Twaddle of the day,- Ed Miliband on NHS efficiency.

Ed Miliband,playing to a willing audience at the Royal College of Nursing's conference in Harrogate today has described the NHS as "the most productive, efficient, value for money, brilliant asset that the country has". The inevitable applause will have given him a warm feeling.

For man who almost daily accuses the government of being "out of touch" this is a classic. A very high percentage of the NHS' non politician patients, even those who sing the praises of its clinical excellence in many fields and on many occasions, know very well that most productive and efficient are things it is not. Its staff, including the nurses, know that too even though many point the finger at burocracy and "management" rather than what they do themselves. Much of its administration is appalling. Productivity is limited by an unholy alliance of the new Gordon Brown's contracts for doctors, rigid interpretation and application of EU rules and new attitudes to work/life balance in Britain in which work is being projected as an inhibitor rather than an enhancement to life. Who suffers? The patients.

Add to inefficient working practices, poor contract negotiation, hours wasted in internal departmental debates and squabbles,low utilisation of many assets including X-ray and scanning equipment and operating theatres (few other than emergency facilities function between 5pm Friday and 9am Monday or between those hours daily) and the sound of huge amounts of money gurgling down the drain is almost audiable. The chances of making money by hiring unused resources out to the private sector are ignored or positively rejected. They ,shock,horror, might make a profit by using them and that's immoral even if they do boost NHS funds by paying for their use and reduce its waiting lists by treating people who would otherwise be clogging them up.

Once again, given the chance of telling people(voters) the facts of life and that there are things which can and must be done better if the nation is to afford them and deliver the best outcomes to the customers-yes, patients are those,- Miliband Minor has flunked it. He and his friends constantly seek instant popularity by promising all that everyone's comfort zones can be maintained whatever the financial and other realities."Crisis,-what crisis?" they murmur. Maybe that's down to them having largely created it and being in almost total denial. As ever, they peddle a dreamworld fiction. Ed makes it even worse by fatuously saying that neither this or any other government is the master of the NHS. As owner of the organisation of course it is. Failure to manage rather than simply throw money at it it largely to the benefit of some staff and the unions is irresponsible abdication and was the hallmark of the Blair/Brown years. Being good socialists,Labour championed the supply rather than the customer side. Just as in the old Soviet Russian style they are driven by the "You have no choice. You have what we give you and you had better say it's excellent" socialist mantra. That's why the NHS is in the mess it is and why it has to be sorted out as the current Minister Andrew Landsley is trying to do. He will not get it all right first time around, but the fact that he has identified £17.5 billion of potential savings blows Miliband's otherwordly claims about its efficiency and productivity right out of the water. Today's cosy cuddling of the nurses was irresponsible and a cop out. Although he is promising to reverse some reforms if he should win the 2015 election it is unlikely that he would actually do much to do so. He isn't that stupid.