As a Doctor I can honestly say the nhs is pure bullshit.

I believe we would benefit from all local communities having Herb Gardens with trained professionals to advise & oversee them. These could provide herbal medicines such as comfrey which, for example, can be used for healing many sports injuries. These are herbs which have been used in the past & we seem to have generally forgotten them.

My sister works in the NHS, she has been in charge of intensive care wards, maternity units and has now become a community nurse to get out of the hospital environment. The stories she has told me over the years you wouldn't believe but one recurring thread runs throughout, the lunatics are running the nut-house. We have too few consultants because consultants don't want enough consultants so that their pay rates are inflated. We have too many doctors who are outclassed on a daily basis by patients with a print-out from Google in their hands and yet these doctors expect super-star salaries as if the world hadn’t moved on. We have forgotten the basics of the health service and the basics, the foundations, are professional nurses, nurses who care and are well rewarded. Disgruntled Nurse mentions "doctors need attending to" and this is more than half the problem with the NHS from what I can see, the NHS is not so much a health service as a club for doctors and that analysis is based on personal experiences in taking kids to A&E and the odd time being treated myself and in listening to every self-serving member of the BMA I see on TV. We all know the stories, we have all seen the hidden camera exposes on TV that are simply brushed off as "not representative". But they are representative and we all know it. Until the basics are faced up to, i.e you can't let one section of a "health service" run it through their trades union the BMA that doesn’t give a fig about patient care but only about it's own members financial wealth, nothing will change. I saw Gordon Brown on TV this morning talking about the NHS etc and all that went through my mind was Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit, ..... the same WORDS we have been hearing for over ten years. We are passed the time for evolution of public services now it is time for revolution and the good thing is not one person out there seems to disagree. We have to rip the whole thing up and start again building from the bottom up this time and if doctors don’t like it tough, we can use Google instead and they can all go to the States and see what work and being sued actually is, I’m only half-joking here. Next time Gordon visits a hospital like the Marsden he should ignore the administrators and the doctors and he should speak only to the nurses, cleaners, catering staff, porters and patients. We pretend we are free of a class struggle but take one look at any "public service" and you will see only the faces have changed but the enemy is still the same, personal greed, and the outcome is the same, the ordinary people are made to feel like second class citizens who should be “thankful” their bosses are willing to allow them to “have their needs attending to”. George Orwell had it right "Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" Always have the question in mind “what is best for the patient?” and if the answer is fewer doctors who work harder and who are paid only 30% more than your average nurse and the problems would be solved in a trice.

Bee in your bonnet about doctors, why dont you go threw the misery of 5 years medschool if you think its sooooo easy, retard.

Should we be considering a totally different approach to health care? When I was in hospital it struck me that not only was the hospital expected to give me good medical care but that for those few days they were paying for everything for me - something that would not happen at home. Should we consider a hospital that provides twin bedded rooms with a private bathroom and facilities for simple cooking / heating of food. A partner, parent, family member or friend could stay with the patient, taking general care of them and providing basic food such as breakfast and snacks / tea / coffee etc. This person could also be responsible for helping to maintain high standards of hygiene around the patient. Main meals / snacks could be ordered from a hospital restaurant offering a broad range of meal choices, and paid for by the patient - perhaps patients and partners could be offered a half board / full board arrangement like a holiday hotel. All this would release the hospital to provide good medical care. So many people can afford holidays / weekend breaks etc. so, with most hospital stays being a few days only now, why not pay for good hospital accommodation and food, releasing money for improved free medical care. Obviously where there is genuine need free meals could be provided similar to free school meal arrangements.

