By Rab Bruce’s Spider

The media, and the BBC in particular, are always clever in their choice of words and, over the past few days, we have seen yet another example of the sort of subtle propaganda they regularly push our way.

Following on from their continued use of the word, "migrants" to describe refugees, the description of Jeremy Corbyn as a Left Wing politician while his opponents are described as "moderates", and the constant linking of the words "Muslim" and "Terrorist", there’s another one to watch out for.

The NHS in England has been running a deficit. The media reports insist this is due to overspending, although they are not clear on what, precisely, the money has been overspent on. Is it inflated salaries for NHS staff? Most members of the public would say they are worth every penny they earn. Is it the cost of treating patients? Most patients would welcome the money spent on treating them and if it is the cost of drugs that is the problem, perhaps some investigation of drug Company practices would be more helpful than blaming the NHS. Is it a top-heavy management system? Possibly, although there have been so many cuts that must surely be less of an issue than it once was.

There is no doubt that an exercise in finger-pointing will always find a target in an organisation as large as the NHS and perhaps there have been some instances where money could be saved but the reality is that the Government are deliberately starving the English NHS of money in an attempt to demonstrate that it needs to be privatised along the lines of the US model. The truth is that it is underfunding, not overspending that has caused the deficit. Yet listen out for "underfunding" in any news report and you’ll almost certainly be disappointed.