David Craig, on February 7th, 2013When writing my blog, I try to include new information (often in the form of a graph or other illustration) that people may not already know. This is because I want my blog to be informative rather than just being a wild uncontrolled rant. But sometimes something happens which is so awful that all one can do is hurl frustrated abuse at the person (or people) responsible.
Last night I saw a (IMHO) truly repulsive human being being interviewed. This was Sir David Nicholson – head of the NHS. Sir David was chief executive of Shropshire and Staffordshire Strategic Health Authority, with oversight of Mid Staffordshire hospital, for a nine-month period in 2005-06 when the first instances of mistreatment and neglect are believed to have taken place. http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-02-06/nhs-chief-did-not-see-abuse-on-visits-to-stafford-hospital/
Around 1,200 people died unnecessarily at the Mid Staffordshire hospital for which Sir David was responsible. But nobody has been punished. In fact, several of those responsible, like Sir David, were promoted. And now a new investigation is expected to reveal that at least 5,000 patients died unnecessarily at four or five other poorly-performing hospitals. In his interview Sir David denied any responsibility for anything and only seemed to be interested in preserving his own lousy job and his own generous pension – sod all the people dying in his hospitals.
Actually, the situation in the NHS is much worse than most people imagine. There was an internal NHS report written in 2006 or 2007 – I have a copy of part of this report. This report found that every year around 34,000 people die unnecessarily in NHS hospitals and another 25,000 are unnecessarily permanently disabled. This report is no lonnger available, for obvious reasons.
My book WHO CARES? describes just one of these tragedies and the lengths the hospital involved went to in order to cover up what really happened.
So NHS bosses have known for years (and covered up) that there have been widespread failures in basic care across the NHS. But they did nothing. They were too busy enjoying their hugely-inflated salaries and all the privileges of power to worry about thousand upon thousand of patients dying unnecessarily or being unnecessarily disabled.
Sir David – you are (IMHO) a lying, self-serving, bullying, greedy, worthless slug. You should be fired. You should be stripped of your knighthood. You should lose your generous pension and you should be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. But of course in the Age of Incompetence you’ll keep your lousy job, your huge salary, your undeserved knighthood and your massive pension. I feel sick. But I’m not so sick that I would go to one of Sir David’s filthy Third World hospitals.
Category: 
