Jobs for the Boys
Now I'm not sure what this new body will pay its members although I would be happy to bet my house on them being very well rewarded, as if Sir David needs the money.
According to press reports Sir David's wants to join the new press regulator so that he can defend the NHS against newspapers who 'hate' the service which sounds completely crazy to me because it's often been the media who expose wrongdoing and poor standards of care in the NHS - which is when highly paid managers and politicians sit up and take notice.
The campaigner, Julie Bailey, who set up the 'Cure The NHS group' at Mid Staffordshire Hospital where up to 1200 patients died unnecessarily, was less than enthusiastic about the news and said:
"This is exactly the job he should not be going for – so he can silence newspapers, silence whistleblowers and complainants."
"If it had not been for newspapers and journalists exposing him, he would have continued to live in the long grass, reaping harm on the workforce and patients."
"We want the press to be able to speak out about behaviour like this, performed while;e he has been in office. He should have nothing to do with the public and the public sector again."
In the past Sir David has been accused of presiding over a Stalinist culture the NHS with staff afraid to speak out about poor care. And he was also head of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority (i.e. the body with oversight of Mid Staffordshire Hospital) between 2005 and 2006, yet failed to pick up on the horrific standards of care which let patins and their families down.
Political Honours
I had a chuckle to myself when I found out that the head of the NHS in England, Sir David Nicholson, was once a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Once upon a time I found it quite incredible that there so many people with supposedly 'left-wing', progressive politics - were so desperate to accept a political 'honour' from the great and good - to become honorary members of the British establishment .
I suppose I shouldn't really have been surprised because there is a long tradition of people in the labour movement turning their back on principle - before heading off to Buckingham Palace to accept a bauble from Her Majesty.
Makes you wonder how progressive and 'left-wing' these folks really were in the first place - I suppose.
And in Sir David's case I think we have the answer - but just look at the company he's in - including the former 'Sir' Fred Goodwin, the one time boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Top Hats and Boiler Suits (August 25th 2009)
Another great story to appear in the press recently concerns William McIlvanney - one of Scotland's most celebrated and talented writers.
McIlvanney revealed that he turned down an OBE in the Queen’s honours list – and went on to compare the honour to "putting a top hat on a man in a boiler suit".
William McIlvanney explained that his decision was private - unlike that of artist and writer John Byrne - the inspiration behind the smash hit series Tutti Frutti - and all the madness involving The Majestics, Eddie Clockerty and Miss Toner.
But John Byrne was making a serious point - when he rejected an MBE for services to art and literature recently - to signify his "absolute disgust" at the Iraq war.
William McIlvanney told the Scotland on Sunday that had written to Downing Street to say he would not be accepting the OBE for "purely personal" reasons.
"It's something that I tried on in my mind, and I found it didn't fit," he explained. "The sleeves were too long, and it just wasn't part of me.”
“It felt like trying to put a top hat on a man in a boiler suit.”
"The idea of rejecting an honour isn't something I've done with any anger, or to demean other people. There are a lot of people who carry out unsung work. I'm only too happy for them to be recognised."
McIlvanney said: "There have been a lot of honours given for dubious reasons in the past, like providing your wife as the king's bed warmer. The system is riddled with ludicrous elements."
But not everyone takes such a noble stand - there are lots of trade unionists only too glad to accept such honours - as a quick Google search shows:
• Bernard McGill (MBE) – from the north east regional TUC
• Felicity Mendelson (MBE) – from Unison (north east)
• Anne Middleton (MBE) - former deputy regional secretary Unison (Scotland)
• Terri Miller (MBE) – from Unite (south east)
• Matt Smith (OBE) – current regional secretary Unison (Scotland)
• Yvonne Strachan (OBE) - former regional organiser TGWU (Scotland) – now Unite
And that’s the eternal battle within the trade union movement – how to challenge the establishment – while resisting the temptation to become part of the establishment.
Some people do it better than others - you pays your money and takes your choice.
Michael McGahey – a Scottish miner and former leader of the NUM – would never have crossed the road for an MBE or OBE.
So hats off to Mick McGahey, William McIlvanney and John Byrne - so long as it's not Top Hats, of course.
Hospital Care (21 March 2014)
The Welsh Labour Mo Ann Clywd has become embroiled in a row with the NHS in Wales following the undignified death of her late husband in a Cardiff hospital.
For some reason Ann Clwyd seems to have been targeted by the NHS establishment and has also been criticised by the Labour First Minister in Wales, Carwyn Jones.
No doubt the motivation behind releasing personal details about the death of Ann Clwyd's will become clear, because she is a fighter if nothing else and won't take that lying down.