Dear Commentors I have worked in the NHS for over six years now and have watched staff morale plummet. Dirty Wards - ask if the domestic is hospital staff or agency. My hospital is one of the few that employs a domestic per ward. It is their ward and they take pride in cleaning it and making sure it stays that way. Ask how many staff are on duty and how many patients are staying, ask how many admissions and how discharges that day. Ask the nurse how much paperwork needs filled out to admit, discharge and care for each patient. Ask what is the ward cleaning roster - you will often find the dirtiest wards are the busiest, least well stafed, have staff moved on a regular basis etc Food - We are trying our best, bear in mind a ward may have eight staff (if they are very, very lucky) for thirty patients. Patient meals arrive at the same time as staff breaks. Work it out..if ten patients need fed, more will need monitored, staff have to get breaks, even going at two at a time for thirty minutes some patients will struggle to get fed. Add onto that breaks lasting two hours in total cant work. Patients need to be washed, dressed, doctors need attending to, patients may get sick and need attention, social workers need cared for, pysios and OT's need help....overwork. We have screening in place, we are well aware of nutritional needs Infection-MRSA and CDIFF - wow, scary - not. Yes they can kill, but thirty percent of people carry the bug as standard, gym equipment is some of the dirtiest areas to work in, so are door handles in shops. Wash your hands when visiting relatives please. Same comment goes for staff - homwever when short staffed it is difficult to say "please wait whilst i wash my hands - i know youve just collapsed and but i need to wash my hands". On top of this is the management decision in some NHS Trusts to replace the expensive Nitrile gloves (which are impervious to bloods and body fluids) with Vinyl gloves (which are not). This means that when washing a patients staff are placing themselves at great risk of MRSA, CDIFF, hepatitis, HIV and other nasties in order to safe money on gloves

Asked what she intended to do about the filthy wards at her hospital, Rose Gibb insisted she had introduced an "action plan" that would "address the issues" of inadequate cleaning. This classic piece of management-speak was delivered in March 2001, when Miss Gibb was implicated in the first of a string of hygiene scandals at three separate NHS trusts. The Daily Telegraph has learned that Miss Gibb, who rose to the £150,000-a-year post of chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust before she left the job last week, has an unenviable track record of presiding over dirty hospitals where infections have been able to spread. advertisementDespite this, Miss Gibb has been richly rewarded by the NHS, which may yet give her £250,000 in severance pay if the Health Secretary's attempt to block it is ruled illegal. Miss Gibb, a former nurse with one grown-up daughter, refused to talk to the media yesterday at her £700,000 home in a secluded country lane in the village of Sole Street, near Cobham, Kent. Her partner, Mark Rees, who was chief executive of Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust until Oct 1, told reporters: "No way is she going to talk to you. Why should she? If you want to ask questions why don't you go to the trust – it's got nothing to do with her." Miss Gibb worked her way up through the ranks as a nurse before becoming operations director at Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust, where she was in charge of hygiene. In March 2001 an internal survey at the hospital found that the standards of cleanliness were "poor". It was then that Miss Gibb was quoted as saying the trust had introduced an "action plan". Later that year she became chief executive of North Middlesex Hospital, which was named in 2001 as the worst in the country for MRSA. In Oct 2001, shortly after the inquiry into the murder of Victoria Climbie began, Miss Gibb was one of six signatories to a letter in which she and others agreed with Haringey council to take a "joint and positive approach" to the inquiry, not attacking or blaming each other for failing to spot the abuse which eight-year-old Victoria was suffering when she was taken to hospital for treatment. Miss Gibb moved on to her job as chief executive of the Kent trust in 2003, where she immediately pledged to sort out dirty wards. Yet the conditions remained so bad that Clostridium difficile became rampant, killing 90 patients. Years of promises "The (Kent and Sussex) hospital has got cleaning problems, I've been aware of those for the last six months. I've put a massive amount of improvements into them, and I'm going to continue to put improvements into the hospital until we get it to the level we want it to be. It will take nine months." Rose Gibb, chief executive, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, June 2004 "This issue is receiving my full and personal attention." Rose Gibb, June 2004 "We have set down a new culture of what we expect from the cleaning staff." Rose Gibb, Sept 2004, at the trust's annual meeting "If we find anything can be further improved it will be a top priority." Bernard Place, then director of nursing for the trust, July 2006 "The trust takes the care and safety of its patients extremely seriously. The trust will now... identify, develop and implement any additional measures that can be made to further improve patient care and safety." Rose Gibb, Sept 2006 "Kent and Sussex Hospital has taken a range of additional infection control measures which include ward closures, additional ward cleaning and isolation of patients in side rooms." So whats the difference between Rose Gigg and Rose West. Exactly,nothing. She should be charged with at least manslaughter - not afet a 2 year enquiry, because its simple - at least 90 dead and she was in charge.

