YP Comment: Will NHS luck hold in winter?

“We will get through it but I am sure it will be very, very challenging,” he said. His defence was that this is his fifth winter in charge of the National Health Service and all previous ‘crisis talk’ from political opponents had proved to be erroneous.

However, it should not be like this as NHS England and Public Health England launch a new Stay Well This Winter campaign which urges the over-65s, and those with long-term health issues to keep active, set their thermostat to no lower than 18C and eat hot meals. Common sense advice in many respects, it neglects to mention, however, that local authorities – like Bradford – intend to scale back the gritting of roads and pavements while many vulnerable pensioners are in the unenviable position where they have to choose between heating their home or eating a nutritious meal.

What is so dispiriting, however, is that this soul-searching is not new. It happens every year, yet there is still no long-term plan – despite the best efforts of Barnsley MP Dan Jarvis – to tackle fuel poverty and challenge the ‘big six’ energy providers to spend some of their profits on insulating the homes of those senior citizens most at risk of hypothermia.

Hoping for the best, the default position of Mr Hunt as respected health organisations claim that a crisis was only averted last winter because of unseasonably warm weather, is not acceptable. With the Government 
also shutting down pharmacies which are now supposed to dispense medical advice in order to ease the pressure on GP surgeries, there needs to be a far more coherent plan for this winter before the Minister’s luck does run out and more elderly people die prematurely because he did not recognise the seriousness of their plight until it was too late.

An early election?

IT is slightly ironic that Labour will oppose Article 50, the two-year process that begins Britain’s divorce from the European Union, if Theresa May does not guarantee access to the single market at the outset.

After all, Jeremy Corbyn is being far more specific on this one policy than he was during the entire EU referendum when his deliberate low-profile and ambivalence – the Labour leader has always been lukewarm towards the European Union – so irritated the Remain campaign as working-class families voted for Brexit in unforeseen numbers.

Perhaps Mr Corbyn should have been more engaged with the referendum from the outset, including whether the June 23 vote was advisory or binding before the High Court ruled last Thursday that Parliament would have to sanction the triggering of the aforementioned Article 50.

As politicians attempt to weaken the Prime Minister’s negotiating hand before she even begins talks, there’s also the small irony of Brexit-supporting MPs opposing the High Court’s rulings when a renewal of Parliament’s sovereignty was one of their more compelling raison d’etres.

All this makes Mrs May’s position even more invidious as she begins trade talks to India, a country whose young entrepreneurs appear to be shunning the UK because they’re perplexed by the mixed messages on immigration.

Unless she can make sense of all the conflicting interests, Mr Corbyn’s move makes an early election more likely – a slight irony when many Labour MPs believe this is the best way to defeat a leader who they regard as unelectable.

Tennis titan

WHO would have thought it? The scrawny and surly teenager without the stamina to compete against the very best finally becoming the world’s number one tennis player to add to his titles in the past year which have included the Davis Cup, Wimbledon and the Olympics – the sport’s greatest prizes.

Yet this is precisely what Andy Murray has achieved after becoming the first British player in the modern era to top the singles rankings (his elder brother Jamie became the world’s best exponent of doubles earlier in the summer) following years of playing catch-up against Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, three of the all-time great Hall of Famers.

Murray, fortunate to escape with his life during the Dunblane massacre, richly deserves the plaudits being bestowed upon him. He has only become this tennis titan because of his incredible fitness, work ethic and a ferocious will to win which serves as an example to all in sport.