Editorial Wednesday 27 February 2013: Welcome to Micturition Terrace

Sports fans of a certain age will remember the days of non-seated terraces. Cheap but crowded, terrace culture had a street-level vibe and gave rise to one of the most useful phrases when dealing with politics.

Given the near-certainty of copious pre-match beer-drinking (oh yes, pre-loading is nothing new), and the difficulty of moving to reach any toilet in such crowded spaces, the terraces gave birth to the excellent line "don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining".

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'Francis is coming. Look busy!', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

......................................................................

This morning, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told a caller LBC who was asking about the plans to downgrade Lewisham hospital's A&E that it was to do with the disastrous PFI contracts of the trusts that became South London Healthcare Trust.

This is what’s known in the trade as a blatant lie. Lewisham has been financially well-managed, in sharp contrast with SLHT (whose PFIs were indeed disastrous, as so many PFIs have now proven to be).

Downgrading Lewisham’s A&E  is the Trust Special Administrator’s planned response to the SLHT financial failure, semi-mitigated by Jeremy ‘Bellflinger’ Hunt, and now going to judicial review.

Whether through ignorance, stupidity or malice, Mr Clegg was seeking to piss down our backs and tell us it’s raining.

In yesterday’s Commons health questions (an increasingly obviously pointless ritual, as power is almost gone to the NHS Commissioning Board), Dr Dan ‘Pecs Dance’ Poulter, answering Q10, said “this Government recognise that no hospital operates in isolation”.

This exhibits startling ignorance of what lies behind the logic of the Government’s NHS reforms – that every provider exists in isolation, in order to maximise choice and competition, building from the accumulated purchaser-provider split of NHS trusts and then foundation trusts. The abolition of strategic health authorities is of the same ideological piece in its ‘anti-planning’ intent.

Pecs Dance’s answer equally displays ignorance of Mr Hunt’s reply that ”it is not our job to be a champion for the private sector or the NHS sector”. That ‘no favour’ approach is another way of saying that every provider exists in isolation.

Either ministers are either terrifyingly ignorant of their own policies, or they are seeking to piss down our backs and tell us it’s raining.

Welcome to Micturition Terrace. Mind the rising damp.