two at Westminster for England & Wales and Scotland along with the one for NI passed by Stormont (grudgingly under pressure from Atlee and Bevan).
As you might have heard this week also the system of care also differs from health board to health board within the nations. That has nothing to do with devolution. Some drugs are paid for by some health boards and some not by others - including cancer treatment drugs.
I suppose it is based on priority and need.
It is a bit like policing I suppose. Outside NI policing is on a regional basis based with priorities based on local needs. If we had a single police service in the UK then this single body would have to tackle all the diverse problems within the UK.
For example you would have police in lets say in East Anglia enforcing anti-sectarian crime measures needed for NI on their patch where there is no such problem. I can see it now - "sectarian crime in Ipswich - methodist parks in Anglican vicar's space - pure provocation"
Pre-devolution I don't rememeber the volume of articles, reports (I could done apost on 7 separate ones yesterday alone)that we're getting now about the discrepancies between not just health board areas, but whole countries (and contrary to the usual impression, that's working both ways across the various borders).
Drugs for certain treatments are not being provided on "priority and need", but on which part of the Uk you happen to live- and if that was also the case pre-devolution then it wasn't justifiable then either and if devolution hasn't improved this unfairness, then what exactly has been the point of devolving health to Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh?
I'd also like to see some comparative figures regarding the state of the various parts of the nation's helath pre and post devolution- again, if there hasn't been a noticeable improvement, what exactly was the point of the devolving "health"?
Apart from all that on a purely pedantic level, I'm sick and tired of Labour bleating on about a NHS which, even they admit, no longer exists.
As I said, postcode lotteries do exist even within the UK nations.
Another good example is Scotland's "free personal care" policy. Each health board interprets this differently. Some give free personal care on demand, others notably in Argyllshire have waiting lists to get the free personal care. Until you get to the top of the list you have to pay like before.
The Scottish government has talked about passing a law making free personal care automatically compulsory. This has not gone down well with the health boards who complain they are stretched enough already when it comes to cash.
Ah yes Don Touhig. What a champion of "what people wants". Let's remember that just a day or two before his speech he voted against the reform for MP's expenses.
It's not the One Wales Government's record that Don Touhig is less than impressed with. As can be seen from the main thrust of his speech ("Plaid are running rings around us") his worry is that the coalition is making the nats more popular.
"...from the main thrust of his speech ("Plaid are running rings around us") his worry is that the coalition is making the nats more popular."
I think he's wrong on that, to an outsider, it appears that Labour have got PC well under control.
Post a Comment