What's happened to the money?

Labour's massive increase in spending on the NHS has been mostly unplanned and wasted. Confirmation came this week with the news that there had been a loss of around 30,000 NHS hospital beds between 1997 and 2007. Don't worry though as Tony Blair promised in 1999/2000 that there would be an increase by 2010 of 7,000 beds and Tony Blair is world-renowned for his honesty and for keeping his promises.

Obviously the biggest reduction in bed numbers must have occurred in 1997/98 when Prudence Brown was sticking to the wicked Conservative party's spending plans. Well no, the biggest decrease actually happened in the year ending March 2007 when Prudence had opened the floodgates on public spending.

The fact that over the same period as bed numbers were being cut, the number of deaths from MRSA and C-difficle rose by 400% is entirely coincidental. Although I do seem to recall that the investigation into the outbreak of C-difficile in the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells trust area in 2005/6 reported that one main factor that contributed to the spread of the infection was overcrowding amid the pressure to meet hospital waiting targets.