The NHS And Independence Day

My absence is because recently I have been concerned with issues policy and not as a light relief to Brexit. It is the National Health Service and I have had a grand tour of our local facilities in several areas of medicine.

It is almost if you name it I've got it and when I ask the busy doctors and others mutter between their teeth, old age. Of course it is not quite as simple as that. There is nothing like watching on screen a device looking round your insides to inform you.

At least now when I consider NHS matters good doses of several realities are at the heart of it (joke) because these days once you are in a hospital and they have run all the tests you become acquainted with staff at all levels.

The cleaner becomes as  necessary as the consultant, except that you see more of the cleaners and often they can be the most reliable sources of essential information.

The upshot of this is the awareness that in Westminster the politicians and senior civil services with the media, the latest report and the mounds of paper and briefing are to them the NHS rather than all those old geezers on the wards costing most of the investment and spending budgets.

I first landed in hospitals in the late '30s and the '40's. One complaint had the local medical officer of health having a panic attack. So, historically am qualified to comment.

The fact is that things have changed and the pace and nature of change in the last two decades has been astonishing. Westminster does not understand this or the implications.

Will it be the NHS where the revolution begins?