A disgraceful attempt to steal services and call it progress
I have lately returned from holiday to be greeted by a glossy flier from the Lib Dems.
The matter in hand is the future of NHS provision in Shropshire via the ineptly and inaptly-named ‘Future Fit’ (FF).
Many readers will know, from the efforts of Shropshire Defend our NHS and others, of the faults of this disgraceful attempt to steal services and call it progress.
They include the consultation being no more than window dressing, the decision having been already made on financial grounds, that FF is only part of the bigger, secret changes which will come under the Sustainability and Transformation plan and that the much trumpeted £312m of funding is not a gift from the Government but will cost the local NHS £10m+ per year which will come out of services.
My real point is to address the wholly pathetic response from the above-mentioned Lib Dems. Do they not recognise the well-known Tory device of ‘divide and rule’, used here to set off South Shropshire against the rest of the county, especially Telford and Wrekin?
They also meekly accept that ‘there is no alternative’ since the option of two A&Es (or a new, bigger hospital) is not being offered.
The LDs fail to do their political job because the lack of this option is a purely political decision based on the false premise that ‘there isn’t enough money’. There is, but the Tory government choose not to provide it.
Not to point this out is a massive dereliction of duty by the pandering LDs.
People who wish to be truly representative of the people should start by telling the truth, in this case about how FF is part of a long-term plan to dismantle the NHS as we know it and can only be stopped or solved by political opposition which seems to be a concept unknown to their parochial, conservative minds.
John Higson, Craven Arms
