From the Guardian, a remarkably frank account of the continuing failure of the NHS to treat cancer as well as the medical services in other advanced countries:
The government's national cancer plan, backed by a massive injection of cash for cancer services in England, has failed to boost survival rates substantially, a major study shows today.The findings will dismay government ministers, who have secured a tripling of spending on cancer over the last decade with the ambition of bringing the UK from among the worst countries up to the standard of the best in Europe. But the authoritative study, from a team led by Professor Michel Coleman at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, shows that survival rates have barely shifted since the cancer plan was launched in 2000.
"We are at best keeping track with improvements elsewhere rather than closing the gap," says an editorial in the journal which publishes today's study, Lancet Oncology. It adds that the government's aim of matching the survival rates of the best performing countries in Europe by 2010 is looking optimistic.
The study also shows that regional divides linger on, with people in some areas of England likely to survive longer than in others.
Cutting deaths and improving the length of time people survive with cancer, while ending health inequalities, is one of the major health goals of the present government, triggered by an outcry over data which showed Britain lagging at the bottom of the European league.
Full story here.
This account is utterly different from that which I heard on BBC Radio. That entirely accepted the propaganda offered by, I think, the so-called Cancer Tsar (perhaps he should be called the Cancer Commissar). It is a sign of the times that a civil servant should promote misleading propaganda in favour of his political masters. It is also a sign of the times that the BBC should accept this propaganda so readily. It is ironic that a Left-wing newspaper, which you might normally expect to be more sympathetic to the Labour Government, gives a more honest account than a civil servant or the BBC. Well done the Guardian but a sad time for the integrity of the civil service and the BBC.
It is worth adding that the different parts of the BBC perform differently. Radio 4, led by the Today programme, has a Left-wing, politically correct, pro big government mindset, as has been widely observed. However Radio 5 is far less predictable. Its great virtue is that its phone-ins make its producers and presenters more aware that there are other views around beyond the BBC view.
Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Media, including BBC bias • NHS
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Even the Guardian is not immune to continuing the Leftwing bias when it changes tack to criticise the welfare state's performance.
I had a leftwing-journalist friend when Blair won in 1997, who claimed that his job to criticise the government would continue under Labour.
I remarked to him that what he really meant was that he would continue his leftwing criticism of the Tories as leftwing criticism of Labour; nothing would change at all.
He most certainly would not harry government performance from a market perspective.
Posted by: Gavin Kennedy at March 22, 2009 08:42 PM