I was disappointed to see that the Herald was willing to publish a column from Nus Ghani last week that at best could only be described as political propaganda. Ms Ghani MP is either so naive that she has been completely hoodwinked by the Tories into thinking they really care about funding our NHS properly or, she is willing to deceive her own constituents? Since the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 our NHS has bit by bit been sold off to private enterprise. We no longer have a single unitary state-owned healthcare service just a jumble of private corporations and state providers hiding behind that blue logo we know so well. Peel back that logo and our NHS is unrecognisable. Devastating cuts have been made, the service is burdened with vastly more bureaucracy, staff are overworked and underpaid, we have lost core services from our own hospital and are likely to lose more and all this has made the service increasingly inefficient. We need to stop thinking that we can’t afford the NHS and recognise that we can’t afford to not have the NHS. Since 2012 when Stephen Lloyd along with many others voted for the HSCA vast amounts of the money going into the NHS is being wasted. We must stop blaming the elderly population or immigrants to the UK for they are only excuses the Tories give to cover their own failures. We must all fight for a return to the principles on which the NHS was founded that have been proven to be the most efficient means of providing healthcare for all. The Long Term Plan for our NHS that Ms Ghani is so proud of proposes moving NHS money around the service to appear as if there is new money available. There isn’t, but all this talk about new money sweetens the true nature of the plan that is really about supporting far more privatisation.