{"id":510486,"date":"2025-10-18T22:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T22:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/510486\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T22:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T22:43:10","slug":"youre-wrong-jeremy-we-need-the-nhs-and-your-own-experience-reveals-express-comment-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/510486\/","title":{"rendered":"You’re wrong Jeremy, we need the NHS \u2013 and your own experience reveals | Express Comment | Comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was the US writer Irving Kristol who famously said a neo-conservative was a liberal who had been mugged by reality. We could, by the same measure, say an NHS basher is a newspaper columnist, politician or pundit who\u2019s never had need of urgent medical treatment. Step forward, Jeremy Clarkson<\/a>. Last week the owner of Diddly Squat Farm took the standard neo-liberal line in his newspaper column by lambasting the NHS as a \u201ccreaking monster\u201d that needed a complete rethink.<\/p>\n

The NHS was a \u201cbottomless abyss\u201d sucking up all our money. It was an out-of-date 1940s relic that was past its sell-by date. And it must be put out of its misery.<\/p>\n

Just a few hours after the piece appeared, quite ironically, our Jezza needed to go to hospital \u201cin something of a hurry.\u201d He needed urgent medical treatment, but guess what \u2013 his private health provider could only offer him treatment two hours away in London. So, Jeremy had to use the NHS, in nearby Oxford. And to his great surprise, he found it to be exemplary. He \u201cgenuinely couldn\u2019t find anything to moan about at all\u201d. He admitted:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe doctors, the nurses and everyone I met were kind. It was all spotless. Lunch was kids\u2019 food brilliant, and they even made me better \u2013 for which I shall be eternally grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clarkson\u2019s actual experiences of the NHS appears was at sharp variance with the ideological, anti-NHS line he was spouting earlier. Yet, despite the care he received, and acknowledging that the NHS is \u201can excellent organisation and the frontline staff are superb\u201d, he still thinks our health service needs major change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn its current state, we as a nation can\u2019t afford it,\u201d he opines. Surely though his experiences show we can\u2019t afford NOT to have an NHS. The problem with private health care, as the Clarkson case demonstrates, is that it very often comes up short when you most need it.<\/p>\n

I remember interviewing the late, great Dad\u2019s Army creator Jimmy Perry on the occasion of his 90th birthday back in 2013. Jimmy told me he\u2019d had private medical insurance for years, but after he\u2019d got to a certain age, it was \u201cno bloody good\u201d. They weren\u2019t interested. So, he had to rely on the NHS \u2013 and was extremely thankful it was there for him.<\/p>\n

Likewise, my dear mother. Her hip was giving her tremendous pain as she approached 90, and she was offered a hip replacement. The NHS gave her the option of a number of hospitals for the operation, including a private one where the waiting lists were lower.<\/p>\n

But the private hospital turned Mum down \u2013 clearly believing she was too old and the risks too great. So, Mum had her hip replaced at an NHS centre and is still alive and well today in her 98th year.<\/p>\n

As a carer to my elderly parents, I have had numerous emergency ambulance dashes over the past ten years and some for myself too. My dear father, who sadly died last year aged 97, collapsed with double pneumonia in the summer of 2022. Like Clarkson, the care he received from the Oxford NHS was excellent. By the end of his first week in hospital, it was me who was in the bed ill with flu, and dad who was standing over me with a smile on his face saying: \u201cCome on, let\u2019s get cracking and make the beds!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s oh-so-easy to pen ferocious ideological attacks on the \u201cout-of-date\u201d NHS, and call for its abolition or radical reform when you have never had need of it and believe your private health insurance is all you\u2019ll ever require. But don\u2019t be so sure that you won\u2019t need the NHS one day \u2013 and when you do, you\u2019ll be glad your \u2018opinion\u2019 pieces weren\u2019t acted upon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was the US writer Irving Kristol who famously said a neo-conservative was a liberal who had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4316],"tags":[105,4348,1867,439,211,166971,16,15,166972],"class_list":{"0":"post-510486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-hospital","11":"tag-jeremy-clarkson","12":"tag-nhs","13":"tag-private-health-care","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-urgent-medical-treatment"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115397591227241188","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}