Next time someone tells you that Labour and the Conservatives are identical

[andrewducker]

Notice the trend up throughout the 90s as things got worse and worse, and then the trend down shortly after Labour took office?

They may have done a lot of things wrong, but the NHS is a lot better off than it was.

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[andrewducker]

There were a lot of people who were on waiting lists to get onto waiting lists, and when proper reporting was put in place Doctors were no longer allowed to hide those people. I remember a discussion with my father complaining that doctors were no longer allowed to just move people about and reprioritise patients so that people with low need were effectively put off forever.

And it takes time to put people into place - getting new personnel through the system and putting new systems in place takes a lot of time and effort - and for the first while you're running to stand still - and then the backlog clears, and suddenly you're running downhill. It's like paying off a big loan - at first you're just paying off a little more than the interest, but as the debt lowers the same amount of cash pays off much more of it each month.