Thursday 25 April 2013

Bear with me!

Just a bit of fun. This is a message with no real content. I want to see how easy it is to spread!

This is a testing time for the NHS

You can't have helped noticing, well you can but bear with me, people all over the UK troubled by the way the NHS is being treated. There's been an unmandated, untested, hugely wasteful restructuring of it by the coalition government partners (even if you believe the 'reforms' are good that's unarguable), a lot of media stories leaped on and or generated by politicians talking the service down (often frighteningly misinformed either through deliberate spin or ignorance- look at the way the Leeds children's heart service was treated) and while all that's gone on their have been real term cuts in provision, denied and denied and proven, despite promises this would not happen.
The service is being talked down, beaten down and cut down, in the face of widespread public alarm.
Many people have been particularly perturbed by the silence of the mainstream media in the face of this, particularly the BBC, another British institution the government seems keen to smear, slash and silence into submission.
As a result, lots of people are using social media to articulate their views that aren't being reflected by mainstream broadcasters but in the last day or so I've seen a worrying cluster of such people saying their attempts to share their messages are being blocked by the market leader in sticking things up on a virtual noticeboard to share among friends, Facebook.
If that's true, it's very troubling indeed and we'll need to find out why. So, as a tiny test, I'm putting up my own NHS message here to share on Facebook when I've published it. If it gets through and appears on my wall it proves nothing either way, of course. If it doesn't, I'll be beyond angry and will let you know.