I cannot agree more with Dr Kafir & treborc, but will these sort of people ever be made accountable in a court of law ? No. God forbid if any of mine fall victim to these criminals - Rose Gibb and her likes would lose more than just cash.

Lets hope this is not removed again, seems we have a dedicated remover. Maidstone has shown how Labour deals with problems remove it. The fact is people have allowed a mess to again became a scandal, hospitals in debt cut out non productive staff cleaners are an easy target. Nurses are sacked cleaning staff sacked and Managers get a bonus. Maidstone has to show how executives will be help to account and removed, or will Labour sack a few more cleaners.

We all have to admit the health service is having problems Older people being allowed to die by removing care ward cleaning not being fully implemented due to cuts The list could go on I do love the artistic talent of a roofer who a on a residential block built resently at my local hospital on a plot of green belt land a masive picture in his tiling of a figure holding a smoking gun its totally amazing to see :) But mirrowing maybe the future

I think any further money given to the NHS should be ring fenced for patient services only.The previous large amounts of money given to the NHS seem to have been used on pay rises for doctors and other staff.The only exception should be incentives for staff willing to work unsociable hours so some of the health centres can be open at the weekends

So what your saying cleaners should not get any extra money for cleaning up the rubbish or wards, nurses should return to low pay, doctors work 40 50 hours without sleep. The NHS is a company in which is employee driver, you need good staff happy staff not people who see wages being cut while rubbish managers get paid off for doing a lousy job. That twit from Maindstone we now find out she is offered a £250,00 pay for off for being the worse person and we find her partner is the same, for to long the NHS has been run by money grabbing rubbish who could not run a piss up in a pub never mind a multi million company. get rid of the rubbish employ the best and get nurses and doctors into management.

name any NHS clinic which has used your method, name one real doctor who even think your silly idea would work, last month you told us you invented the Red Rose Labour says it was invented by Neil Kinnock, not you. I think your a joke mate.

Odd how my previous comment was removed from this site, maybe they don't like hearing the facts. Freedom of speech? It was about how my friends father died due to blood loss when the ambulance couldn't get to him quick enough. This was because the local hospital had been closed down and the nearest hospital was too far away for him. I live in a rural area where everything is getting closed down and all the money is being spent in citys so it will be rosy for people that live in citys! (more voters in citys).

I recently have under gone Major Surgery ,I was seen by my GP quickly ,he referred me to the Surgeon within 6 weeks I had been into hospital and had my Operation ,the Wards had been upgraded and service was A1,the Matron checked the wards regularly, I was back home within 7 days, support in the community was good ,when I think back in the early 1990s when I had previous Surgery the skilled staff on the Surgical wards were leaving in droves to work in other countries,staff moral was the pits,the Tories had Managers in telling the staff what to to,you were left in wards for weeks,why do people not remember those dark days ,the waste of budgets, no one had ever questioned the NHS nor made it accountable ensuring that funds used were allocated well done for the initiative of the agenda for change, thats recently been undertaken throughout the NHS, thankyou for the care received, All you whinging all I can say is get a grip the grass is now greener as we are now on the other side

I bet the 750 nurses who lost their jobs in Swansea will be voting labour.

Then why am I and other waiting outside in ambulances for treatment for ten hours, why am I waiting for a hospital appointment for nearly eighteen months, why does it take sixteen weeks to get a GP appointment, why can I not get a doctor to visit. The only thing which has changed are the way Labour informs the media these days, more spin and more lies when in fact not a hell of a lot has changed.

