Having asked, via the interweb during the Labour party conference, a question of Tony Blair (that being “Why don’t you fuck off and apologise for Iraq, you twat?”), I seem to be getting propaganda direct to my inbox. All fine and dandy, but I must say that I object to be addressed as “Dear Labour Supporter”. I have never been a Labour supporter, and don’t particularly intend to be.

Apparently, according to the propaganda, the party of Foundation Hospitals and piss-poor Private Finance Initiatives which have cost the taxpayer millions is the party of the NHS. The fact the email has the audacity to imply that the Tories are the main party that wants to privatize the NHS after the PFI balls-up is just ridiculous.

I can not deny that the NHS has got increased funding under Labour. I will, however, deny that it has actually got any better.

My father, a conscientious NHS Dentist, earns – in real terms – less now than he did 25 years ago. Although this is not entirely due to Labour – the decline started under the Tories – Labour have done precisely fuck all to make working for the NHS an attractive prospect and, if my father and his colleagues are to be believed, are actually going to make the situation worse through their new payment plans.

If you can’t get the staff, there’s no hope in hell of the system being able to work. The fact that my father also lost several years’ worth of pensions contributions in the Equitable Life shambles (which the government have singularly failed to do anything constructive about) and now, shortly being due for retirement, has no hope in hell of making this back only pisses me off further.

What also pisses me off is that I don’t recall ever granting Labour permission to send me this crap.

The NHS is still a great service, but the recent years of wasting millions on administrative and management staff at the expense of the doctors, dentists, nurses and pharmacists that make the thing run is crippling what was once one of the finest examples of a “socialised” medical system in the world. To give a brief indication of how incredibly wasteful the thing is, Derek Smith, chief executive of Hammersmith Hospitals (covering just a tiny section of London), last year earned between �210 and �215,000. That’s �30,000 a year more than the Prime Minister himself, for fuck’s sake…