Back to business at PMQs. Our ailing NHS, and its many-headed crises, were today’s key battle-ground. We hear of sick people being parked in ever tinier and more humiliating confinements: corridors, trolleys, airing cupboards, pill depositories, laundry baskets, spare gaps between drinks’ machines. All these locations, and worse, are currently sheltering patients awaiting the healing touch of some NHS miracle-worker.
Today Miliband told us of a pop-up ward which has been raised, like a Punch and Judy tent, in the grounds of some calamity-hit hospital. Plenty of ammo there to chuck at the PM. But Miliband couldn’t bring any colour or vitality to his arguments. He used percentages and numbers instead. Rather unwise. Statistics, on the page, always promise to reveal some dramatic and important truth. But recited out loud they just float off like bubbles and go pop.
Listening to a column of figures about waiting lists is like being stuck on a waiting list yourself.
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