Everyone with an interest in Politics must get the new ‘Private Eye’ for its 8 page special on the “£12bn NHS IT Cock-Up Special”. (issue 1179 2-15 March 2007) It is as devastatingly well –researched (as usual) and has chapter and verse for the whole disaster that is overtaking the NHS as we read it. It names names quotes all the figures and explains why doctors can’t get jobs, why other medical staff are losing theirs, why wards and whole hospitals are closing while what remains is increasingly mortgaged well into the future with the PFI financing on the ‘never-never’ . “How this government is blowing £12,4 bn on useless IT for the NHS” - that’s the headline! That would pay for - - “26,000 doctors for 10 years” - “65,000 nurses for ten years” - “The NHS’s record 2005/06 deficit 23 times over” - Every hospital built since 1997 three times over” - “200 years of currently ‘too expensive’ Alzheimer’s drugs” - 500,000 full courses of herceptin treatment for cancer patients’ - “Reversing 20 years worth of planned cuts in social care budget” . “ ‘A penny wasted is a penny stolen from a patient’ declared Health secretary Patricia Hewitt. This is the story of the theft of 1,240, 000, 000, 000 pennies from patients through an IT project that wasn’t wanted and doesn’t work . It tells how political vanity, official incompetence, and vested interests have wreaked havoc on the health service – and calls for a halt to the ultimate in a long line of New Labour computer cock-ups before it’s too late.” And before any Conservatives say “Oooh, isn’t it awful” remember that their precious leader, Cameron, and his shadow Chancellor Osborne, reject root and branch reform of the Health Service and, furthermore, will not reduce taxes. Blair said to voters at the 1997 election “You have 24 hours to save the NHS” . Ten years later it is collapsing in front of our eyes. Go get your copy! (and mind how you cross the road – A&E’s probably been closed) Christina Speight