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Author’s Introduction

We are all just a heartbeat away from illness, in the same way as a musician is only ever as good as their last gig. My time in hospital coincided almost exactly with the opening months of the Coalition, which came into being following the rather botched, ineffectual General Election of May 2010, when the British electorate was unable to decide whether it loathed Gordon Brown more than David Cameron, or vice versa. Almost two years on, with the Tories determined to demolish the NHS in a top-down reorganisation that was never in any manifesto and which is costing billions of pounds, at a time when we’re allegedly so strapped for cash that we can’t keep the libraries open, maybe it might be a good idea to re-run the contest. Best of three, anyone?

The NHS as portrayed in these pages was far from perfect, but it was the best NHS we had, warts and all, maintained on the same principles that went back to Beveridge in 1948.

This isn’t meant to be a political book, it wasn’t me that made health a political issue, and I don’t think it ever should be. But then it wasn’t me who said I had no intention of ever dismantling the NHS, that I would cut the deficit not the health service, and then proceeded to do the exact, diametric opposite.

STEVE RUDD

The Holme Valley, Easter 2012

NB: Names have been changed throughout this book, apart from the people mentioned in the list of acknowledgements (which is only partial) and certain people who are happy with their part in my story being known.