Darryl Hartley

A shower screen shattered all over my wife this week. Over the next 72 hours, the NHS got almost everything wrong. A cautionary tale of a system that is broken (with the usual caveat that everyone working in it is doing their best) 👇 I called an ambulance. All good at first: “It’s on its way.” Ten minutes later: “Actually, there are no ambulances for hours - can you get her to hospital?” So I loaded my bleeding wife into the car, along with the kids and the dog, and drove to A&E. Ten hours later, she came home - having given up after not even being offered a plaster. The next morning, we called our GP: “Any chance she could see a nurse?” “No - as the ambulance referred her to hospital, we can’t see her.” So I went to the pharmacy and bought a first aid kit. Because apparently that’s where we are now - me and a pack of plasters, in one of the richest countries in the world. This morning, still in pain, still untreated, and with a ballooning foot, we went to an urgent treatment centre. At first, smooth. She was seen in under two hours. X-ray done. “Nasty cut, but nothing broken.” Relief. Two hours later, the phone rang. It was the hospital. “Sorry - we got that completely wrong. Your foot is broken and the wound needs antibiotics.” If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable. And the truth is - anyone who uses the system has a story like this. We need to stop clinging to an idealised version of the NHS and have a grown-up conversation about how to fix it. Free healthcare for all should remain a principle - but pretending the current model works isn’t helping anyone. Almost every other developed country combines public healthcare with some level of private provision - and all deliver better outcomes as a result. Yet in the UK, even suggesting that tends to get shut down before the conversation starts. That’s not protecting the NHS. It’s protecting a cult. We don’t need ideology. We need honesty about what works. We need a brilliant NHS in practice for all of us - not one we’re told to revere while it quietly crumbles, and where anyone who speaks up is dismissed or discredited. When are we going to get serious about the things that actually matter - and have the difficult national conversations needed to fix them? We don’t need to abandon the NHS. We need to be honest about fixing it. We shouldn’t just shrug our shoulders. We have to be better. We need to vote for real change.