Why I've stopped listening to the Today programme on Radio 4 (by Tom Watson)

Ed Miliband calls really early. Too early. These days I have to set my alarm for 6am in order to be fully awake before he starts chasing me. Before Ed's calls, I listen to the depressing daily news on the Today programme. Unemployment sky rocketing, the economy flat-lining, more arrests at News International. By the time Ed rings I'm usually ready to explode. The final straw came at 6.54am last Friday morning. Interviewed on Today, Clare Gerada, the Chair of the Royal College of GPs, was asked about Lansley's Health Bill. I don't know Clare Gerada, but she was authoritative, calm, thorough, and therefore devastating in her analysis. As the first coffee of the day was brewing, Clare patiently said the following words: "I think the essence is this Bill is a burden. It makes no sense. It’s incoherent to anybody other than the lawyers. It won’t deal with the big issues that we have to deal with such as the aging population and dementia. It will result in a very expensive health service and it will also result in a health service that certainly will never match the health service that we have at the moment or at least had 12 months ago." I couldn't stomach any more of this miserable truth about Cameron, Osborne and Lansley's Britain. I'm sick of starting every day like this.  I re-tuned to Smooth Radio. But re-tuning the radio isn't enough. What makes us Labour is that we don't just look away.  We've got to stop them. We've got to stop this Bill. It really will wreck the NHS in a way that hasn't been fully understood. It's a fight that patients can't afford for us to lose. Cameron is determined to force these measures through. To defeat him, we have to build a coalition against the Bill that has never been seen before. We’re taking a huge step today by pledging to protect 6,000 nurses jobs by ditching this Bill But for Andy Burnham's "Drop the Bill" campaign to succeed, we have to talk to people in our communities to get the message across. The divide is simple: David Cameron puts profits before patients. Ed Miliband will put patients first. Why not try it now? Forward this email to your friends and ask them to sign the online petition The purpose of this email is to ask you to help build the coalition to drop the Bill, but I'd be negligent if I didn't ask you, once again, to help us fund the campaign. As you read this, we’re getting ready to print thousands of leaflets to build that coalition, letting people know that we’ll drop the bill and protect 6,000 nurses' jobs. But we need funds to print as many as we can. Donate £10 or whatever you can and, if we raise enough, I'll personally hand them out in Andrew Lansley's constituency And when you talk to the friends on your email list, remind them what Clare Gerada said would happen if Lansley and Cameron get their way. If the Health Bill becomes law, the Chair of the Royal College of GPs said: "It will turn one National Health Service into thousands of different health services, all competing for the same patients, the same knee, the same brain, the same heart. What that will mean is that patients will find that their care will be fragmented. It will be on different sites, it won’t join up, it will be difficult to hand over care and it will be phenomenally expensive to keep track of all those different parts of the competing health service" Profits before patients. Same old Tories. Best, Tom PS: When it's coming at you from all sides. When the chips are down. When the newspapers are undermining what we do - I turn to Billy Bragg. Don't lose your passion comrade. Keep faith