Remember that fatuous lie back in 1997 – “24 hours to save the NHS“:

On the eve of the 1997 election, Tony Blair famously told voters they had 24 hours to save the NHS.

So did the patient survive?

People really believed that phrase. Labour had banged on about the NHS for so long that people really believed that the Tories wanted to privatise health care and that it would be a lot worse than having our beloved NHS run  as the biggest state run organisation in the world.  I really don’t know what it will take to lift the scales from the eyes of the vast majority of this country and make them see that the NHS is a disaster. It isn’t the “envy of the world”, except for the populations of third world countries that get no health care.

For the past couple of days I’ve been searching for the words to express my outrage at the latest revelations:

An independent inquiry found today that there were “shocking” systematic failures of hospital care in Mid Staffordshire that left patients routinely neglected, humiliated and in pain as the trust focused on cutting costs and hitting government targets.

And just in case you think this is a one off I refer you to the National Death Service blog, a truly depressing read. But before you go there stick with me because I haven’t finished yet. Back to this report on mid Staffs hospital, and bear in this isn’t from a public inquiry so we may not be getting the full story:

The appalling picture painted by the commission – which described how some patients drank water from vases because they were so thirsty and how many had to rely on their families for food – was not exaggerated, Francis said today.

If that didn’t move you to tears then how about this:

Francis found that for many patients the most basic elements of carewere neglected while others were left humiliated and sobbing. The report found that:

• Patients were left in sheets soiled with urine and faeces for considerable periods of time.

• There was striking evidence of the incidence of falls suffered by patients, some of which led to serious injury. Many took place unobserved by staff

• The attitude of nursing staff left much to be desired

• Relatives took to taking sheets home to wash

• There was insufficient care for patients’ dignity, with some left in degrading conditions and others inadequately dressed in view of passersby

• Families were forced to remove used bandages and dressings from public areas and clean toilets themselves for fear of catching infections.

This sounds like one of those Radio 4 Christmas appeals for a disaster struck third world country, not something happening in our own beloved NHS, an NHS that can do no wrong.

So what was the Government doing whilst this was all going on you might ask? This would be the same Government that promised to save the NHS:

In an exclusive interview with The Slog this afternoon, Julie Bailey the Head of campaigning site Cure the NHS* blew the lid off The Big Secret behind Andy Burnham’s refusal to hold a public enquiry: as Junior Health Minister in June 2007, Baily claims, Burnham signed off Stafford’s third-stage process of elevation to Foundation Trust Status.

For some reason, if he did do this, Burnham signed off stage three of the four-stage process despite the hospital having FOUR high-alerts for negligence against its name.

He was too busy scamming us with his expenses to worry about whether this hospital was actually looking after patients:

Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, was involved in a secret eight-month battle with the fees office after making a single expenses claim for more than £16,500 to buy and renovate a new London flat.

The authorities finally agreed to pay the money — after rejecting the claim on three separate occasions — following a series of increasingly desperate pleas from the minister and his wife.

Shortly before Christmas 2005, Mr Burnham even wrote to the fees office that he “might be in line for a divorce” if reimbursement for his expenses was not forthcoming within days.

In July 2007, Mr Burnham attempted to reclaim the costs of buying a £19.99 bath robe from Ikea.

I’m still burning with rage but fortunately someone far better then I has written a masterpiece. The problem is reading it again just make me angrier. It starts off by listing all the incompetents who have had responsibility for the NHS since Labour came to office**, demolishing each and every one in turn:

instead they are stuffing their faces and shitting in ours. Alan Milburn, former layabout, amazingly became health secretary, resigned to patch up his common-law marriage, cops a hundred grand a year for “advising” firms trying to privatise many aspects of the NHS. Also drawing a full-time salary as a part-time MP.

NewLabour’s Health Secretaries have turned the NHS auxiliaries into paupers, the greedy bastard doctors into idle, dirty tyrants, abandoning their patients to shell-shocked, European locums, the managers into millionaires and the hospitals into full-steam ahead extermination camps for the vulnerable.

[...]

Patsy Leatherface Hewitt, former Kinnock Babe, married to a judge, son’s a junky; gobby, patronising, useless career shitbag, jointly responsible with the Postman [Alan Milburn] for national epidemic of HAIs, deaths of hundreds, thousands. Couldn’t even see to it that the hospitals were as clean as the local chippy. Wouldn’t wanna eat round her gaff. Now working full-time for Boots the Chemists, honest, not invent, and drawing full-time salary as part-time MP

Thats all great knockabout stuff, and there’s lots more of it, but then he really hits home:

But the worst, the very worst of it, what is unspeakable and unthinkable and intolerable is that people, relatively unsophisticated, came back from Europe and the Pacific and wandered around their bombed-out homes and communities and for themselves and for the dead voted for something different; emaciated POWs, miraculaously surviving the Nasty Nips’ work camps, frightened and traumatised, their mates beheaded and starved, voted for something different. And they built houses and they built factories and they suffered rationing and delay and privation but they banished rickets and for a time, unemployment and hunger. And the schools worked. And there were to be pensions, at sixty and sixty five. And health care, from cradle to grave. The people bootstrapped themselves, from shattered, ruined communities, they built homes and hospitals and futures, when lesser people might have merged into, gone along with an uber-Europe, as had the French and the Dutch and the Danes and the Poles and the rest, these people, scorned by Uncle Sam, drip-fed a little aid , a little materiel, a few rusty ships, these people kept the world free and now they and their children enter hospitals built with their taxes and are murdered; their leaders, standing on the shoulders, but shitting in the faces of the post-war reformers, too busy fellating Russian gangsters in Strasbourg, oil billionaires in Kabul, treat them with contempt, No, they shriek, we must have more, the Kinnocks, the Blairs, we must have more, how else will you attract people of our calibre, unless we have more and more and more.They have now betrayed everything for which people fought and died and went without;

[...]

That old people go into hospital, die through avoidable neglect, indifference and cruelty and that those paid to ensure the opposite happens receive golden handshakes, peerages and yet more positions of responsibility, this is not hyperbole, this is organised crime, this is not a government at its fag-end, part of the merry-go-round of party politics preached by shitbags like the self-fellating Mr Nick Robinson, this is much worse; sharpen your sticks, fill your cupboards, buy some seeds and get tough, this is Ruin.

I’ve only touched on his post, go and give the guy some much deserved traffic for this masterpiece, and then get angry. Point this out every time some Labour scumbag tells you the NHS is safe with them, better still, print off this post and the report, roll them up very tightly and thrust one end into their solar plexus. That should disable them long enough for us to get the hempen rope and find a lamppost.

H/T Old Holborn

* It can’t be cured, but at least they recognise there’s a problem.

** I do wish peoplle would stop saying “power”, it just encourages the fuckers