All stick but no carrot - Minister gets her Whip Out

'Minister's break-even order to health boards' - Western Mail 31st December 2012

It's a case of 'All stick and no carrot', with the patients having ( once again ) to bear the pain of the Health Minister's lash.

First, we heard that the health boards would break even, then we're told by the Auditor General that losses could range from £30m to as high as £131m !  Next day, 'Leslie the Lash' produces a contingency fund of £82m, that will only become a bailout out if the A.G's  prediction is only half right. So, now, the Dear Minister decides to order the health boards to break-even ( again ).  If I wasn't a chronically sick pensioner, I could imagine myself sitting at the Mad Hatters' Tea Party,  Oops, another tip of the slongue as Dr Spooner would say - is it possible that we have our own Republican Tea Party that is determined to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, or the sick and the healthy ??? Perhaps, even, the use of the word General after the innocuous word  'Auditor' is a further clue to our enforced Orwellian lifestyle ?  Maybe we're being ruled by a Junta, as in some banana republics ?

The fact that the Minister and her followers are revealing the full extent of their corporate stupidity by overlooking the fact that the cost of the health service is the true cost of meeting the health needs of the country, regardless of targets or unsupportable budgets. If you haven't assessed the health needs of the growing population, in the first place, how the blazes can you convince - even other idiots -  that the cost of meeting those needs must fall within some budget-by-pipe-dream that no one else has seen ?? The nurses and the doctors rightly say that they are not about to become the 'whipping boys' for the government's incompetence, but the poor short-changed patient has no say in the matter at all !  He/she/we are right at the bottom of the stairs, being slowly choked to death by the increasing weight of dust, falling from above, as the government lamely beats about the bush seeking solutions to their own self-made problems.

For some reason the words of Sir Walter Scott, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive", keep ringinging in my ears.  Isn't it about time that we demand that our government - particularly NHS Wales - starts telling the truth ?    R. W.