There is lots of front page news about the NHS at the moment, but let’s reflect back to 1996. I worked as a security officer in casualty, my job was a night security officer, for the management of violence and aggression in casualty. I was not employed directly by the hospital but by an agency that ran the catering, portage, cleaning, and security, for which I was paid a minimum wage, but I am sure they were paid a healthy sum in return for all our services.

Not only these services, but also the maintenance, and many more services I was unaware of were put out to contractors, now it is always easy to spend money if it is not your own, and you have nobody to answer too. Some of these contracts are literally a licence to print money, and companies can become very big and very rich at the cost of life-saving drugs, as can some of the individuals whom hand out these contracts.

It was the second evening of my first lone shift, I was nervous because having spent two weeks shadowing the other officer, who was to work the alternate two nights on two nights off to me. I had already experienced the mayhem of casualty after 10pm when it just goes into a completely different place, there is a tension that builds by the hour, and between midnight and 2am becomes a war zone.

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The reason that the tension builds is because most of the doctors have now gone home, and you just have two junior doctors, very unsure of the diagnosis they have given, and constantly on the phone to their fully trained colleagues, who have long since left. It gets even worse would you believe it, at twelve we have only one junior doctor left there, trying to go from cubicle to cubicle, spending a few moments in each trying to prioritize the most urgent patient. The doctors under stress that they themselves would advise against.

So we can now see where the waiting time starts and builds, you have parents with young children screaming in agony for two or three hours, just sitting quietly there, the parents go to the receptionist who tells them again, they are very busy and it will be at least another two hours. Now the most precious thing to those parents is that screaming child of theirs, they feel the pain of the child deep inside.

This is when the explosion happens, a normal respectful parent turns into a raving lunatic, and can you blame them, this is where the violence starts, I saw it hundreds of times.

Hospital chief executives are now on average earning £172,000, substantially more than the prime minister’s £142,500.

This was 1996. Nothing has changed.

David Hoy

UKIP Hertsmere