But if you ask me the explanation for the First Minister's criticism appear pretty obvious, that the MP stood and and spoke out instead of placing the NHS on some kind of ridiculous pedestal.
And for taking that brave, non-political stance Ann Clwyd is now being victimised and punished - just like the Save the NHS campaigner in Mid-Staffordshire, Julie Bailey.
Ann Clwyd’s husband died at the University Hospital of Wales
By Oliver Moody
A Labour MP has called for an investigation into the Cardiff hospital where her husband was left to die “like a battery hen” as it faces new allegations of neglect and malpractice.
Ann Clwyd, who warned this week of a crisis in the Welsh NHS, said that the Principality risked its own version of the Mid Staffordshire scandal.
The MP for the Cynon Valley also called for the resignation of the local health board’s chief executive after his organisation agreed to release personal information about her husband’s death to a Welsh Assembly Member.
She said that she was “outraged that the rights to privacy of my late husband and myself have been violated” after the board said it would issue documents from the hospital’s unfinished investigation into the death under Freedom of Information laws.
“In my opinion, this information has been released for spiteful and political reasons, because I have been critical of both UHW [the University Hospital of Wales] and the NHS in Wales,” she said.
“Personal information such as this is exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. I believe that the only motive can be to cause me hurt. This a shameful day for UHW and for NHS Wales, and I am truly dismayed by what has happened.”
Mrs Clwyd’s criticisms of the hospital followed claims by families of patients who died there that their relatives had been ignored and “stripped of dignity” by nurses on its wards.
More than a dozen families spoke out against the UHW and other hospitals near by in a meeting organised by the Community Health Councils of Wales last Friday. Some broke down and wept as they described how they had lost children, parents and husbands after alleged poor care by nurses.
Jackie Parsons said that her aunt, Margaret Holloway, who died last month at 73, had been left in an ambulance for two hours outside the hospital. Staff then took two weeks to release her body for burial after losing the paperwork, Ms Parsons claimed.
Pat Connies-Laing said that doctors at the hospital had failed to realise that an operation had left her husband with internal bleeding for 23 days last year.
Walter Connies-Laing, 81, who was admitted with a suspected broken shoulder, allegedly was given eight pints of blood before staff thought to check where the haemorrhage was and identified a nick in an artery. His widow said that he had left the hospital with five open sores and died six weeks later of pneumonia “in his weakened condition”. Martyn Dew, an advocate for the Community Health Councils of Wales, described the claims as “extremely distressing”.
Mrs Clwyd called for an investigation into the families’ allegations and warned that Wales risked its own version of England’s Mid Staffordshire scandal if it did not pay attention to death rates and patients’ concerns.
She was singled out for criticism by Carwyn Jones, the First Minister of the Labour government in Wales, who told the Assembly that she had produced “nothing but anonymous comments that are unattributable” in her work on the Welsh NHS.
Mrs Clwyd said: “People can argue about the way you count mortality statistics, but there was a smoke signal in the case of Mid Staffordshire, a smoke signal that was ignored for too long before it became a fire. I don’t want to see the same thing happening in Wales.”
The allegations against the UHW follow complaints about the quality of care at another South Wales hospital. Three nurses from the Princess of Wales Hospital, in Bridgend, have been arrested and bailed as part of a police investigation into the alleged falsification of patient records and, separately, several families of patients who died at the hospital are understood to be considering legal action.
A spokesman for the Cardiff and Vale Health Board, which oversees the UHW, said the board was “always sorry to hear of any patient or family who feel they have experienced poor care”. He added: “We would like to apologise to them and stress that we are committed to fully investigating any concerns.”
Here's an article from the Observer that made me want to cry.
A Labour MP has called for an investigation into the Cardiff hospital where her husband was left to die “like a battery hen” as it faces new allegations of neglect and malpractice.
Ann Clwyd, who warned this week of a crisis in the Welsh NHS, said that the Principality risked its own version of the Mid Staffordshire scandal.
The MP for the Cynon Valley also called for the resignation of the local health board’s chief executive after his organisation agreed to release personal information about her husband’s death to a Welsh Assembly Member.
She said that she was “outraged that the rights to privacy of my late husband and myself have been violated” after the board said it would issue documents from the hospital’s unfinished investigation into the death under Freedom of Information laws.
“In my opinion, this information has been released for spiteful and political reasons, because I have been critical of both UHW [the University Hospital of Wales] and the NHS in Wales,” she said.
