Another Bitter Pill to Swallow - it's All Our Fault

How about Three MILLION Scapegoats ?

After reading the article which reports Dr Tony Jewell, Chief Medical Officer, it is natural for all of us to shrink back away in horror at the figure of 94% of the population of Wales that is ‘failing to heed advice on improving lifestyles’. Of course this must be true – but is it , really ? Where and when was this survey conducted ? What percentage of the population were interviewed, or, is the result of a full epidemiology study or Needs Assessment ( that haven’t been conducted in Wales for a decade ) that Dr Jewell seems reluctant to tell us about ?

When alarm of this type is spread through the media, people tend to think well it must be true – “it’s in the papers, isn’t it you daft idiot, you must be ‘Tup’ to think they’d print lies now Bach”. Well, I for one am not ‘tup’ yet I fail to see why the eminent Dr doesn’t publish this survey and its’ detailed findings – especially as this apparently puts the blame for bad health onto the populace. He makes no mention of the cuts and rationalisation that have been going on for the past 10 years, so he obviously doesn’t want NHS Wales to take any of the blame for providing us with inadequate and less accessible health services than before. Many of you will say “ Ah but he’s always being saying the same unhelpful things, running our health service down”, but why should this be any more true than Dr Jewell’s remarks ?

Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have be the ‘habitual complainer’ that they have labelled me, in order to avoid answering any of my searching ( and justifiable ) intelligent and informed comments I have put to them over the past 11 –14 years. To be frank, this is more scaremongering by the NHS in order to shift the blame for the incompetent management from them to the poor uninformed populace of Wales. In exactly the same way that we have to suffer the incompetence of our economy, by being made to pay for the mistakes of the banks and the government financial advisors. It really is long overdue that we begin to realise that the only management going on is of us, the poor dabs who pay the salaries of our fat-cat leaders and so-called experts. We are being made to believe that we are to blame, so ‘let’s all pull together and realise this simple fact. We caused the problem, so we fix it – right ? WRONG ! If I may quote the eminent, retiring doctor – this is, indeed, “A Poor State of Affairs” where shifting the blame onto us is becoming accepted policy by government and its’ loyal but subordinate authorities. Every reader must have realised that – at every level of our society – every senior‘public servant’ that the public purse keeps in a job is passing the buck. In the Health Service, this has been all too evident in spurious claims that ‘essential’ changes will cost. However, not one change, or one sham consultation has given us any evidence to support these nonsensical chunks of our money that are supposedly ‘ring-fenced’ to provide services that are ‘fit for purpose’ – whatever these vacuous words are meant to mean. We are paying millions of pounds on the production of mountains of empty rhetoric, passed off to us as being ‘good governance’ that are meaningless and insincere as anything we have ever heard in our history.

Personally, I think it is about time that the PEOPLE started telling the authorities that we won’t swallow this misinformation any more, and that we are entitled to all the facts, instead of the bilge-water we have been expected to swallow without explanation. We should all make a stand and demand that we are told the truth and insist that we be fully involved in the processes that have resulted in such incompetent management of out national and local authority budgets.      R.W.