A deeply confused Laura Kuenssberg thinks people ‘hate’ the NHS

Laura Kuenssberg looking confused NHS


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The NHS is fast approaching its 75th Anniversary. So, what better way to celebrate that milestone than with a bone-headed article from the media’s shallowest thinker Laura Kuenssberg? The article in question is titled Love it or hate it, the NHS is here to stay, and somehow the piece only gets worse from there.

What?

Many people’s jaws hit the floor when they read the article’s title:

There are articles with awful headlines that actually make a lot more sense when you read them. This was not one of those articles.

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Kuenssberg’s BBC article begins:

The British have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.

Do we? Because no one I’ve ever met has hated it (although, then again, I don’t spend my life surrounded by Oxbridge media freaks and right-wing policy wonks). If you’re worried this opening gambit goes unexplained, fear not. Although the explanation is somehow worse than the statement:

According to researchers at the King’s Fund, the public gave the NHS its worst rating since records began 40 years ago. Just 29% said they were satisfied with the NHS in 2022.

And yet we still love it. A whopping 90% of the public agrees the service should be free and available to everyone.

Let’s let that sink in for a moment.

And maybe a moment longer.

You know what – let’s deal with this in an entirely new sub-section.

Is Kuenssberg for real?

Any sensible person understands that being displeased with a thing you love being hurt is not the same as hating the thing itself. Make no mistake – the NHS is being hurt by the politicians in charge of it.

Kuenssberg’s statement is like saying that people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with boats because they love sailing but they hate being shipwrecked.

It’s like saying people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the environment because they love long walks but they hate that Canada is on fire.

It’s like saying people have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the concept of homes because they like having somewhere warm to sleep but they hate paying their landlord £2,000 a month for the pleasure.

Her statement is so monumentally stupid that it’s forced us to reevaluate our entire operation here at the Canary.

We’ve been reporting on Kuenssberg’s idiocy for years, and if even we didn’t realise she was this colossally vacant, what does that say about us? Before everyone else caught up and saw Kuenssberg for the establishment stooge she is, we were regularly slammed for our strident criticism of her. Now it seems like we were giving her too much credit if anything; that we were overestimating her abilities.

So, she continues:

As the NHS approaches its 75th anniversary, politicians are falling over themselves to praise the service.

But when the cameras aren’t rolling, the message you hear can be a very different one. Just like us, politicians have a love-hate relationship with the NHS.

Oh good lord, here we go again.

She can’t be for real, can she?

Anyone with a modicum of common sense understands that the greedy little piggies in charge have nothing but contempt for their golden goose.

Kuenssberg’s statement is like saying that poachers have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with elephants because they love their tusks but they hate them being alive.

It’s like saying fast fashion brands have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with sweatshop workers because they love poverty wages but they hate health and safety laws.

It’s like saying mainstream British journalists have a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the truth because they love selling themselves as truth-tellers but they hate actually telling it:

The British Bollocks Corporation

Would you believe me if I said the rest of Kuenssberg’s article was just random letters, as if she’d repeatedly banged her head against the keyboard? That’s not true, but it might as well be given that she reported things like this (largely from politicians she afforded the privilege of anonymity, of course):

A former minister says rather than go for bold reforms after the pandemic “we have gone straight back to the voodoo land of heroic pointless commitments that will never get met because as a country we are so ill”.

Another suggests ministers are actually scared of telling the public hard truths about increasing cost pressures in the health service. “The public has unrealistic expectations of what we can deliver – the government is frightened of that,” they say.

The only ‘hard truth’ you need to know is this. The NHS isn’t unaffordable, and neither are public services in general. What’s happening is these vital institutions suffer yearly funding decreases while the wealth of the rich just keeps growing. Ever heard of ‘trickle down economics’? It’s like that, except the wealth is flooding upwards. What’s going down, though, are all the services that said wealth used to fund.

There’s a reason why Kuenssberg’s article is filled with quotes from anonymous politicians but not regular members of the public. That’s because she’s never spoken to the latter. If she had, she’d maybe have a view of the world that wasn’t shaped by the whisperings of the nation’s most notorious bullshitters. Then again, maybe not. She really doesn’t have much going on upstairs.

Really, what we need moving forwards is a ‘love-hate relationship’ with billionaires – one in which we hate the fact they exist, but we love re-directing their undeserved wealth back into the public sector.

