In a recent post detailing the latest meltdown in the NHS emergency service, Owl asked:

Do you remember 2017, the year the local Tories ruthlessly started stripping out our Community Hospitals? 

To which a correspondent has written:

I do indeed remember those times.

I attended a few meetings at DCC HQ and heard the pleas to retain our cottage hospitals, solid arguments from Claire Wright and Martin Shaw .

I remember the promises of alternative provision but later experienced a 100 year old former Royal Marine and ex POW friend being told no such alternative care was available despite him fully meeting the criteria.

He blocked a few beds but was also sent home on occasions, one of which saw him laid in a hospital-provided bed but from which he could not move by himself. He was expected, in light of the shortage of the promised alternative, to be left alone in that bed and flat all night, some 12 plus hours.

In the end, friends, (there was no capable family), stayed for several nights until alternative private arrangements could be made.

I should have liked Sarah Randall Johnson, the Tory party through and through chair of the Health Security Committee, to have seen what the consequences of the policy she was promoting caused.

Those who have read any of Swire’s wife’s diaries will know that he got involved ‘saving’ Ottery’ just to piss Claire Wright off (see Martin Shaw’s blog). That’s Tories and health care for you.

Having been the subject of 999 calls for a priority ambulance I can assure you it is not a pleasant experience waiting and wondering if they will turn up in time-obviously and thankfully they have so far, but dozens will share the concerns and as long as we have the same politicians running things, our hard working ambulance service will (hopefully), be carrying the politicians.

They, and we, deserve better. Sarah Randall Johnson appears still to be chair of the County Health Scrutiny Committee. I for one would like to see her long gone.