Liars leading donkeys

Wednesday May 10

So much for Blair's extra £bns and his '24 Hours to Save the NHS' campaign. Lincolnshire Hospital Trust, which closed 5 wards last year as part of its, err, improvements programme (sic), is now even deeper in debt and thinking about closing its night-time Accident & Emergency facility at Boston Pilgrim Hospital to save money.

If it does close, it will mean a 40odd mile trip to Lincoln for about 120,000 people living out here if they're unco-operative enough to suffer a medical emergency after 6 pm. At the same time, Lincolnshire Trust is going to "ration" care given to smokers and the obese. Not for breathing and weight issues even (yet). Get this... for hip and knee replacements and hysterectomies!

Unbefcknglievable isn't it? I don't believe a single word this bunch of lying incompetents say. Not on waiting lists, employment figures, inflation figures, education results, crime figures, immigration numbers... Passing legislation, doling out money to Civil Servants, spinning the results is the easy bit. Their problem is that they can't actually run anything. Getting the bloody thing to work properly is a hard trick and this lot aren't up to it..

When you are elected to a Council, officers will fawn over you - calling you Councillor, Chairman, Leader or whatever and laughing like drains at the merest of your jokes. It's a flattering experience, especially for many people who come from humbler backgrounds than the senior officers who are being so deferential. Inevitably, the officers will be more skilled in their fields than mere 'amateur' members so that it takes nerve to query them when they give advice. But most members remain entranced and so are led to approve staffing and tax increases as the solution to every problem. They go native. Same thing in spades happens to Ministers - plus they have%