North Tees Hospital is in dire need of replacement and has been for a decade now. The NHS is spending eye wateringly, enormous amounts of money on maintenance just to keep it safe for patients and staff – approximately £8 million a year on maintenance, with a current backlog of £100+ million. This backlog is likely to triple in the next decade.
Under the previous Labour government, the hospital was to be replaced with a new, state of the art one. The Conservatives took over government in 2010, and not only cancelled the new hospital, but proceeded to run the NHS into the ground. The Conservatives then had an epiphany, a road to Damascus moment, possibly. Ooohhh! Britain needs the NHS and suitable hospitals for doctors and nurses to care for the populace.
What happened next was momentous, a veritable game changer…Boris Johnson announced to great fanfare the building of 40 new hospitals.
Brilliant news!
Until, of course, you scratched just ever so slightly below the surface, to find out that the proposal was absolute rubbish, smoke and mirrors and just words. Extensions and refurbishments were designated as new hospitals, and just to be clear, they never actually funded these phantom building projects. Who would have thought Johnson would be less than economical with the truth?
To the present day
Matt Vickers, the MP for Stockton West, is apparently at ‘loggerheads’ with the government and the absence of North Tees Hospital being on the list for replacement or increased funding.
Unsurprisingly, Vickers ignores/forgets his government’s lack of action on the issue. Indeed his government/s dereliction of duty in regard to the NHS as a whole.
According to Hansard, Vickers has mentioned North Tees Hospital ten times in his five years as an MP, however was unable to get a replacement for our dilapidated hospital. Indeed, he couldn’t even get it on the Johnson fantasy list. That’s how well regarded and influential he is.
So, how could one describe Vickers’ intervention?
Hypocrisy? Political chancery? Pathetic? Delusionary?
Not good enough descriptions.
I suggest we require a wordsmith of the Charles Dickens or Lewis Carroll calibre to invent a new descriptor to do Matt Vickers justice.
He takes every chance he can, to run to a TV/Radio studio or call up a journalist to pontificate about all the ills perpetrated on us by the Labour Party, whilst harking back to the golden days of Conservative government. I am not sure how a psychiatrist would define this cognitive failure. He seems to actually believe what he says is true.
I recently released my inner idiot to explain this phenomenon, but there has to be a real life explanation, surely.
Could I tempt the Oxford Dictionary with a new word\/
Vickerism…a delusional belief that bad is good, up is down and that one is a genius, when in fact they are a bit of a fool.
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