The ultimate admission of failure

 2,500 operations cancelled due to bed shortage

Giving evidence to the Assembly's Health and Social Care Committee, the head of Wales' NHS, David Sissling attempted to trot out the usual excuses that "service pressures on the Health Boards had effected their ability to perform elective ( non-emergency ) surgery, leading to 2,600 operations being cancelled in the months up to April 13th".   Excuse me a moment, but

 WHAT SERVICE PRESSURES ???  Does the idiot expect us to believe that all these operations - scheduled in good time - were cancelled for any plausible reason ?
He stumbles on into incredulity, insisting that the cancellation of the procedures was down to bed shortages caused by "unprecedented pressures on the health service during the winter" and not ( of course ) due to the Health Boards financial position. ( he says he even asked them all and they said 'No', therefore we're all meant to accept this as the truth - gullible fools that we are).  Also, are we really dumb enough to forget about the hospital closures with over 800 beds lost in order to cut costs, or the lack of Intensive Care beds that doctors have been screaming about for years ?

So, there we have it - all those histrionics and threats about boards being over budget ( for about the 12th time in three years ) - were completely untrue, even though they successfully placed us into a state of terror that even 9/11 failed to produce.  Excuse me once more, but

WHAT UNPRECEDENTED PRESSURES ??? Did we have a bird flu epidemic ? Swine Flu again, one of cholera perhaps ? maybe even a return of Spanish flu, or the plague known as the  black death ?
Did we miss it in the news - How many millions of us died after allowing ourselves to become so extensively afflicted as to cause "2,600 important, life-saving operations to be cancelled". Shame on us all.

Nowhere in his diatribe testimony does he place any blame or responsibility for these gross    inadequacies on himself, the MInister Mark Drakeford, or any of the LHB management or the melee of middle managers at Cathays Park, who seem to spend more time on Sudoco or crossword puzzles than anything that could be described as meaningful work ( roll on knocking-off time ).

It is truly pathetic that, in the 21st century, highly paid nincompoops like Sissling et al could be allowed to insult our collective intelligence with such impunity. And what of our elected representatives - have any of them fought against this corrupt autocracy, by martyring themselves to the cause of Openness, Transparency, Truth or Justice ???  Traitors all, I say, and to Hades with every one of them !      R.W.