Jeremy Hunt accused of turning NHS deaths into \’political capital\’
Medical leaders criticise stance of political briefings as Keogh report finds \’mediocrity\’ rather than disaster in hospitals
What is it that you don\’t understand about being part of a State service?
When politicians decide your budget, when politicians decide your pay levels, when politicians decide how you do things, then everything that you do will become a political football.
There is simply no way that a politically determined organisation will not become a political football.
Another way of putting this is that you don\’t get to have the taxpayers\’ money without being repeatedly felched by the politicians.
Particularly amusing about this accusation is that the left never shut up about the NHS being the ‘envy of the world’ and how it’s only ‘safe in their hands’, ‘evil tories’ blah blah blah.
Point out that there’s nothing to be envious about and it isn’t safe in their hands and they don’t want to talk.
As for The Guardian, if more evidence were needed that it is written by scumbags for scumbags, today, the day after the Keogh report, the only mention of it on their front page (website) is a story buried well below the virtual fold headlined, “Hunt accused over NHS deaths”. Shameless. Astonishing.
13,000 deaths from ‘mediocrity’? Thank God he didn’t find anything worse.
And by what standard does he judge ‘mediocrity’ anyway?
Jeremy Hunt is taking a rather anti-democratic stance here, isn’t he?
Keogh’s report was a soft soap, look-after-his-chums report. No recommendations, just “ambitions”. Just keep letting people die, collect your pensions on the way out.
For sheer bloody evil, go read Richard Murphy.
Nobody died needlessly actually, well maybe one person. Those that did die were simply statistical variations.
So the grieving families should stop demanding answers immediately.
These same people are simultaneously calling for more government control over lots of other things too – water, electricity, railways, banks etc. etc etc.
When they have it, they don’t like it, but they want still more of it.
Most odd.
“When they have it, they don’t like it, but they want still more of it.”
I don’t know: you can probably find people that take a grim satisfaction in having everyone be equally badly served, who long for the days of long delays to get a GPO telephone, a small selection of approved cookers in a tiny showroom, ration books, expensive electricity (no, wait …).
CHF,
The hair-shirters think like that, but most leftists I know genuinely think goods and services would be more plentiful, varied and cheaper, if the state controlled more.
Weird, I know.
I’ve said it before but it bares repeating–look at TU H&S publications–every time some poor sod dies on a building site(and, in fairness, SOME of those will be negligence rather than bad luck) they are screaming for the Directors to be jailed for corporate manslaughter. Now with 13000 dead the silence is broken only by the slight scrape of tumbleweed as it blows by. Hypocritical scum.
“Companies make business decisions.
Politicians make political decisions.
Politicians running businesses make political decisions.” – GC
Well, of course. If the NHS was killing 1000s of their own (ideally unionised) workers, then the hounds of doom would be baying for blood. As they are merely disposing of unsatisfactory product, it is merely an inefficient QA operation.
@ Surreptitious Evil (and others): The idea that the NHS is “killing people” does not stand up to analysis.
As Sir Bruce Keogh’s (otherwise highly critical) report was at some pains to point out, it would be be “clinically meaningless and academically reckless” to use statistical measures of death rates to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths.
“As Sir Bruce Keogh’s (otherwise highly critical) report was at some pains to point out, it would be be “clinically meaningless and academically reckless” to use statistical measures of death rates to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths.”
It may be indeed be meaningless to use statistics to precisely quantify the number of avoidable deaths, but the fact still remains that avoidable deaths are taking place. And one suspects that if it were private businesses that had widely differing death rates the very same statistics would be shouted from the rooftops by people like Sir Bruce Keogh demanding criminal sanctions against those involved. If one airline was having a considerable higher number of accidents than the industry norm, would that be an ‘acceptable statistical variation’?
“… it would be be “clinically meaningless and academically reckless” to use statistical measures of death rates to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths.”
That’s the anti-smoking lobby buggered for a start. And with it every other organisation telling us this that or the other reduces life expectancy. Good on.We can go back to not being required to use seat belts or crash helmets on bikes as well. There’s no reliable statistical evidence they’re needed.
Any chance of this Keogh guy being bumped up to a lord? I’d be in favour of him going straight to sainthood but’ll have to leave that to the Catholics amongst you.
And where, oh where, did I attempt to quantify an actual number of avoidable deaths? The only number I quoted was a) non-specific (thousands) and b) a hypothetical based on the NHS machine-gunning its own workers (or getting them infected with MRSA or otherwise just bumping them off – the tea in many hospitals is a good start for 10.)
I appreciate that visceral over-reaction is a lot more fun than reading and trying to understand what people are saying but, please, make an effort. Or just change your name to ‘Arnald’. We have several of those already.
The NHS is the deadliest non-military organization in the world, and, when it doesn’t kill you, it delivers medical care that is simply awful.
It cannot be any other way – think of your favourite hotel or restaurant, and then imagine what would happen if the local council ran it.
That’s the NHS.