Groundhog Year in NHS Wales - or, where I have heard that before ?

Echo - 'Sick left on trolleys in hospital bed shortage'

Yes - here we go again - listening to the same load of codswallop as Cardiff & Vale University Health Board ( and forerunner Health Boards, Trusts, Health Authorities ) have been spouting out every year, as soon as they demonstrate that the services they're supposed to run, have proved to be hopelessly inadequate at meeting the health needs of the population.  University hospital is said to be 141 beds too small, to say nothing of the knock-on effect on our over-stretched A & E and Ambulance Services. Mental Health Services are worse than ever, with 191 Elderley Mentaly Infirm Beds lost out of a total of 300+ beds cut over the past ten years. And how does the Deputy Chief Executive of the Universally Inept Health Board respond ?  "The last two months have seen a significant rise in the number and complexity of emergency admissions across the Vale......".  I say 'Yeah right - the same load of meaningless crap we've heard, every winter, since the Ark docked at Pier Head'. 

Only this year, there is no flu epidemic to blame, no exceptionally bad weather conditions, no delays in transfer of care ( formerly known as bed-blocking ), no e-coli outbreak, no MRSA or C-defecile, no staff shortages, no massive demand for expensive, dubious drugs like Herceptin, no foot and mouth outbreak or swine flu, or even a poor uptake in MMR vaccinations - No, and I'm absolutely certain that the GPs are not to blame for deliberately overloading secondary care services with patients able to be 'kept at home where they'd be much happier'.  That leaves only one group to blame for these perennial disasters - that manage to make Undertaking a growth industry, bucking all economic trends - The Management of the Health Boards and the people that are supposed to manage them - our ruddy useless government. These are some of the most insincere, untrustworthy, incompetent, shameless liars, I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, and anyone daft enough to believe any of the empty rhetoric they spew up, needs to have their meters read as their elevators obviously don't go to the top floor.

The management and unskilled government toadies all need to face up to the fact that THEY and only THEY are to BLAME for the poor, inadequate services they provide for our growing population.   R. W.