Though these can be often fleeting, reflections on our National Health Service are anything but brief at the moment.

The challenges it faces don’t leave the news.

Post-Covid support for our nurses and doctors continues to ride high. We agree.

It isn't enough to clap for carers only to accept frontline workers must rely on food banks because their overwork is so underpaid.

A Freedom of Information request revealed that Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, which is responsible for Fairfield General Hospital, spent more than £21m on agency doctors and nurses.

Agency staff are brought in to cover when there aren’t enough staff on shift, at a far higher cost than those who work full time for the NHS.

Recent figures show the NHS paid £3bn to agencies for temporary staff at short notice, a 20 per cent increase from the year before.

Readers will know I have promised to say what Labour will do instead, in these very pages. I won't only comment on the 13 years of this damaging Tory government.

Labour will tackle staff shortages in the NHS. We'll save taxpayers’ money being wasted on agency recruiters.

And treat patients on time again by doubling the number of medical school places to train 15,000 doctors a year.

Despite the shortages, the Conservative government cut medical school places by 3,000.

This means thousands more students who want to help are being turned away.

Labour will train 10,000 new nurses and midwives every year. And double the number of district nurses qualifying each year. We'll also provide 5,000 new health visitors.

Bury’s loved ones need treatment more than the country’s wealthiest need to escape paying tax.

So these plans will be paid for by abolishing non-dom tax status, which lets residents of the UK avoid paying taxes here.

Last month, after waiting six days after my initial attempt, I received a call from my doctor and got the meds I needed for a chest infection.

Before then I had been told I was a red category over consecutive days. It was only after I chased by phone for the third time that I got a proper response.

I tried first to log on to askmyGP. I got a message that all patients should head to A&E if in real medical need. Or wait until the following week to try again.

Speaking to medical professionals at my own surgery they tell me they're getting more than 1,000 enquiries a day - per doctors surgery. And that shutting the askmyGP service is the only way they can run to stand still.

Now the Chancellor, himself the former Health Secretary, says it's a failure in capacity in the NHS.

This must not be the last straw for the NHS but it can be the final straw for this government.

Nobody would ask the arsonist to return to put out the fire he started. And so this year, and well beyond the new year, I am determined that more of us agree that the party that created the NHS are the only ones who can save it. Again.

James Frith is the Labour candidate for the next general election. He served as MP for Bury North between 2017-19 and hopes to again. He Tweets @JamesFrith and can be contacted via JamesFrithforBuryNorth.com