Hazel Blears: Action Woman, energy like the early Margaret Thatcher?

Iain Dale did once seem to be quite a fan of Hazel Blears MP, recently compared as an 'action woman' to Baroness Thatcher. But Iain has alas been falling for all the spite and hype. Local people, their elected representatives, and government and Trust officials will decide in the end what should happen or not to maternity services at Hope Hospital. But meanwhile there's more to this story.

Early in 1997 Dr Greatorex was arguing, including providing a soundbite for BBC Panorama (quoted below) for concentration of services at one hospital at the expense of another.

But now, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, he is claiming that Hazel Blears MP did not act in 1998 on the merits of the case as they appeared to her. But many local people in both Salford and Trafford and my guess - though Dr G has said otherwise in a BBC Radio 5 interview yesterday - Beverley Hughes MP joined Hazel Blears in having the timerity to sincerely support a different proposal than Dr Greatorex's.

I honestly don't think that Beverley or Hazel had an inkling that saving local services then would lead to or be connected with any threat to local services now, nine years later.
Dr Greatorex is I believe the Dr IF Greatorex some of whose contributions to medicine are listed here and here including a much-referenced paper on the sex lives of students at the end of the nineteen eighties.

But just now he is coming across as a bit of a green-inker rather than the clear thinker he once was.


In 1997 he clearly wanted to remove a service from Trafford and concentrate it elsewhere to improve and preserve it. He is now opposed to a rather similar process. Hazel is on the same side as Ian on this one. Why can he not accept that instead of making unscientific and as far as I can see unsupported assertions of alleged conspiracies with Frank Dobson MP (who was and is generally against most closures) and of now trying to influence a Labour selection. By, er, doing what most diligent constituency MPs of any party would do.

There seems to be a kind of twisted reverse-NIMBY-ism going on - IMBY-OIB - In My Back Yard Or I Bleat, now coupled by Greatorex renouncing Blears for being OTSS (On The Same Side).

Perhaps I'm wrong but I'm beginning to think that Dr G was a better citizen when he was in a politically restricted post and couldn't so easily foam at the mouth in the media. The Manchester Evening News needless to say are chronically understaffed and can be gulls when it comes to hospital stories. They were unwittingly pulled into John Leech's cancer hoax in 2005 but almost immediately and with regular statements to that effect they have now thought better of that.

OOPS: after 'was' in line 2 of pull out quote insert 'saying was'.