Mid Staffs masscre and baby deaths: a sinister agenda?

In the mid-1990s my friend worked in a nursing-home in Grantham and was asked to write a report about failings on a shift where a patient was scalded by hot tea. He declined as he hadn’t been on that shift, but receiving an offer he couldn’t refuse wrote about systemic failings that had led to somebody unsuitable being in charge of the shift. His boss replied the report was unacceptable, and to rewrite it. He refused. It later transpired the report had been rewritten with his name appended.

So I can sympathise with the officials of the Care Quality Commission who found their reports about failings in the discredited (but still functioning) clinical standards inspector suppressed.

It’s been rotten from the start: its first chair, Cynthia Bower (right), was formerly CEO of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority and had studiously looked away from the ongoing corporate massacre of 1200 people at Mid Staffs Hospital, as well as being in charge when babies were dying unnecessarily in Cumbria. That’s the sort of negligence that can only be cultivated over the course of years of disorder and misrule.

I say so advisedly: many people comment on the caring nature of almost every ground-level doctor and nurse in the NHS, without reflecting that there are nasty pieces of stuff in all walks of life – where are the NHS’s?

The answer is they’ve been promoted. The NHS always had a habit of kicking troublemakers with loud voices upstairs, but the adoption of a target-and-tickbox culture has sucked the buggers into management in previously unimaginable numbers. It’s since been shown that targets cultures attract psychopaths, who excel at both producing ticks in boxes and erasing the chaos created.

There seems to be another dimension to this crisis, though. Look through your history books – older people and babies are the traditional prey of eugenicists. It’s where they always start. This perhaps explains the untouchability of the guilty parties.

Charles Bond
300 words

Resources

Inundated with complaints from all over the UK - Cure the NHS, Feburary 17, 2013; scroll down to third comment, which refers to "Disc 1", alleging the complicity of "public officials in the NHS, Home Office [and] chief constables" in the NHS cover-up

Cynthia Bower omitted from report into Cumbrian hospital baby deaths - Guardian, 19 June 2013

NHS Watchdog accused of hospital 'cover-up' still not fit for purpose, chairman admits - Telegraph, 18 June 2013

Name the NHS staff responsible for hospital cover-up, minister says - Telegraph, 19 June 2013

And still the NHS cover-up goes on - Telegraph, 19 June 2013

Baby Joshua: the death that led to police enquiry

Targets and psychopaths - 300 words, 8 January 2013

Where are they now? - Tales from a Draughty Old Fen, March 18 2009

Patients subjected to abysmal workhouse conditions - Telegraph, 18 March 2009