‘Does the government take us for fools?’

• WHY do we put up with this?

Does the government take us for fools?

People have died unnecessarily, many people are suffering, yet Conservative ministers duck and dive from accepting responsibility; they adopt techniques of evasion, of being economical with the truth, learned no doubt from highly-paid media consultants.

Ministers call for “minimum service standards” during strikes. They cannot bring themselves to own up that, even without strikes, their policies are failing to deliver such standards.

Severely ill people wait for hours for ambulances and then many more hours for even trolley space in hospital.

Ministers say they are now doing this or that to address those problems, yet why did they allow things to reach this dire state? To that question, answer comes there none.

Statistical and medical bodies point to excess deaths – thousands – yet ministers respond, “Oh, we cannot say exactly how many deaths have arisen from what”, as if we should conclude that long waits, when with cardiac arrests or similar, could have nothing to do with subsequent deaths.

Ministers blame the pandemic for this dire state, yet they know full well that even prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, through NHS and social care underfunding, shortages of staff, beds and care workers were developing. Why do they not own up?

Ministers squeal, “Ah, but look, there are also crises in Labour Wales and SNP Scotland”. Oddly they fail to mention that they set the overall budgets for those administrations.

As for medical staff pay, ministers hide behind the “independence” of the pay review bodies, hoping no one will mention how they set the financial parameters for those bodies.

Ministers are not the only people who show no shame, no care. Interviewers time after time allow them to get away with their evasions.

Tory MPs support them. The wealthy prefer to focus on complaining about tax levels or about their next exotic holiday.

Many voters opt for reading about the jetting life style of the likes of Prince Harry; and, despite the disasters in health and social care we could add, the failings in welfare, housing, library, community, education, police services and more, millions of people will still vote Conservative.

Maybe what is even more astonishing and depressing than the government ministers’ callousness and incompetence is the number of people who, one way or another, keep them in power.

PETER CAVE, W1