The Tories have always tried to deny that a government can spend itself out of a recession, but Jeremy Hunt has a much more bizarre plan.
Hunt is doing a sponsored Londo0n Marathon in late April and last Friday posted this on Twitter:
What Hunt does in his free time is, of course, up to him. But doing a 17-mile run on a workday does seem odd.
More bizarrely, he is doing this run to raise funds for the NHS. Think about that for a moment. This is the man who was in charge of the NHS for many years, from 2012. And this is the man who can now give it any additional money he likes. But instead of that, he thinks he has to run a marathon to raise charitable funds for it instead.
Really? Is that how bereft he is of ideas on how to fund our public services? As a metaphor for the state of the Conservative Party and its thinking, that seems pretty grim to me.
No problem this country faces will be solved by Jeremy Hunt running around a park. Has anyone told him that?
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It might be solved if he has a heart attack or injury and waits hours for an ambulance and ER
I would not wish that on him, and I am entiorely sincere in saying so
Speaking of waiting for ambulances, maybe I could be allowed the indulgence of relating something that happened to me recently. At about 8.00pm in 8th February I was doing some homework for an online course in Classical Chinese when suddenly the left hand side of my visual field disappeared. Obviously I had suffered some sort of stroke. I phoned 111 and booked a callback that was supposed to happen within an hour but actually occurred about an hour and a half later.
Having discussed the symptoms I was told I should get to the A&E in Watford General, which is about nine miles from my home, as soon as possible. I was told not to drive. I don’t own a car but who drives with half their visual field missing? I was also told that if I wanted an ambulance I would face a wait of at least 5 hours. I went to the hospital by taxi.
The symptoms gradually cleared up and by the time I left hospital, they were restricted to a small blind spot in the bottom left hand corner of my visual field. A CAT scan showed no sign of bleeding and I am booked in for an MRI scan next Sunday.
It is quite possible that I will end up none the worse for my experience; presumably I will find out on Sunday. What I find disturbing is that there are people who would be unable to lay their hands on a £30 taxi fare at that time of night. According to the Stroke Association if you do not have prompt treatment for a mini stroke (a.k.a a transient ischaemic attack) you run a high risk of a debilitating stroke within the next few days or weeks. So I am left wondering how many people are left permanently disabled for want of a taxi fare.
As for whether Jeremy Hunt would change if subject to a similar experience, something I would not wish on him, I somehow doubt it.
Bernard
Go well
I hope the MRI suggests the right route of long term treatment
Best
Richard
This so-called marathon he is running is so bizarre that it suggests, to me at least, that there might be something wrong with him, cognitively, that is. I may be reading into it, but your post, Richard, suggests this as well. Of course, I may be wrong, and (H)unt is acting like a normal Tory.
Shades of Forrest Gump. It is a great pity that Hunt does not just keep on running – would cause less damage.
Of course it is all a stunt to provide Daily Heil etc headlines/copy. Anything to deflect UK subjects from reality.
Reckon it’s a strong hint that charity is all the NHS can rely on! It’s already happening with local services as local councils run out of money. My parish council in South Devon has had to take over the funding of our village public toilets and litter bins from the district council or lose them. It has now been contacted by the county council about helping to support Family Hubs, part of the government’s Start For Life programme. These provide services to a wider age range than existing Children’s Centres and will need “support from local community groups” DCC says. But community groups are being starved of council grants and Channel 4 News the other night documented the closure of Citizens Advice and other vital services in some council areas.
Local councils have to balance their budgets of course, unlike the government. But Hunt isn’t about to change the narrative on the maxed out credit card. And neither is Rachel Reeves. She’ll have her running shoes on soon too haha.
I hope they can square the circle
It will not be easy
Charities will soon be in need of charity themselves as donations, inevitably dry up. Still, it all brings us closer to the equally inevitable civil unrest…
We would all feel seriously relieved if Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves were to both ‘Jog On’!
Thank you, Richard.
And to think that Hunt was promoted as the adult in the room, voice of reason etc. by centrists after Kwarteng’s brief period at No 11.
Hunt has always been like that. His disastrous reign at Health and the junior doctor strikes he provoked have been memory holed. We are fortunate to have you explain the reality.
I forgot to conclude by echoing John Boxall on another post, “We’re f’d”.
As a long distance runner, I can say that yes, great thinking can occur during those long runs, and it can be a way for individuals to raise money for charity. But also, long training runs can make a person useless for the rest of the day. Many marathon training programs prescribe one long run per week, which can be done on a non-working day, when the runner can clear their schedule of other obligations. Doing the long training run on a workday shows contempt for the public. And while it’s admirable for individuals to “do their bit” for charity by raising money during runs, the NHS isn’t, and shouldn’t be a charity, and his post is an affront to the hard-working heroes of the NHS.
It is bizarre to take this view.
He lost his brother to cancer and has previously run the Marathon raising money for Sarcoma UK.
You could adopt the Attlee argument that no chancellor should ever raise money from voluntary donations for anything ever. A view long since confined to history.
Given the answer is not chastity but a better funded NHS I see nothing whatsoever bizarre in my view. What I fund every odd is your view that charity should be required to address these issues.
Chastity?
I wonder if it has anything to do with the Johnson programme tonight. He was one for running away from problems, wasn’t he?
Not going to watch it, by the way, before anyone asks.
This is very serious performative politics – only, bless you, Richard, you are sensibly immune to its message. This – like Cameron’s pleas to boost volunteering, remember them? – is to signal that health services, like social services – should be a matter for charity and not the state. It is the same toxicity with which the BBC has long allowed itself to be complicit with Children In Need etc,. Remember when that was started? (1980) These brutalist Victorian, Thatcherite and worse Tories are nothing if not relentless – as well as heartless and monumentally economically stupid.
Heartless & driven entirely by greed. Damaged goods, the lot of them.
The only thought I had on this nonsense from Hunt is ‘Who is Poppy’?
His Labrador…
Who should not go on marathon training
Is it just me, or do others think that narcissistic is an apt description of him (and a lot of his colleagues)?
Can anyone raise me on ‘narcissistic’, perhaps a word ending in ‘th’, albeit on the low end of the scale.