I have just had a knee operation ,The claim of 18 weeks by the labour party is absoultely outrageous i waited 9 months !and was told this was quick.Has it become so acceptable to tell lies in this country. I must say the care i recived from all nurses ws first class.How they continue to be so helpfull and pleasent under the circumstances they are put under being so under staffed and continous pressure.I as quite suprissed whe the nurse told us out of her class while training 28 passed out of training only 4 found jobs as nurses,and the only job she could find was as a health car assistant and then getting a 6 month contract as a nurse.Isn't it about time we started looking after british nurses and doctors and treating them with respect they deserve,Instead of telling us the nhs would collapse without all the overseas workers employed.what about employing british trained nurses and doctors instead of training them with taxpayers money only for them to go and work abroad ,breaking even more families up and continuing to break up our society .and would anyone with any sense have put patricia hewitt in charge of the nhs you would not even let her look after a first aid box !

Labour have practically abolished waiting lists - in 1997 hundreds of thousands of people were sitting on waiting lists for an operation for over six monhts. Now this is next to nothing. Most people, from diagnosis to treatment, now know they will wait a maximum of 18 weeks, there are no waiting lists.

Robert - your not and you don't. Everyone will be seen and sorted in 18 weeks in a few months time

I am afraid we do, and no we do not get seen in 18 weeks, I have now been waiting eighteen months to be seen. My grandson has had an operation in hospital to remove all his teeth, he was in the national news papers, he has not seen an NHS dentist since he was born and it turns out thousands of children have never seen a dentist. anyway he had all his teeth removed and now has a serious health problem when a surgeon stated his second teeth may need removing before they come through. This is life under Labour, last week in our local news a women waited Twelve hours in an ambulance before being given a bed, the hospital stated it had to close a ward for MRSA, on further checks this was found to be nonsense and in fact over 100 people had been waiting in ambulances waiting for beds. It's no good pumping billions into the NHS giving 3/4 of this in wages, and then saying thats it, do not get me wrong nurses needed a wage rise so did porters and cleaners, sadly the rest of the money was wasted. MY hospital spent the extra money on a golfing trip to Spain to bond, a art critic, and a gent to look after the car mark getting £125,000 a year in three weeks his idea was to sell off the car park to his past employers a car park company, guess what he is now the manager of the car park company. Sorry but the days of listening to Labour have long gone. I am disabled severely disabled with massive problems the last time I went to the NHS I waited sixteen hours to be seen Labour says two hours. I was once put into a toilet I cannot walk and left in the toilet for eight hours while they tried to find a bed. Nothings changed at all, oh and before you spout what Labour has done, under the Tories I was treated after long waits, now I get told to come back in six months, under Labour I've had MRSA three times, under Labour not the Tories.

What is the reason for Scotland getting free healthcare when England does not. This is totaly unfair as the taxes of the U.K. pays for this. Bill.R

The NHS is state-provided and free, would you rather pay for private healthcare everytime you visited the doctor?

You need to realise you can't fix anything by just throwing money at it. From what I can see most of the extra money you've thrown at NHS and Education has been wasted in beaurocrats etc.

As a nurse at a busy north London hospital I have to say that Labour whilst improving some things, have not done enough. Gordon Brown says that nurse wages have increased by 50%. This may be true, but by translation this means that nurses wages have gone from abysmal to bad. As a nurse I have been versbally abused more times than I care to remember. I have been physically assaulted once. Once my unsociable hours wages are stopped (due to happen in october apparently) my wages will drop by about £200 pounds a month. This on top of a wage rise below that of inflation. Agenda For Change has thus far not had much of a positive effect for nurses. It is sad but true that the majority of nurses I know (and bear in mind that there are 45 nurses on my dept payroll) want to leave the NHS. Personally I intend to emigrate to country where I can afford to buy a house, and I will earn a decent wage and therefore have a dcent standard of living. This country is the US. I feel insulted by the fact that a comunity support officer (those quasi-policemen) can earn 25K a year for two months training, I trained for three years and I take home less than that! The bottom line is that the NHS/goverment is going to be up the creek without a paddle IF they do not address the issue of pay and housing. The number of nurses leaving the country coupled with the average age of nurses will result in deaths due to dangerously low levels of staffing. They cannot keep exploiting the good nature of nurses by expecting to work for peanuts in the grand scheme of things.

