Looks like it could soon be 'RIP the NHS'?

Are we allowed to say this is tragic- or is that a 'gross exageration' too?

This is the woman who is standing for the NHA in Witney, Cameron's constituency.

'Dr Salisbury says, “In Witney, a GP surgery is closing as Virgin Healthcare withdraws, Chipping Norton Hospital has been handed to a charity and effectively downgraded, and plans are in place to remove maternity care and more from the Horton Hospital in Banbury. The JR in Oxford will struggle to cope with the extra demand.

I am a GP in Oxford and I am standing in the Witney by-election because I know how important these services are to the people here and I want to do my best to save them. I think that to fight effectively in parliament you have to understand what is really happening both locally and nationally.'

I find it interesting that a surgery is closing because Virgin Healthcare is withdrawing.
I wonder how many of those patients, or service users as they are now called, knew that Virgin owned the surgery.

Junior doctors have called off the strikes as they have consulted and realised that it could harm patients.
Well done to them. Now all we need is for Hunt to call off the imposition of the contract.

Apparently Hunt is complaining about bias against him at the BBC, and has threatened its future as a public service broadcaster.

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/views/blogs/history-repeats-itself-with-jeremy-hunt/20032828.blog

He must be getting friendly with Murdoch again.

He's been saying that all the threats of imposition of the junior doctors contract wasn't by him, it was by his minions.

Ooops. Info on Halewood on wrong thread.

He's not Chancellor and he only wrote it this year. I'm not saying that I agree with him, but what he says appeals to aspirational working class voters. Harlow is very typical of many towns in the UK. It's actually a marginal, but seems Tory, because Halfon has wooed them.

I can't find the 2016 results for Halewood Academy, but in 2014 they were 24% for 5 GCSEs A*-C including Maths and English.

I thought he didn't sound much like a Tory until I read that he thinks that extra tax cuts for the rich will generate more tax and enable tax cuts for the poor. Really? When did that ever happen?

I wouldn't vote for Robert Halfon, because he's a Conservative, but his constituents think highly of him. This is the article I read:

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/robert-halfon-conservative-dying_uk_5776b79be4b0c9460800c912

He gets votes and that's what matters.

Had to laugh there, daphne. It makes it sound like your homeless gentrify Harlow. Just my sense of humour.

Maybe because his constituents live jeek and jowl with a highish percentage of people on benefits. I live in the neighbouring authority and we send our homeless to Harlow. Harlow is becoming slightly gentrified, but it still has many working class voters with traditional values of working hard. Thatcher appealed to those kind of voters.

I know Peterborough reasonably well too and Harlow has more deprivation and problems. It's a bellwether seat. If the poll was just people in the town itself, they were probably fairly evenly balanced.

PS. Apologies to anybody on here from Harlow. I've made it sound bad, but it isn't really.

He might have written an article about deprivation, but he voted with the government on anything to do with the welfare bill.
The main thing he voted against the government on was same-sex marriage.

I don't know Harlow, and never pretended to, but it sounds very much like Peterborough, where I lived for ten years in the 70s and 80s, another London overspill newtown, with a high immigrant population, which now has a Tory MP.
Doesn't get over the point that to choose two places with Tory MPs as focus groups looks a bit biased to anybody who notices these things.

PS. Despite the social problems and pockets of poverty, which should make Harlow a Labour seat, I can't see the population voting for a Corbyn-led Labour Party. If anything, Ukip will gain votes. Labour needs to win back seats such as Harlow, if it's going to form a government.

@dj

You obviously don't know Harlow!

Harlow is a bellwether constituency. It was built as a new town for London overspill in the 1950s. It still has a high number of council houses and a much higher than average (for Essex) unemployment rate. I think it has the highest crime rate in Essex and certainly has a major drugs problem. Pockets of Harlow have some of the highest levels of multiple deprivation in the country. It has quite a high percentage of EU immigrants.

The constituency includes some of the leafier more rural areas surrounding the town.

Harlow was a Labour stronghold until the mid 70s, when I guess some people sold their vote for the opportunity to buy their council house. It was Labour during the Blair years and then was a marginal. The MP was Conservative Jerry Hayes, who is on the left of the Conservative Party. The current MP is Robert Halfon, who is a popular constituency MP and pretty decent (for a Conservative ). He wrote an article about deprivation, which showed more knowledge of grassroots problems than I think I've ever read in anything by a Labour MP.

Here's an interesting fact.
If the NHS was a country, it would be the 31st largest in the world. In this country, only BP and Shell are bigger than the NHS.

Nothing wrong with Harlow, daphne. It's just that if you are going to have focus groups and claim they are representative, it's best not to have them all in Tory strongholds.
Robert Halfon, MP.

I agree with you about NHS commissioning. The amount of NHS money spent on admin now compared to before the new system is phenomenal. It was this government that said it was going to get rid of all the admin, and put more money into the front line. Now they are reorganising the NHS again into 44 footprints, it will need even more organising, so less money for the frontline.

www.kingsfund.org.uk/topics/nhs-reform/mythbusters/nhs-managers

@bluebellwoods

There are too many NHS managers doing the wrong jobs, such as commissioning and analysing targets. There aren't enough managers where it really matters - in hospitals, etc.

What's wrong with Harlow?

There are far too many overpaid managers in the NHS now. The pyramid needs to be turned the right way up!

What else would you expect of focus groups in Harlow and Leamington Spa?

Trouble is daphne people don't want "facts".

The UK has total control over immigrants from outside the EU and most EU immigrants are young and fit and don't put a strain on the NHS. It's more likely their taxes are going towards paying for it.

It's the same in many of the areas which voted Leave. They have the lowest percentage of immigrants, yet complain that they're using hospitals and schools and stealing jobs. Doh!

You could be right about immigration connection daphnedill. I was speaking to a neighbour about local CCG meeting I have just attended. They are 14.5 million in debt rising to possibly 31 million by end of next year, unless they make drastic cuts in services. They term "cuts" "disinvestment" and decommissioning"! My neighbour said that it was possibly due to all the immigrants putting strain on services. I replied "hang about, there are very few immigrants in our leafy area of Shropshire, and those there are, are running the health service"....