You'll Win On Health - Just Get It Right

There are three subjects that the electorate care about - health, crime, education. Get those three right and no matter what else is happening you'll win the election. Other issues will have an impact but if you don't get these three core issues right then you're dead in the water. William Hague knows that - about 90% of the country backed the Save the Pound campaign in 2001, people queued up to sign the petition but in the end it didn't change their vote. People care about the environment but will choose who to vote for based on who'll get the yobs off their streets, not who'll save the polar bears. And try being in the line of fire when parents don't get their first choice schools - county councils change hands over these issues.

David Cameron is absolutely right to take Brown on over the Health Service. It's in a shocking state and people care and will choose who to vote for based on who they trust on health. Telling people that despite the spin local hospitals and services are under threat and pledging to protect them is a winning strategy. As long as people have faith you will act on it. Nicola Sturgeon can vouch for that one.

But for god's sake get it right. You had a great start to the week - I bet members loved the thought of a bare-knuckle fight on such a key issue, then it all went wrong. Turns out the research wasn't good enough, local MPs weren't fully on board and then an idiot researcher (probably the same one who bollocksed up in the first place) got bullied into apologising. Things like this detract from the strong central message.

A couple of tips - get your research right from the start and double check the work of 17 year old Emily and Tarquin, make sure the local MPs/PPCs know what's going on in their area and are fully behind it, know that the vested interests (the Trust managers) will come back at you and be ready to take them on too, never apologise to them and for god's sake keep going. Use Andrew Lansley more - he's attractive and appealing to the general public. Oh and yes - keep banging on about health.

Health, crime, education. Might never be the causes de jour - but will always be the things the swing voters care about.

Organ Donations - Consent or Presumed Consent?

This story about the Chief Medical Officer for England suggesting that we move from consent driven organ donation to presumed consent concerns me.

I carry (I think) an organ donor card. I have since I was very young and first understood what organ donation was and what it meant. I have always felt very strongly that should anything happen to me I very much want my organs to be donated. I have also warned my family that should this not happen I will haunt them - and not in a good way.

This has always been my choice. I know that not everyone in my family feels the same way and I know that others just don't know how they feel about it. That's fine. If (and I pray I'm never) in the situation where I have to make such a decision I hope that I will always respect the feelings of my family members.

I am really concerned about the idea of presumed consent and how this could develop. Presumed consent takes the decision away from the individual and their family about their body. I accept that as suggested there is an opt-out option, but how likely are people to actually find out how to opt-out and do so? People never think that dreadful things will happen to them and won't therefore prepare. Hence the lack of people with donor cards despite the estimated 70% of the population who would be willing to donate organs.

And if consent is presumed does this mean that organ harvest will become a consideration in treatment? Will families be rail-roaded into making decisions about turning off life support as the state already has a call on the body parts?

Surely there are better ways to increase proactive organ donation? A first step would be to ensure that inclusion on the register was binding. As far as I know it currently isn't. Increase awareness of need for organ donation, make it easier to sign up to be a donor - have cards in every library and every supermarket in the country.

Let's make sure that a rise in proactive consent negates the need for the government to take away yet another of our civil liberties - the right to control our own bodies.

If you haven't already registered and do want to - sign up here.

How not to balance the books

So the NHS not only turned about its deficit last year but had a £500m surplus.

This is not a good thing when waiting lists are on the increase, operations cancelled, junior doctors cannot find work, hospitals are unclean and patients and staff are just generally fed up.

The NHS is not a profit making organisation - a £500m surplus is as bad as a £500m deficit as it implies that more emphasis has been placed on cost-cutting than on patient care. Still, I'm sure that there have been plenty of clip boards purchased.

The NHS is in a real mess at the moment and the government are doing nothing about it other than claiming everything is better than under the Tories (a decade ago).

The dangers of Lemsip....

Our beloved Government have mooted the idea of taking cold and flu medicines off the shelf as people are using them to make crystal meth. Apparently.

While I'm not denying this is happening I'm pretty sure that a knee-jerk reaction of clearing the shelves of lemsip, night nurse and benylin won't help. What it will do is start to place an intolerable pressure on GPs. In the past couple of years I've had 4/5 colds - probably pretty average. I've been to the doctor once (and I'm convinced it was a bout of the flu rather than a cold), the rest of the time I've dosed up on lemsip, night nurse, benylin, tixylixx, sudafed and got on with it. I think most people probably do.

The chaos that will ensue when everyone with a minor sniffle turns up at their GP needing a cold medicine doesn't bear thinking about.

Working time will be lost as people don't go into work but wait by their phones to be the first to get the one appointment available that day. Others will not bother and hope that they don't still have it in two weeks time when the next appointment is available.

Pharmacies will get much busier with chemists taking up much of their time on cold remedies.

And drug dealers will continue to manufacture crystal meth and causing misery in our communities.

Surely a better plan is to invest more in frontline policing to stop the drug dealers and leave the rest of us alone?