I don't think you can separate the NHS completely from politics as the party in power is the custodian of the NHS, policies they implement can have repercussions years later as we are seeing now. Many of the self serving, overpaid cronies in the overmanned upper echelons of management were appointed by Labour eg ex Communist NHS Chief Exec Sir David Nicholson (The Man with no Shame) who unsurprisingly started his swift climb up the ladder in 1997

GP's are paid proportionately a lot more and do less and this is solely due to the contract drawn up in 2004 which had the BMA biting off clueless John Reids arm.

Here is an article from January 2010 :-


Labour has made a mess of GP services


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/t...-services.html

From what I can gather the present A & E Crisis is due both to GP's working less hours and not being available for home visits along with peoples correct refusal to accept "the earliest routine appointment we can give you is in 2 weeks time". The situation is further worsened by hordes of immigrants who think hospital is always the first port of call and other non english speaking immigrants taking far longer than is necessary at GP appointments.

I'll be interested to hear Docs view as a retired NHS Professional on this mess