Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 July 2008 12:58:38
This week sees the 60th Anniversary of the National Health Service (NHS) and it is being hyped as much as possible with news stories and government initiatives.
Locally their is a little disquiet brewing with the Assembly government's idea of renaming the Gwent Healthcare Trust as the Aneurin Bevan Healthcare Trust. You see the "father" of the NHS was born in Tredeegar and it was the Tredegar Workman's Medical Aid Society that inspired his vision.
Local workmen contributed to to the scheme weekly and it provided them with the best available health and dental care. Remember at this time many poor people were unable to afford medical treatment, as it was all private and had to be paid for by the user.
A new hospital is being built in Ebbw Vale that will bear his name but the Assembly wants to go further. It sounds like a good idea until you realise that it will cost from £200k to £1 million, depending on who's quoting the figures. At the present time the local Trust is running at a loss of around £17 million; so should we spend money on this?
I think that the fopunder would much prefer us spending money on the NHS than on memorialising his name further.
History Today:
1690 : King WilliamandMary defeat the deposed King James II at the Battle of the Boyne. Some believe that the battle is namede after the river, in reality, it is named after the Spacehoppers that the troops founght on.
1916 : The British army loses 19240 men on the first day of the Battle of the Somme - it worst ever losses in one day. We did gain a few years of front out of it though - not a great reward for all those lives.
1997 : Britain gives back the island of Hong Kong to China. We had taklenm it away because the Chinese refused to play cricket with us and they weren't having it back until they apologised.