The National Health Service in the UK is the most prized welfare service of all.
In order to get re-elected with a thumping majority Prime Minister Tony Blair led his "New Labour" Party a couple of years ago with the cry: "We will reduce the hospital waiting lists." Very popular, that. And, by crikey, he succeeded! Both ways. Hospital waiting lists for operations were reduced from about 2 years to 18 months. And Tony won the last General Election. After careful examination of thousands of hospital records, the Audit Commission is now revealing just how this was done. All over the country, the managers of hospitals gave priority to trivial cases (cosmetic surgery, etc, etc) and delayed the serious operations. Tens of thousands of people who were waiting for cancer and heart operations in the last two years have died as a result. The road to hell in 2001 is paved with the good intentions of 1945. Keith Hudson __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
