LIKE many with ongoing health issues I have noticed from personal experience the increasing waiting times.

The obvious reason for this is chronic under-funding but alongside that there is also the vexed issue of privatisation.

Those anxious to see what the current government’s relentless drive to privatise our NHS will mean for them need wait no longer: the effects are being felt now because so many parts of the NHS are already in the hands of private companies.

And it isn’t working.

Many GPs and other health professionals are recounting the same story - cost-slashing private companies are filling positions with poorly-paid and often inadequately-trained staff, workloads are too high, and communication between different services varies between sketchy and non-existent.

The same problems are common across the public sector.

The logical conclusion of the NHS’s deliberately-orchestrated breakdown, the Conservatives will say, is to put the entire NHS system into private hands, lock stock and barrel, and adopt USA-style health insurance schemes.

We have been assured that this won’t happen, but how many u-turns have the Tories already made, and what’s just one more?

Their cynical calculation will be that after June 8, five years will be plenty of time for the furore to blow over. There are already private health schemes for the rich and privileged but for the rest of us the private health insurance model would be disastrous.

Be warned: voting Tory on June 8, will result in a great service for the well-off, but it will mean poor or non-existent cover for the rest of us.

Paul Halas

Stroud