Featured image via BBC/YouTube

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  • Show Comments

    2. It would be interesting to learn how the BBC reported on the public and political tussles in the years leading up to the establishment of our National Health Service in 1948. Perhaps other readers can point to suitable research. Did Auntie Beeb make it a falsely two-sided debate back then, when the reality was that the working class (i.e. most of the people) was desperate for it to happen, whilst only the Conservatives and the BMA were deeply opposed for reasons of personal enrichment. Just like now.

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    4. I have an arms length relationship with the most vital life saving element of the NHS. There is no doubt it’s world class, amazing life saving ability that exists no where else in the world. (HEMS)
      Most of the NHS is a hugely wasteful organisation gobbling up billions and providing worse outcomes than many other developed nations.
      France has excellent healthcare, but everyone except the very poor, has to pay to see a GP etc. it isn’t perfect, but it certainly works as well as can be expected. I have seen a GP make a home visit and then request payment by credit card. Big issue is GPs moving to the South of France leaving the grimy cold north- who would blame them.
      NHS so good? Why hasn’t any other major country copied it.
      I rest my case.

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      1. Thirteen years ago patient satisfaction with the NHS was measured as extremely high. The NHS of 13 years ago is in the advanced stages of being reformed out of existence and dismantled by government policies.

        Before the introduction of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) by the Blair government, followed by a sequence of governments’ reforms that fractured the services into separate, private trusts that often don’t normally even share their patient data, the NHS was a model of providing healthcare, free at the point of use, and widely admired.

        Deriding what remains of the NHS after it has been pillaged by Tory vandalism ignores the fact that we can and must build it back to suit our needs.

        Other countries, France and Germany, do have fine national health provision but the private part is generally not-for-profit. The proportion paid by the patient goes into health provision, not into company profits and dividends.

        The evidence is that a privatised health service in this country would more closely resemble the expensive, American model, where needing treatment or having a baby can bankrupt you.

        The choice is not the effective French model versus what we have now. It is Pay Up Or Else.

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      2. “Most of the NHS is a hugely wasteful organisation” sez you. Where is your evidence? Perhaps you might compare the National Health Service’s cost to outcomes with those of the USA’s mostly private healthcare industry. The UK spends far less per head than does the USA, but our outcomes are in general comparable or superior. You could, of course, compare both systems with that of Cuba, which spends even less than does the UK but gains superb results for the money.

        “Earlier this year, I shattered my elbow in a freak fall, requiring surgery, plates and screws. While I am a US citizen, several years ago I married an Englishman and became a UK resident, entitled to coverage on the British National Health Service. My NHS surgeon was able to schedule me in for the three-hour surgery less than two weeks after my fall, and my physical therapist saw me weekly after the bone was healed to work on my flexion and extension. Both surgery and rehab were free at the point of use, and the only paperwork I completed was my pre-operative release forms.

        Compare that to another freak accident I had while living in Boston in my 20s. I spilled a large cup of hot tea on myself, suffered second degree scald burns, and had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance. In the pain and chaos of the ER admission, I accidentally put my primary insurance down as my secondary and vice versa. It took me the better part of six months to sort out the ensuing paperwork and billing confusion, and even with two policies, I still paid several hundred dollars in out-of-pocket expenses.”

        https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/07/opinions/single-payer-healthcare-beers/index.html

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        1. You do make some very good points, however ,comparing the NHS with the health service in the US is very much apple and pears. I defer to your better knowledge of the system across the pond, my understanding is that care in the US is either terrible or best in the world, the proviso is that you have to pay for it at the point of delivery. As you say, it can bankrupt you.
          My very sweeping statement about our NHS is based on more and more money being poured into it with outcomes seemingly below France, Germany etc. no other country worships it’s health service as we do.
          I stand by my ascertion that if the NHS is so wonderful, why haven’t other countries copied it? Not even English speaking countries such as Australia, have copied it.

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          1. Which shows you missed the point. The UK government spends far less per head on our healthcare than do many comparable nations, particularly the USA. So your claim that we must not spend more than we do is absurd: why should we not do so?

            “In 2017, the UK spent £2,989 per person on healthcare, which was around the median for members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: OECD (£2,913 per person).

            However, of the G7 group of large, developed economies, UK healthcare spending per person was the second-lowest, with the highest spenders being France (£3,737), Germany (£4,432) and the United States (£7,736).

            As a percentage of GDP, UK healthcare spending fell from 9.8% in 2013 to 9.6% in 2017, while healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP rose for four of the remaining six G7 countries.”

            https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/howdoesukhealthcarespendingcomparewithothercountries/2019-08-29

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