I've had a complaint about my blog: not enough about Labour's achievements apparently.
Ever responsive, here's a few of Labour's achievements in the NHS which was crumbling in 1997 after 18 years of being starved of cash by the Tories.
• Waiting times slashed: Virtually no-one now waits over six months for an operation. Most are treated much quicker - the average wait across the country is now down to seven and and a half weeks. In 1997 some patients were waiting more than 18 months.
• By end of next year, there will be a maximum wait of 18 weeks between GP referral and hospital treatment. Some hospitals are on course to achieve this target by the end of this year.
• Over 99% of people with suspected cancer are seen by a specialist within a fortnight of urgent referral by their GP - up from 63% in 1997.
• Deaths from cancer and coronary heart disease are falling ahead of target: An extra 150,000 lives have been saved from heart disease since 1996, and an extra 50,000 extra lives have been saved from cancer.
• 19 out of 20 patients are treated within 4 hours of arriving in Accident & Emergency, still not good enough but a massive improvement on 1997.
• The NHS is treating more patients, more quickly and saving more lives than ever before.
• The Healthcare Commission’s latest survey shows that 9 out 10 patients rate their care as excellent, very good or good.
• Labour has already doubled investment in the NHS and it will have trebled by 2008 to over £90bn.
• The NHS will receive an extra £8bn this year alone - the biggest cash increase ever.
• Labour’s investment means there are around 280,000 more staff in the NHS since 1997, including 80,000 more nurses and 35,000 more doctors.
• 116 new hospitals - the largest ever hospital building programme. More than 2,800 GP premises have also been improved or refurbished and around 90 NHS walk-in-centres have been opened.
In 1997, when the Tories were kicked out, more than half of NHS hospitals, clinics and other premises were older than the NHS itself. Today, more than half of NHS premises have been built since Labour came to office in 1997.
Yes, there's always be criticisms and failures in such a massive organisation, and we must address them.
But if Tony Blair had promised half of the above in 1997, he never would have been elected Prime Minister!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
20 comments:
• Waiting times slashed?
Hardly, the figures are fixed. Most health care professionals are honest enough to admit that priorities have been distorted for headlines. People have been shoved off into out-patients. All a big con.
• The NHS is treating more patients, more quickly and saving more lives than ever before?
No. It is spending more money. The rest is lies.
• Labour has already doubled investment in the NHS and it will have trebled by 2008 to over £90bn.
You might as well piss the money down the drain. Stop wasting money on the NHS. It is dead and not coming back to life.
• The NHS will receive an extra £8bn this year alone - the biggest cash increase ever.
More money. Great(!).
• Labour’s investment means there are around 280,000 more staff in the NHS since 1997, including 80,000 more nurses and 35,000 more doctors.
Overpaid militant state workers. Yeh we really want a lot more of them(!).
• 116 new hospitals - the largest ever hospital building programme. More than 2,800 GP premises have also been improved or refurbished and around 90 NHS walk-in-centres have been opened.
Brilliant(!). Build a hospital on every street corner. People will still die. Get. Real.
With achievements like this, no wonder you spend so much time criticising the muppet Cameron. Your best tactic in my opinion. Indeed your only hope.
michael:
remember: watch and learn lad, watch and learn.
Learn about what - spin?
So michael believes NHS staff are overpaid militant state workers and we seem to have built too many hospitals...
nuf said.
Here's what Labour have done over the last ten years:
We have cuts in the NHS, a pensions system in crisis, violent crime rising and prisons overcrowded.
So here's what’s happened:
• In 2005-06, the NHS was over £1.3 billion in the red;
• Over 20,000 job losses have been announced by NHS hospitals in England in the last year
• 17 Accident and Emergency Departments, 105 community hospitals and 43 maternity units are under threat of cutbacks and closure;
Almost one million people in the UK are still waiting for treatment on the NHS.
• Violent crime has more than doubled;
• Gun crime has doubled;
• Almost 450,000 more crimes were committed in 2005-06 than in 1998-9;
• But just one in four crimes is now cleared up by the police.
• The abolition of tax credits on pension dividends has cost pension funds £5 billion a year and £100 billion over the long term;
• Since 1997, around 125,000 people have lost part of their pension;
• Tony Blair’s first Welfare Reform Minister, Frank Field, has said that as a result, ‘we have some of the weakest pensions provisions in Europe.
According to independent experts, taxes have risen by £1,300 for every family in the UK as a direct result of Gordon Brown’s decisions at Budgets and Pre-Budget Reports since 1997.
Since 1997, Gordon Brown has introduced 111 stealth tax rises (HM Treasury, Budgets and Pre-Budget Reports), including:
• Pensions Tax – Gordon Brown’s first and worst stealth tax has taken £5bn a year from pension funds. Treasury documents released recently show that Gordon Brown was warned of the damage this would do to pensions but went ahead anyway.
• Stamp Duty - Gordon Brown now gets £10 billion a year in stamp duty – four times the level when he became Chancellor.
The average home-buyer is paying almost £1,000 more in stamp duty under Labour.