Nurses have a better deal overall than ever before. Major prob is FAR TOO MANY SENIOR MANAGEMENT JOBS FOR THE BOYS. This is what drains resources and is the cancer which drains the NHS of the funds needed for better things.

it is a better deal than ever before, but it's still not good enough. A new nurse will earn less than a new PC. We don't get what Tube drivers get either. In fact some comunity support officers that earn more than some nurses. How is that right? Yes there are too many managers. And a high percentage of managers are useless.

"free at the point of need with equal access for all, irrespective of wealth." or nationality, or residency.

I am pleased to read the comments about peoples positive experience when they have been in hospital However,.......... WHAT ABOUT THE NURSES? They work all day without a break, they have to deal with violence, heavy workloads, and short staff. What will happen if nurses strike? complete chaos I expect! I dread to think what will happen if somebody dies that could of been saved if the government had listened. Its coming, you know it I know it, everyone knows it

yep. We have been balloted. We are seriously considering it. Maybe then something might just get done. If people die because of it the blood is on the hands of the Goverment.

The main problem the nurses have is their high housing costs. If we could reduce their costs, they wouldn't NEED to be payed more.

My 8 yr old son broke his arm in 3 places 3 weeks ago. The A&E staff were good but the orthopedic doctors were awful. They couldn't decide when they would operate. Then they decided it would be 'first thing' the next day. Turns out this was 2pm. He hadn't eaten for 24 hours. We had to threaten to take him home. All the time you have to fight to get anything done. It was exactly the same when as a 6 year old he had a kidney stone. Although I said that Great Ormond Street didn't want to see us I was branded a stupid mother and we were shunted up to london by private minicab!! 20mins later after our arrival we were discharged from Great Ormond Street. The NHS is a total joke- although we are on a very low wage we will be taking out private insurance. THIS CAN'T GO ON

My uncle aged 86 with serious breathing problems and in pain his wife calls the ambulance at 11.30 pm the ambulance arrives,they do not take him to the hospital 1 mile away but to hereford 45 miles away,when he gets there there is no bed so they phone my aunt at 3,30 am can you collect him no because she cant drive,so an ambulance car gets him home at breakfast time,he dies a week later.If somone has a coronary in my town 45 miles to hospital despite our own downgraded hospital remaining open.More money certainly but spent totally by incompidant pen pushers things are not better it costs some people a days wages just to park the car this forum is rubbish as are the staged and controlled debates believe this propaganda and you need a doctor yourself. incidently my late uncle did vote labour poor man.

My father has just suffered a long illness with a heart condition. The expertise, care, professionalism and compassion of the staff working in the NHS makes me proud to be British. I have got to say i do NOT trust the NHS in Conservative hands. Labour has always been a compassionate party and founded the NHS and I know the future of our National Health Service is in safe hands. I do not trust the Conservatives on the NHS or anything else. Mr Cameron is all spin and no substance. I would not trust him to run a whelk stall. Thank you Gordon Brown and Labour for making the NHS an institution which we can be proud of and free at the point of need.

If may be free at the point of need but the can still send you a bill later.

The NHS is paid for from general taxation, so we all pay for it, but when we need it, it doesn't matter what our finances are like. Exactly like the school system, this is the fairest way to run it - people pay for these services for society, according to their ability to pay (ie, wages) and no one leaves the hospital clutching a bill with no idea how to pay it. The NHS is a hugely expensive beast, how could you fund it any way besides those two? I know what 99% of the country would say: option 1.

I agree i wonder how many of the people on here are actually employed to do this by labour? and also why are people who are non abusive still blocked from using this forum just for oposing government policy? perhapes if labour heard the real views from real people about their policies then it may just give them a nasty surprise especially on the europe and imigration lies we are being fed on a daily basis.

