Media Watch: looking back on 60 years
- Published: 10 July 2008 09:00
- Author: Rebecca Evans
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- Last Updated: 10 July 2008 09:29
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On the NHS's 60th anniversary, several papers concluded the government is not doing a bad job of running the service.
"There has been a great deal of waste but there has also been great improvement," said David Robson in the Daily Express.
Daily Telegraph columnist Janet Daley warned that while Labour is "inching its way toward" putting the patient at the heart of primary care, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley "sets himself up as a staunch supporter of the BMA, a reactionary, self-interested doctors' trade union whose spokesmen currently seem to be competing to give the most morally repugnant form to their objections to change".
"It is good to see a tabloid make space for claims by EastEnders actor Rudolph Walker's wife that she has developed a cancer cure"
That is not the only kicking the British Medical Association comes in for. On the eve of its annual conference, chair Hamish Meldrum's comments to The Sunday Telegraph that his "gut instinct is that [top-up payments] go against the sort of NHS I believe in, which is free at the point of use, fair and equitable to all", were seized on as evidence of "cruelty".
Still, as the top-ups debate rages in the broadsheets, it is good to see a tabloid make space for claims by EastEnders actor Rudolph Walker's wife that she has developed a cancer cure.
"Cuppa 'cure' for cancer - EastEnder wife saves pooch", the Daily Star Sunday reported. Dounne Alexander claimed that after drinking her herbal tea her dog Zara, given just weeks to live, was now in excellent health.
"The tea has the potential to help the whole nation," she told the paper. At least the Star put the word "cure" in inverted commas.
