DO you sometimes wonder what is going on in this country’s health and care services?

Barely a day goes by, or so it seems, without some fresh scandal crashing or a damning report being released on some aspect of the £100 billion a year NHS or a local authority. Today, for example we report on the worryingly high number of complaints being lodged over adult social care with the local councils responsible for that provision, Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset. Now the Care Quality Commission says that nationally, almost a third of care homes are failing on basic standards of care.

Now that is a scandal. Successive governments, including this one, have failed to come up with a viable plan for a care system that is facing a demographic timebomb and that cannot make ends meet. Fights over our Euro rebate and green energy are all very well. But politicians need to get their priorities right.