Good stuff: investment, reduced waiting times, new hospitals. Bad stuff - MTAS, GP salary increase, MRSA. Not bad could do better. 6/10. FYI Tory NHS score = -67 out of 10!

I'm interested in why you think GP salary increases was/is a bad thing? the standard has increased and general practise accounts for 90% of patient contact.

Labour have wasted loads of tax payers money on the nhs but is it any better i dont think so out of hours gps in rural areas a total shambles,giving gps a huge salary increase but less hours ridiculous,more managers,more administration and more red tape typical labour the money has been put in yes but do they listen to the actual workers and doctors i the nhs no they dont listen to anyone and that is the trouble with this government,disaster on disaster and reform after reform all poorly planned and all ending in disaster the tories were no good with the nhs and neither are labour in fact i do not think labour are much good at anything full stop apart from telling lies raising taxes and surpressing free speech by the way on the last thread i was called peter and i have been blocked from contributing on this site merely for being honust and critisising labour policies it just shows that labour are still deeply unpopular and they will do anything to surpress people speaking the truth in true dictator fashion.

Roy You must have some kind of medical disorder that makes you paranoid. You do not offer us any acurately based facts when you come to your conclusuions. Its moaners and wingers like you that makes this country a sad place at times. Remember the minumum wage and laws that protect workers plus record investment towards public services. The list could go on but I am waisting my time talking to the likes of you Roy

Well labours facts are unbelievable anyway and after all who believes tony blair anyway?

Tony Blair hasn't been our PM for a good while now - Blair and Labour aren't one and the same thing.

Josh you are correct blair has been gone a little while now but who was his chancillor and replacement in waiting? and who did blair elect as the most suitable person to continue the destruction of great britain? who was responsible for the financial mess our country is in? GORDON BROWN can you trust him?

So where are your acurately based figures proving things are loads better and every one working in hospitals are happier.

Roy/Peter who ever you are! How can you claim that your freedom of speech is being denied - you've got loads of really negative comments against Labour on these boards. I think someone needs to do a bit of growing up TBH.......

Paul you need to grow up yourself and get a brain as well there are lots of very angry people out there who do not share your rose tinted view of new labour they hate what britain is becoming and its government selling it out on a web of lies and deceipt to the european union and all this white wash and flanel will only fool some people for so long one day there will be a very angry backlash against labour just wait and see.

Can any person be positive about a government that lies about just about everything? even this board is not a debating forum as it deletes everything that is in any way opposed to its motions so it creates a one sided debate it is a fact most people hate labour and its politicians if you dont believe me then go out onto the street and ask people,what you read on here is total lies and and rubbish.

How about fining people who miss their appointments with GPs or the hospital - that should save a few kids to pay for cancer drugs!

There's no doubt a lot of money has been spent on infrastructure and probably rightly so. What I would like to know is how you intend to address the hopeless plight of the new Physiotherpists who are just leaving uni with their hard earned degree with no hope of getting a job? In fact joining the list of those graduates from last year who are still looking.

Would you rather have a local unsophisticated hospital or one a drive away with world class facilities?

Depends on how long you have to live. If you've just had a heart attack one nearby would be preferable. If you need a knee op one further away would be just as good.

I really would like to know why local hospitals are being closed in my area. There are current plans to close the Maternity and A&E at Epsom General Hospital. The level of care and attitude of the staff really are wonderful. Mr Brown I would urge you to go see for yourself. The NHS plans to close these facilities and local people will be faced with a one hour drive to an alternative hospital. What I would like to know is with more spending in the NHS than ever before why are local hospitals being closed? I have used both departments and I have to say the thought of a one hour drive in the case of an emergeny fills me with dread. Please rethink - you are right - the NHS does need to be pretected for future generations. I know this is a local issue but I feel it's important to highlight some of these issues which are effecting "the man on the street"

This government dont listen they just pretend to they just dictate when has he listened about europe all of these politicians are out for themselves perhapes if some of them were sacked and had to work for A LIVING AND EXPERIENCE THE EFFECTS FIRST HAND OF STUPID RIDICULOUS POLICIES have on peoples lives then they could share the frustration.

