The BBC has become a party political broadcast by the Labour party (Casualty)

Member Name: cabletow

Product:	Casualty
Date:	14/04/02 (303 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great cast, great scripts

Disadvantages: none of you realised that this is propaganda did you?

The NHS is dying; Max, for god's sake, get it into resus. No room? There must be room - this is the nation's saviour, the flagship that Britain hangs on to, and the stalwart paragon of great British socialism. But Max we must save it.

Casualty is the BBC's own grown hospital drama. These days however it is more to do with political drama, than hospital drama. After watching another gruelling episode of death, stress and caring, I can only come to one conclusion. The BBC has finally become blatant at being a New Labour advertising tool. Tonight Casualty was bought to its knees. Corridors had become full and Casualty could no longer cope with the flotsam and jetsam of Britain's health service. All very dramatic and harrowing, and Max had to close Casualty.

The coincidence is all too apparent. On Wednesday next is Gordon Brown's awaited budget. The budget that, he has promised, will outline his prescription for saving the NHS. A prescription that many pundits are prophesying that will mean the end of low taxation. Never fear though, increased taxes will; we are assured, save our ailing health service. So the BBC helps out. Over dramatize the worries of the middle classes, and soften them up for the blow that will come. I have been sceptical about claims that the BBC was in New Labours pocket, but now I am agreeing.

Tonight's episode was over the top. Wards full, with bed blockers. The waiting time to be seen got over 6 hours. The staff dropping like flies with the Norwalk vomiting virus and overwork and patients had to be treated in ambulances in the parking lot. The staff had to lie about the death of a patient to cover up there inadequacies and management started to see the toll all this was taking on the staff. The plot was taken straight from the Daily Mail's daily tirade about our third world health service, and it worked. Everyone who watched it must have been moved to tears as the old man with cancer died
in the corridor and the staff nurse who started that day had to comply with Charlie?s request to lie to the relatives. Is it really like this in our hospitals? Well, yes it is. But it has been like this for a long time now and my concern is why we are being shown the dark side now. Up till now casualty staff have risen above the politics and focussed on what every one who works in the NHS does to the best of their ability. That is getting on with the job of dealing with patients. Why usually on busy days like today the staff manage to solve a deep and complicated social problem. Not tonight, though. They just could not cope.

Propaganda takes many forms. Clever propaganda is that which the viewer does not even realise is propaganda. Churchill was the master of this. Remember the directors of the BBC have all recently been replaced with New Labour spin doctors and they have now started to get to work on casualties doctors.

I can assure you that despite the promises most of the cash that is earmarked for the NHS gets swallowed up before it gets to patient care. It gets spent on new management schemes to cover up the deficiencies of the NHS. It does not provide more doctors and Nurses it provides more people with clip boards making targets that are achievable, scoring parameters that prove those targets and then reworking the statistics to prove that the NHS is getting better, when patently it is not. Just two weeks ago it was leaked that there are 210,000 NHS managers, 196,000 NHS beds, 120,000 nurses and 60,000 doctors. For the first time in the history of the NHS there are more managers than beds. Any tax rise next week will only make this worse. How can the state of our hospitals be so bad when around each bed there are 1.1 managers?

More money is needed for patient care, it is true. But it must get to the patient and not to those who are creaming it off. It must go towards getting and keeping more doctors and nurses. It must go to increa
sing bed capacity and not go towards spurious targets that have more political meaning rather than patient cantered improvements.

This used to be Charlie Fairhead's constant refrain. But, it would seem, even he has taken to dealing with just getting by. Even he has become a master of the cover up, to support an ailing system at the expense of the conscience of his loyal and dedicated staff. That would never happen under Tory rule.

The actors did their job fantastically. They helped us all live the desperation that the NHS has become. The script writers fulfilled their brief fantastically, and I am sure many of you will comment that I am ranting and exhibiting signs of paranoia. But I question the timing and the motives. I am sure we will see a tax raising budget and I am sure that many of you will feel better about that. It is a good cause you will say. Yes it is a good cause, but we spend much more than other places yet we have very much fewer clinical staff. The care we get is appalling yet all we seem to care about is that there is a better management. Please be aware that better management does not mean more management. I am happy to pay more in tax if it means a better heath service. Better must, however, be judged at the patient level and not by a spurious measurement of how many aspirin have been prescribed last year. We need to start seeing reports in the newspapers of happy patients grateful for the fantastic results the hospitals have achieved and we need to see casualty return to the halcyon days of solving all the problems of their patients. Then we will know that taxes have saved the NHS.

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