Right so who’s going to see their GP if you suspect you’ve got internal bleeding then? Come on, own up! I jest of course, but according to Labour leader Keir Starmer, we should be self diagnosing that ourselves. Don’t bother the doctor about internal bleeding he said, apparently we can just take a test! I must’ve missed those in Tesco, are they next to the pregnancy ones? I dread to think how such a thing might be used. Oh look there’s blood in my wee, maybe I should buy a test to check…for the blood I can already see? What if you’ve had a fall and suspect internal bleeding but can’t see any? Are we supposed to listen for some kind of a sloshing sound Keith? Do we stand on our heads and see if it runs out of our ears? If only Tesco or somebody did a test for common sense deficiency or sheer bloody stupidity, because it’d be two blue lines for you wouldn’t it sunshine! Maybe they have colonoscopy kits in the middle of Lidl this week and you can give yourself a DIY anal probe for such things, I mean what could go wrong with that!
Labour’s front bench should be performing a collective facepalm over this, it is easily one of the most stupid things any politician has ever said ever and there’s no blaming Corbyn for this one. He can and will lose you that next election regardless of polling right now. Those live TV interviews guys, think about it. Anyway, when did internal bleeding become an issue we are apparently making too much of a fuss about? Look, if anyone suspects internal bleeding, not only is there no such thing as a home test, you don’t bother your GP about it either, you ring a flaming ambulance, it could be a fatally serious condition. If Starmer tried speaking to actual doctors about this, tried being a human instead of the plank of wood he is and rather than spouting abject stupidity on TV, he’d know that.
It was just the most dangerous, nonsense drivel to come out with in an interview and made me wonder if Rishi Sunak was the only one to pretend to have an NHS GP, since Starmer seems to have no more of an idea of what they do or how they work than he does.
Internal bleeding doesn’t just happen, you can’t just walk it off, pretend it may not be serious, it can have all manner of causes, sure, there are minor causes, but there are major ones too and we aren’t qualified to know which.
Now I could be charitable to him and just forgive some careless language here. When we think of internal bleeding you tend to think of it as having resulted from some kind of trauma, but of course a nosebleed is a form of internal bleeding if you think about it, an ear infection, piles, there can be minor forms of internal bleeding there too, the sort of thing you might see a GP over, however I’m not going to be charitable over that, because Starmer wants to give everyone free rein to self refer themselves to hospital specialists skipping the GP once more. Apparently letting a GP triage you ahead of potential specialist care is just bureaucratic nonsense according to Keith. Just, what work exactly is he leaving for the GP? Is this his answer to the GP shortage, just skip them? This seems contrary to what his equally inept and frankly offensive health secretary Wes Streeting had to say, as he’s under the impression the NHS is being run in the interests of doctors and wants patients to dictate whether they want a face to face, phone or online appointment. Doctors changed to more phone and online appointments both in the wake of the pandemic and because their budgets have been cut to the bone so have had to make what the Tories love to call efficiency savings. Forcing them to return to what used to be the norm is impossible without proper investment and with Covid still present and this country still inept at dealing with it each time it rises. What extra money will Labour put in Wesley? Oh that shuts him up, because they won’t commit to any.
Chair of the BMA doctor’s union Professor Philip Banfield has weighed in on this, condemning the stupidity of both Starmer and Streeting not only for what they’ve said, but their abject refusal to listen and learn from the very people they’re talking about. Doctors themselves.
Banfield, in an interview on Sophy Ridge’s Sunday morning show on Sky said he had met with Streeting earlier that week and had to end up agreeing to disagree with him. I mean what? A senior doctor and trade unionist ending up being forced to agree to disagree with Labour’s health spokesman because, as Banfield put it, he doesn’t understand General Practice. GP’s, as Professor Banfield put it, are one of the most effective and efficient parts of the health service in the way that they manage risk, but self referral will just result in queues of the ‘worried well’ turning up to see specialists when they shouldn’t be there.
Of course by disagreeing with Streeting, young Wesley might point to that interview as proof of the BMA’s hostility towards Labour’s plans, but when Labour’s plans for the NHS merely demonstrate to the public, let alone the highly educated health professionals, their cluelessness and abject stupidity when it comes to the NHS, how our healthcare system is supposed to function when it isn’t being starved of investment, it’s hard to see how such concrete-headed arrogance is going to win voters over.
There aren’t enough specialists, just like there aren’t enough GP’s. As ordinary members of the public without really knowing what might be wrong with us, we’re entirely likely to pick the wrong specialist, which is not a mistake a GP would be as likely to make. Our hospitals are already overwhelmed, why make it worse by skipping the GP? Starmer and Streeting are arrogant idiots too up their own arses to listen to what anyone else will tell them, all this will do is ensure those in most need of specialist care end up waiting even longer to get it and what will be the cost of that? They don’t know best, they just seem to be hell bent on carrying on exactly where the Tories leave off and the pair of them need to engage in meaningful, educational conversations with medics before they embarrass themselves even further. Both are too full of themselves to do so I fear. If they really gave a damn for the NHS, the conversation from both would be one of investment, reversal of privatisation as Starmer pledged when he ran for Labour leader and dealing with the staffing crisis as quickly as possible, which means getting some overseas workers back that we lost, or perhaps a sponsorship scheme as has been used in the past. For heavens sake don’t listen to Starmer on issues of health he clearly has no idea about. I’m just amazed he hasn’t brought up that his mother was a nurse as his justification for his all knowing all seeing depth of medical knowledge yet. If you really do suspect you have internal bleeding, please just call an ambulance, it is what the service is there for, it is appropriate use of their time. Do not listen to Keir Starmer on this and for the love of God think twice about voting for him now.