A Healthy Perspective

As the NHS approaches its sixtieth birthday - the age at which responsible citizens are encouraged to consider whether they intend to be a source of cheap labour or spend the rest of their lives on the scrap heap - the Secretary of State for Health Service Privatisation, Alan Johnson, is having a bit of a squeal about the scaremongering and misleading tactics of the evil BMA. "Controversy may well be caused by some GPs who fear greater choice for patients, worried that they themselves will lose out" when the Government sets up its titan clinics. In fact, the medical malls will be set up "in consultation with local people and driven by clinical evidence of what works", unless such evidence should have the bad taste to be contrary to the Government's decision. The evil BMA is speaking in "lurid and inaccurate terms" and indulging in "gross misrepresentation", claiming that the administration which has wreaked such wonders upon the education system, the transport system, the penal system and the armed forces might possibly be inclined to do something similar with the NHS. If there is one thing a New New Labour minister cannot stand, it is lurid inaccuracy and gross misrepresentation.