And in the red corner fighitng for,,,, err,,,,,

People across South Wales are at last beginning to wake up to the fact that there are substantial changes proposed in health provision across the region.   The grandly named ‘SouthWales Programme’ will see a centralisation across five centres of specialist services.  Consultant led maternity, neonatal, in patient paediatric and severe trauma services will be lost from some hospitals.

The ‘best fit’ option as described in the consultation document means the Royal Glamorgan in Llantrisant would lose these services.  The health board have become very touchy when people have described this as their preferred option, they say it is not, it is just the ‘best fit.’  Go figure!

Over the coming weeks there will be a territorial battle between supporters of the Royal Glamorgan and  the Princess of Wales hospital in Bridgend.  Not only residents will be taking to the streets, but politicians of all hues will be locking horns, not just party against party, but internal clashes too. 

In the red corner, fighting for the Princess of Wales, we have the Labour party, and in the err red corner fighting for the Royal Glamorgan we have, err, the Labour party.

Strange really as the party responsible for setting all this in motion and indeed for failing to do anything about staff shortages for years is, um, the Labour party.

The idea of devolution still has not hit home with many people in Wales.  Aided by a UK dominated media and a Labour leaning local press there is much confusion as to who is responsible.  The Labour party like to add to this confusion blaming the UK Government for absolutely everything.  Pontypridd MP Owen Smith is leading the pack in this, to the extent that it is getting really boring. 

Meanwhile Leighton Andrews and Slick Mick Antoniw have leapt forward like Batman and Robin, underpants outside their trousers, to fight for their local services.  Bit late really, especially in Slick’s case.  He couldn’t even be bothered to put in a submission to the original public engagement exercise, although is trying to claim he did.  Problem is the letter he says he wrote is on the RCT Labour campaign website and is dated a month after the consultation ended.

Along with Chris Bryant MP for the Rhondda (who knows a thing or two about underpants in public) they came dashing across our tv screens like the four horsemen of the apocalypse launching their campaign  - Labour for the Royal Glamorgan. 

Except of course ‘Labour’ weren’t, just RCT Labour.  Someone apart from me obviously cottoned on to this problem pretty quickly, because the Labour4royalglam Facebook and Twitter accounts they had set up disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

Having set up the so called campaign in a flurry of tv activity what have they done since?  Precious little it seems. Away from the glare of the tv cameras Chris Bryant is already saying he thinks it is all a done deal anyway.  So much for fighting our corner.

Slick is a little upright about the while issue, so much so that he threatened to block me from his twitter account if I didn’t stop posting in his opinion ‘inane’ comments - apparently direct political questioning is ‘trolling’ according to him.  Not something I’ll be losing any sleep about.