So that's £12.4billion over ten years - multiply that by ten and it still doesn't cover the extra money in the NHS budget between 1997 and 2007. AfC was a good idea done badly - possibly because it was left to individual hospitals to sort out (and mine was an early implementer) rather than centrally. Having a physio and a medical secretary do my job evaluation was as sensible as ... er, the idea that I could do theirs. "Expensive drugs that people expect to get no matter the cost" - well, there's an ethical minefield that goes to the very heart of what the NHS is, does, and provides. Love the word "scads" - never heard it before. As for "it doesn't then follow that the government aren't a bunch of gits" - EVERY government is a bunch of gits after two years max, let alone eight, nine or ten. Of course, I remember that sweet cuddly Margaret who was so nice, and I'm sure John Major / William Hague / Iain Duncan Smith / Michael Howard wouldn't have been gits over the last ten years. Things could be better nationwide, of course, and I feel I may have to apologise since other people feel the NHS is falling apart but in my particular part of the service (sorry for being selfish) they have got better, and I've heard patients say that too, and I don't think that would have happened under the Tories.