• Inheritance Tax - The number of households paying inheritance tax has doubled under Gordon Brown.
The average price of a semi-detached property in London is now above the inheritance tax threshold of £300,000.
• Council Tax - The average Band D bill in England has risen from £688 in 1997-8 to £1,321 in 2007-8 under Gordon Brown – over 90 per cent.
• Business Tax - The CBI estimates that British businesses have been hit by a massive £50 billion increase in tax under Labour. Under Gordon Brown, Britain has dropped from fourth to tenth in the international competitiveness league.
• Almost half of all 11 year-olds cannot read, write and add up properly when they leave primary school
• Fewer than half of school leavers obtain five or more good GCSEs (grades A*-C) including English and Maths
• Over one in eight secondary schools has been judged ‘inadequate’ and over one third of adults in the UK do not have a basic school-leaving qualification.
• There are two million economically inactive people who want to work;
• Nearly half of young job- seekers who leave the New Deal for Young People end up back on benefits within a year;
• And almost 2.7 million people of working age are claiming incapacity benefits - nearly three times more than the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.
• According to a recent report by UNICEF, the UK is rated the lowest out of 21 OECD countries for child well-being;
• The UK has a higher proportion of children living in workless households than any other EU country;
• Child poverty rose last year by 100,000 before housing costs ( the Government’s preferred measure) and 200,000 after housing costs;
• The incomes of the poorest 20 per cent of households fell in real terms last year, from £182 a week (before housing costs) to £181, while the real incomes of the top 20 per cent went up from £722 a week to £733.
What a success Phil!
thanks geoffrey...
and i suppose three historic general election victories didn't happen either?
The Tories had four Phil:79,83,87 and 92. Did you or any of the other Labour incompetents praise them for merely winning elections? I think not. And you won't get a fourth with the Dour One.
You miss the point as usual michael and make too many assumptions
(and do try not to be so bloody rude lad or i'll have to have a word with your dad...)
Labour reacted to the '79 defeat by lurching to the left (becoming even more unelectable)...it took Kinnock and then Blair to return Labour to the centre ground.
The Tories reacted to the '97 landslide defeat by lurching further to the right (making them even less electable) and ensuring further defeat in 01 and 05.
The reason Grammar Wars is so significant is it clearly demonstrates that the Tory party grassroots - and even Cameron's own MPs - still don't get it...
4 victories Phil. Count them old man.
watch this space...
it took the fourth Tory victory to finally get me - and others - off our collective arses and work to help prevent a fifth.
geoffrey:
Crime is down with Labour - ask the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire!
The Tory record was appalling.
Here's what your former leader who actually cut the number of police officers when he was Home Secretary had to say, note it's from Hansard:
“For the period as a whole from 1979 to 1997 crime doubled under the Tories. It is an accurate figure - it did. It more than doubled between 1979 and 1993.” Michael Howard, Hansard, 24th May 2000.
Nobody believes your figures Phil. Most intelligent people recognise them for the lies they are. And quoting of lies doesn't make them more credible. Just look at the public surveys. The vast majority of people in this country believe crime is rising. That is because they see it with their own eyes.
They don't believe you Phil.
michael:
I agree with you that the public don't believe that crime is falling.
But the statistics are not lies. They are also not mine, Labour's or Blair's.
They are the official figures from the British Crime Survey - and from the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire - and all the other 42 police forces across the UK.
But I suppose all the Chief Constables are liars.
They don't agree with you, so they must be lying.
There are complicated reasons why the figures are wrong. Basically...the institutions responsible for computing them have an in-built self-interest for keeping them low. The figures are not a true reflection of the lawless hellholes that so many of out cities have become. The public see it, and they don't believe your lies.
oh i see, it's all a bit complicated.
i'll rely on our local chief constable who assures me that crime has fallen in each of the past four years.
and as for the nhs, you can't argue with more than 100 new hospitals...
and since there's much wider free eye tests with labour, we can all see them.
Yeh you agree with the Chief Constable that crime has fallen. After all he would know - he did the counting. And then you pay and promote him for cutting crime. Anyone who doesn't see a problem with this system is too stupid to have a proper job.
And i suppose the extra police officers and the police community support officer who patrols our village every day - and thousands like him across the country are an illusion...?
It's simple. You put more police officers on the street to fight crime and crack-down on the criminals and hey presto, crime falls.
Not difficult.
Not an illusion Phil. An illusion would have fooled most people, and opinion polls show you failed there. I prefer "lie".
michael:
I've not failed and nor has Labour.
More police, crime down.
And btw, if you don't believe the official statistics on more police and falling crime, and you think the Chief Constables are all liars too, come to Lincolnshire and ask the Tory members of the Police Authority who scrutinise the figures whether they think they're fixed...
Rather like asking an expert on cheese his opinion about whether the moon is made of it. The police might be experts in crime, but everybody knows it going up because they can see it with their own eyes.
Now instead of excuses, I would be more interested in knowing what this silly Government is going to do about the rise everyone knows is happening. I am guessing releasing criminals early because they didn't build enough prisons isn't a good start.
Post a Comment