I've got a little surprise for you... Politicians aren't all out for themselves. There are over 650 MPs. How many do you even know the names of? There are thousands of councilors - do you know the name of yours? Most politicians are in it to help others, and change society for the better. You might not agree with an individual's, or a party's idea of 'better', but to say that they are simply out for themselves is madness. Our MPs work a ridiculous number of hours a week, and most (particularly Labour, since Tory areas are just too nice to have poor people) engage fully with a very gritty side of life, the people who end up at the very bottom of society, and try to help them solve their problems. If you're free on a Friday any time, I suggest you just go and sit in on your MP's surgery, to see some of the work these people do for society, before tarring them all with slander.

The government does listen - it has to in order to stay in power. On your point of Europe, have you noticed how far out of Europe we really are? We have exemptions on everything, we're not in the Euro, we just aren't as engaged as everyone else.

After 10 years of Labour government, you'd really think we would be more involved. The reason we aren't is because of the huge number of people in the country who haven't investigated and don't realise the huge benefits that the EU can and does bring us - and the Government has listened to that, even though it would love to be more a part of Europe. We live in a representative democracy - just because the representation goes the other way from what you think, doesn't suddenly give you the right to sanctimoniously preach for "The People", so please don't.

Worth noting that pretty much all MPs have private healthcare. Perhaps if MPs were banned from having private healthcare and sending their children to private schools, they might actually try fixing the NHS instead of using it as a way to provide jobs for their overpayed management consultant friends.

Labour has made a lot of progress in regard to the NHS compared with 18 years of a Tory Government. We so have a long way to go though. For example Labour is failing to ensure everbody gets access to dental care. Bring all Dentists under the NHS and ensure dental care is freely available to everbody. Currently patients are charged a fortune and find it a challenge to meet the costs of thier dental care.

Labour have mearly continued the privatisation of the NHS... except they haven't CALLED it privatisation. If it Waddles and Quacks you call it a duck.

To discuss this matter on an even playing field, it might be useful to know how many operations in private healthcare go wrong and have to be "fixed" in NHS hosplitals.

Some cosmetic surgery may do, but generally no.

The NHS is safer in Labour hands no doubt but we need to be much smarter at getting the best for our money to enable increased front line services - scientifically and technologically we can do more but to have the range of treatments and services we want we could get so much more if NHS was able to develop their partnership working. Silo thinking costs us.

Is it really safer in Labour hands? Is it safe to have a 28 bed ward cared for by 3 nurses and a health care assistant? Thats what happens. The 'topic' for hospitals at present is infection control. This is reduced with higher numbers of staff simply because it means that staff have less patients, therefore reducing the chance of cross infaction, and giving the staff member more time, which facilitates hand washing. Its common sense, such a shame the NHS is run by politicians and business who have none.

NHS Management consultants are "safer in Labour hands".

I think Labour have made some really, really bad choices (Iraq) but they've made a hell of a difference in my local hospital.

I'm suprised you still have a local hospital. Don't worry, Labour are doing there best to do something about that... soon it will knocked down and the land used for executive flats, and you'll have the benefit of travelling 50 miles to the nearest MRSA infected A&E unit when you're in need or urgent treatment.

to right they have made bad choices.

The NHS has got loads better under Labour - it's no way perfect but it's so much better. My friend was in hospital for a month - first rate care everday. Thanks to all of the doctors at the Queen Elizabeth hospital!

All Doctors and Nurses try their hardest from what I've experienced. But...I have lost a friend because hospitals in rural areas are closed and He could of suvived if it was kept open. So maybe it has got better for people in Citys whilst people who live in rural areas die! Is it right that people should die just to benefit others?

The doctors and staff at any hospital are good and always have been irespective of what government is in power the problem is with the fools in suits and the government.