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‘Doctors strikes underline that we must finish this fag-end of a government’
The dispute that drags on is a stain on ministers who spend more time on Tory psychodramas than governance, says Paul Routledge
My long-planned hospital appointment yesterday for prostate trouble was cancelled at short notice.
No reason was given, but perhaps the consultant involved was standing in for a striking junior doctor.
I have no argument with that, and I still support the doctors. They saved my life a year ago.
But I have a very large bone to pick with lazy, weak, zombie Tory politicians who refuse to get off their backsides and solve this long-running dispute.
If they spent one tenth of the time they waste on the Boris Johnson psychodrama on doing the job for which they were elected, it would have been sorted out long ago.
Months ago, I said “things can’t go on like this.” But they did, because this fag-end, exhausted government simply isn’t governing any more.
They stumble from crisis to crisis, never finishing one job before turning to the next one. So the health service is at breaking point, the cost-of-living crisis deepens daily and mortgage rates are soaring.
A long-promised and desperately needed staffing plan for the NHS has yet to materialise. More than half the doctors want to quit.
The only thing you can rely on with this lot is more of the Tories’ self-indulgent civil war that takes precedence over running the country.
Mirror readers voted eight out of 10 for an immediate general election. Constitutionally, Rishi Sunak can’t be forced to respond.
But we can start the process of shaming him into action, by signing the Mirror’s petition calling for a poll, as I have done. Let’s make it a million!
That would have to be debated by MPs, and it might just start the ball rolling.
Sign here: you.38degrees.org.uk/ petitions/we-demand-a-general-election-now-2
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It’s Blackpool rather than Benidorm as the cost of foreign holidays rockets and flying becomes a nightmare.
I’ve never been to the Spanish resort, but it sounds like the home of Kiss Me Quick hats without a tower.
In flaming June, why bother going anywhere? The roads are choc-a-bloc, the trains cost a fortune and B&B prices are zooming.
Might as well stop at ‘ome, with a deckchair out back. And your favourite newspaper over your face if the sun gets too strong.
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Father’s Day comes round again on Sunday. I usually get a kindly call from my two daughters. Quite sufficient.
And it’s possible my granddaughters will remember Grandparents’ Day, invented by Age Concern in 1990 and celebrated on the first Sunday of October.
But nowhere in the calendar do I see Great-Grandparents’ day, an even higher pinnacle of parentism, if such a word exists. It does now.
I qualified three years ago with the birth of Robyn, and again with the arrival of her baby sister Pippa three days ago, 7lb 14oz. Congratulations, Ally and Dan!
I doubt if I will live to become a great-great-grandparent, but sensible Mrs R might. On past performance, it will be yet another girl.
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Boris Johnson accused fellow MPs who yesterday found him guilty of lying to Parliament of being a “kangaroo court”.
“This is a disgraceful slur on marsupials everywhere,” said a spokes-roo. “Another lie! We’re hopping mad.”
And rejecting his charge of a witch hunt, Ms Ima Wiccan, leader of the Amalgamated Society of Sorceresses and Necromancers, warned: ”If I catch him, he’ll get the wrong side of my broom.”
