It's been my severe misfortune to have had quite a lot to do with the NHS in the last three months. I've had three attacks of cellulitis since September, a condition that can turn life-threatening if not treated promptly. Kudos to my severely overworked GP surgery, who have prescribed the strong antibiotics I need just on the strength of my phone calls. They shouldn't need to operate that way but they have to get us all sorted. They have even agreed to let me keep a stash of a week's antibiotics at home so that I can start taking them at the first hint of symptoms (which happened to me last Friday - without them I wouldn't have been able to get a prescription until today, leading to God knows what). I got a severe attack in September and had to go to A&E (we drove there). I had to wait for over six hours to be seen, even though I hadn't urinated for almost 24 hours, a massive red flag for sepsis. My kidneys were severely damaged, mercifully not irreversibly. Following that were five visits to the medical assessment unit, each one consisting of anything between three and six hours of waiting in a stuffy, cramped waiting room. The cellulitis was sorted out very well by intravenous antibiotics, but I picked up a vicious acute bronchitis infection that took me almost two months to shake off.

Not in even the slightest way can I criticise the doctors and nurses who did their level best to get me sorted. I was dealt with at every step with love and care of the highest order. But I'll tell you what I think I've worked out, after seeing all the reports about the crisis in hospitals, the ambulance queues and the strikes by nurses at the end of their tether: this Tory government wants us to blame the NHS, to hate the NHS. They want the NHS to collapse so that they can privatise the lot and install a two-tier system, maybe even a three-tier system, fast-track for the rich and sod the rest unless you pay big-time insurance premiums. Let's all open our eyes, even you Tories here, and see what's really going on here.