“Personal information such as this is exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. I believe that the only motive can be to cause me hurt. This a shameful day for UHW and for NHS Wales, and I am truly dismayed by what has happened.”
Mrs Clwyd’s criticisms of the hospital followed claims by families of patients who died there that their relatives had been ignored and “stripped of dignity” by nurses on its wards.
More than a dozen families spoke out against the UHW and other hospitals near by in a meeting organised by the Community Health Councils of Wales last Friday. Some broke down and wept as they described how they had lost children, parents and husbands after alleged poor care by nurses.
Jackie Parsons said that her aunt, Margaret Holloway, who died last month at 73, had been left in an ambulance for two hours outside the hospital. Staff then took two weeks to release her body for burial after losing the paperwork, Ms Parsons claimed.
Pat Connies-Laing said that doctors at the hospital had failed to realise that an operation had left her husband with internal bleeding for 23 days last year.
Walter Connies-Laing, 81, who was admitted with a suspected broken shoulder, allegedly was given eight pints of blood before staff thought to check where the haemorrhage was and identified a nick in an artery. His widow said that he had left the hospital with five open sores and died six weeks later of pneumonia “in his weakened condition”. Martyn Dew, an advocate for the Community Health Councils of Wales, described the claims as “extremely distressing”.
Mrs Clwyd called for an investigation into the families’ allegations and warned that Wales risked its own version of England’s Mid Staffordshire scandal if it did not pay attention to death rates and patients’ concerns.
She was singled out for criticism by Carwyn Jones, the First Minister of the Labour government in Wales, who told the Assembly that she had produced “nothing but anonymous comments that are unattributable” in her work on the Welsh NHS.
Mrs Clwyd said: “People can argue about the way you count mortality statistics, but there was a smoke signal in the case of Mid Staffordshire, a smoke signal that was ignored for too long before it became a fire. I don’t want to see the same thing happening in Wales.”
The allegations against the UHW follow complaints about the quality of care at another South Wales hospital. Three nurses from the Princess of Wales Hospital, in Bridgend, have been arrested and bailed as part of a police investigation into the alleged falsification of patient records and, separately, several families of patients who died at the hospital are understood to be considering legal action.
A spokesman for the Cardiff and Vale Health Board, which oversees the UHW, said the board was “always sorry to hear of any patient or family who feel they have experienced poor care”. He added: “We would like to apologise to them and stress that we are committed to fully investigating any concerns.”
Shooting the Messenger (29 October 2013)
Because it's a terrible tale of someone who stood up for her local community, but was then bullied and effectively victimised - for blowing the whistle and exposing hundreds of unnecessary deaths and poor standards of care at her local NHS hospital.
Now I've heard stories about Julie Bailey's treatment before now, but this is the first time I seen anything in print - and it makes me feel deeply ashamed that someone who stood up neglected NHS patients and their families - can become so isolated in her own community.
What kind of people would have a motive for making her life so miserable and forcing Julie Bailey from her own home?
Looney, misguided 'supporters' of the NHS - in the same way that violent thugs attach themselves to football clubs and masquerade as fans and supporters.
To my mind, it has to be individuals of a certain political persuasion who would say, I imagine, that Julie Bailey should not have washed such dirty linen in public - that she was really attacking the NHS and its various vested interests - by highlighting the poor standards of care at Mid Staffs NHS Trust.
But just what have the community leaders been doing while this hate campaign been going on - leading NHS figures, political leaders, churches, trade unions, the police and so on?
Nothing it appears - which is a truly shameful state of affairs.
Mid Staffs NHS whistleblower: They destroyed flowers on my mother's grave
Woman who exposed scandal of inhumane treatment at hospital was forced to leave home after campaign of abuse
By Daniel Boffey
Julie Bailey at the caravan park where she lives after leaving her home. Photograph: Andrew Fox for the Observer
The whistleblower who exposed the horrific neglect of patients at Stafford hospital has revealed the full scale of the hate campaign that forced her out of her home town to live in a caravan.
In her first significant interview since closing her cafe business and moving out of Stafford, Julie Bailey speaks candidly about the impact of the abuse, which included the desecration of her mother's grave.
Talking to the Observer New Review, Bailey says that she is just content to be out of danger, living 50 miles from the town that was her home.
"It's a relief to be able to go out on my own again," she says.
Bailey's mother, Bella, died after appalling neglect at Stafford hospital in November 2007. Haunted by the memories of her mother's final weeks at the hands of uncaring staff and an unravelling system, she launched the group Cure the NHS, campaigning for better NHS care. The campaign forced an official inquiry, and her criticisms of Stafford hospital – where as many as 1,200 patients may have died through neglect – were fully borne out by Sir Robert Francis QC. The conclusions helped to force a wider review by the NHS medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, into the service.
