The Tories' attacks on the Welsh NHS have been exposed as baseless

by Irn Bru Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:56 pm

A new report calmly and authoritatively shows that there is no significant difference in the performance of the four UK health systems.

When David Cameron was first elected Prime Minister he came to Wales and pledged "a new respect" agenda, promising collaboration and partnership between the devolved Welsh Government and his own. Yesterday, he returned to Wales to address the dwindling band of Welsh Tory faithful at their annual conference and spectacularly broke that promise.

In a vitriolic speech that demeans the office of Prime Minister, Cameron described Offa's Dyke, the divide between England and Wales, as "a border between life and death". Even the Western Mail (the Welsh daily once described by Nye Bevan as a Tory rag and the Coalowner's Gazette) marvels at language from the Prime Minister that would be more suitable "to describe a criminal atrocity or a natural disaster". They concluded that "politically motivated scaremongering is intolerable...the battle for votes in England can never justify terrifying a grandmother in Wales on the eve of a hip operation."

Sadly, this sordid intervention by Cameron is a new low in a long campaign the Conservative Party have been orchestrating to smear the NHS in Wales. Jeremy Hunt did exactly the same in his conference speech yesterday and even the Secretary of State for Wales, David Jones, has been using any opportunity to whip up fear by criticising key Welsh public services. The Conservative chairman Grant Shapps even went as far as openly stating that his party were going to target Wales as part of their general election strategy.

But what is most galling and insulting about this grubby strategy of targeting the Welsh NHS is that it is unquestionably based on a lie. On the very day this speech was being made, leading health academics at the Nuffield Trust, published a report based on over a decade’s worth of data, which made it crystal clear that "no one country is emerging as a consistent front-runner on health system performance".

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/tories-attacks-welsh-nhs-have-been-exposed-baseless

Cameron and Hunt are just a couple of lying gits.

by Guest Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:01 pm

I read Cameron's speech with amazement. Is he worried that the Welsh with want to go for independence as well? It was so disgusting and now it has turned out to be a complete lie, he should be hauled before the Welsh Assembly to apologise and actually state the facts, an apology in itself if not enough in this case.

The Tories' attacks on the Welsh NHS have been exposed as baseless

The Tories' attacks on the Welsh NHS have been exposed as baseless

Re: The Tories' attacks on the Welsh NHS have been exposed as baseless