We still love our failing NHS

A new poll about the NHS, the Sunday Times tells us, has discovered ‘a decline in support’ for the National Health Service. The story spoke of ‘wide dissatisfaction about the state of the health service’, under the headline: ‘Britain falls out of love with the NHS’. The figures from the poll itself tell a slightly different story. The headline finding was that three people in five are now not confident that they would receive timely treatment were they to fall ill tomorrow.

But these three people in five aren’t necessarily saying they’ve ceased to approve of the NHS. It seems to me that they are simply affirming what they’ve read in the papers and heard about on telly and experienced, piecemeal, themselves. It’s bloody hard to get an in-person appointment with a GP. Waiting times for operations are on the rise. Ambulances run slower than rural bus routes and a trip to A&E is for life, not just for Christmas.