But in the interview with the Observer, Bailey talks about how her life has unravelled as some parts of the community have lashed out in anger after local NHS departments have been condemned to close.
A mother of two who lives alone, Bailey says she decided to move when her mother's grave was vandalised. "I would go up each Sunday to put fresh flowers out, and when I went up on a Tuesday to water them the flowers would be out and the vase smashed and the pieces stamped into the earth so I would have to dig them out," she says. She then received a thank-you card, asking: "Isn't it about time you started looking after your Mum's grave? Hahaha …" Bailey says: "I don't really know how you deal with that."
However, she expresses her hopes for the future and her determination that every hospital will have a dedicated Cure the NHS group to watch over standards. Bailey also reveals that she is seeking charitable status for the organisation so that she can draw a wage, commit her working life to the cause, and build a network of watchdogs. "I hope I can just coach them a bit in what I know and let them get on with it. Mortality rates are a starting point. But more importantly, we would like to see anonymous complaints in the public arena, along with details of serious untoward incidents. Match that with mortality rates and staffing levels and you begin to see a picture …"
Bailey, who sold her cafe for just £14,000 in the summer after she decided to escape the hate campaigners, adds: "I feel full of optimism that we have opened that door and people now feel a bit safer in speaking out. We don't want to destroy the NHS, far from it. Six, seven years ago I was so proud of the NHS, mum was, too. We'd always had fantastic care. What other country did what we did? But I do think we have lost our way.
"I believe government has to be honest and say we just can't afford what we are trying to do. We put on bionic arms and all sorts. Miraculous things. But we also have people lying in beds with terrible pressure sores and dying of dehydration…"
Woman who exposed scandal of inhumane treatment at hospital was forced to leave home after campaign of abuse
By Daniel Boffey
Julie Bailey at the caravan park where she lives after leaving her home. Photograph: Andrew Fox for the Observer
The whistleblower who exposed the horrific neglect of patients at Stafford hospital has revealed the full scale of the hate campaign that forced her out of her home town to live in a caravan.
In her first significant interview since closing her cafe business and moving out of Stafford, Julie Bailey speaks candidly about the impact of the abuse, which included the desecration of her mother's grave.
Talking to the Observer New Review, Bailey says that she is just content to be out of danger, living 50 miles from the town that was her home.
"It's a relief to be able to go out on my own again," she says.
Bailey's mother, Bella, died after appalling neglect at Stafford hospital in November 2007. Haunted by the memories of her mother's final weeks at the hands of uncaring staff and an unravelling system, she launched the group Cure the NHS, campaigning for better NHS care. The campaign forced an official inquiry, and her criticisms of Stafford hospital – where as many as 1,200 patients may have died through neglect – were fully borne out by Sir Robert Francis QC. The conclusions helped to force a wider review by the NHS medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, into the service.
But in the interview with the Observer, Bailey talks about how her life has unravelled as some parts of the community have lashed out in anger after local NHS departments have been condemned to close.
A mother of two who lives alone, Bailey says she decided to move when her mother's grave was vandalised. "I would go up each Sunday to put fresh flowers out, and when I went up on a Tuesday to water them the flowers would be out and the vase smashed and the pieces stamped into the earth so I would have to dig them out," she says. She then received a thank-you card, asking: "Isn't it about time you started looking after your Mum's grave? Hahaha …" Bailey says: "I don't really know how you deal with that."
However, she expresses her hopes for the future and her determination that every hospital will have a dedicated Cure the NHS group to watch over standards. Bailey also reveals that she is seeking charitable status for the organisation so that she can draw a wage, commit her working life to the cause, and build a network of watchdogs. "I hope I can just coach them a bit in what I know and let them get on with it. Mortality rates are a starting point. But more importantly, we would like to see anonymous complaints in the public arena, along with details of serious untoward incidents. Match that with mortality rates and staffing levels and you begin to see a picture …"
Bailey, who sold her cafe for just £14,000 in the summer after she decided to escape the hate campaigners, adds: "I feel full of optimism that we have opened that door and people now feel a bit safer in speaking out. We don't want to destroy the NHS, far from it. Six, seven years ago I was so proud of the NHS, mum was, too. We'd always had fantastic care. What other country did what we did? But I do think we have lost our way.
"I believe government has to be honest and say we just can't afford what we are trying to do. We put on bionic arms and all sorts. Miraculous things. But we also have people lying in beds with terrible pressure sores and dying of dehydration…"
