PM Blair as the EU President – Setting newer Standards.

Mr Blair felt an urge to resign his position as the PM however the path that he laid lead the Nation into a conflict while creating inner battling on home soil as to change and competition and where people themselves are not people anymore but walking ATM’s for the convenience of a Gov possessing an “open cheque book” to spend as they may in justifying change as to their elected stances. New Labour of course is not alone in calling for changes to the same old themes – that of Education, the Health Service and Law and Order etc at every new election looming however the underlying theme to New Labour has been about driving competition by “throwing money” at Services to firstly segment them, subsequent to which target setting be applied in getting “more for continually less”. In contrast “target setting” to a business is about a business obtaining ever bigger orders then meeting the demands placed upon it but to apply the same methodology to a Nation in terms of its Public Services is about a need to displace people as to the Nation in favour of financial gains through the lowering of principle budgets in one domain only to apply them back to others as “over-seers” to such primaries. To demonstrate shifts as savings one can reward oneself from budget under-spends yet subsequently be fed the real budget needs following to drive down costs.

To have a “single track focus” on money/revenue everything else takes second place which historically has resulted in trains coming off tracks as to safety, helicopters required for war but still in hangers after many years (cost-cutting), delays and set-backs to IT projects (spec changes etc), failing Hospitals requiring additional money to address hygiene issues while saving be made in displacing matrons responsible for hygiene etc etc. All of this and more all under a New Labour Government which has empowered “spin” doctors to lay imaginary tracks for the Public’s consumption.

The real issue now stemming from New Labour’s leadership which affects it and all future Governments is that of “Standards” - an attribute which New Labour is finding to its cost that it cannot “buy off” however much money it throws at the problem. It introduces “buckets” of New Laws, it places a Nation into a state of anxiety over terrorism as oppose to acting discreetly in resolving matters, it fails to justify itself over issues in the eyes of the Public like that of MP’s expenses to which the Public now recognize were to be hidden from them at their expense in legal bills yet once exposed now “backfills” the Public Purse as to Public money.

 

Standards are set as to people in the same way that “respect is earned” but how does one educate a Government given that it now represents disrespect in having no respect for the very people whom supports it financially?. Does it really need to care about how ordinary people are treated while taxpayers fund their Private Medical Insurance, Parliamentary Pension schemes, second homes, private schooling, self businesses, past family members in their employ, flights and air miles etc. Since before 2001 dirty Hospitals have been an issue while in 2007 cost-cutting and government targets were blamed for it at a time when a trust was carrying out a programme to save £40 million over three years in the face of huge debts!.

Of course Mr Blair can blame Mr Brown but in being cast in the same mould as to New Labour both must take the credit as to were now firmly stands.

 

Old News:

10 04 2001 Dirty hospitals 'named and shamed'. Inspectors - 42 hospitals failed to meet basic hygiene standards - Alan Milburn has named and shamed hospitals. The standard of hygiene was so poor 10 hospitals put on "special measures" - these hospitals will get a cash injection of between ?50,000 and ?50,000 to help bring them up to standard. Health Secretary Alan Milburn said the move to bring matrons back to the hospital wards from next April should improve standards.

23 10 2001 PFI hospitals design 'disaster'. Hospitals built under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) could be a disaster, says the head of the government's own advisory board Sir Stuart Lipton (Head of the government's Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). Some of the hospitals, he says, face basic problems like leaking sewage, unusable rooms and no air conditioning. And not enough importance is being given to the impact of building design on patient care. Whether patients recover or die makes no difference to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract to design and build. Cumberland Infirmary was the first PFI hospital opened by the Prime Minister in spring last year and has become notorious for design flaws, including a glass atrium which heats up in summer because there is no air conditioning. A Senior consultant neurosurgeon in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />South London. said: "We have been told 'you will be comfortable, you will be comfortable'. I daresay that's what they told them in Carlisle as well at the Cumberland hospital, and they will be baking to death.". David Hinchliffe (Chairman of the House of Commons Health Select Committee) is also concerned about the design of PFI hospitals. His committee has uncovered a number of problems: (1)confusing layouts (2) corridors being too narrow (3) difficulties for nursing staff actually seeing patients because of the layout of the wards. A Department of Health spokesman said the PFI was providing the NHS and patients with the biggest hospital building programme in its history and that "PFI has nothing to do with the design of the hospital, it is merely a way of securing funding for a new hospital.

08 04 2007 New Labours spin - ruining NHS

In a blistering attack on the Government's running of the health service, the RCN general secretary, said cuts in jobs, services and training were catastrophic for the country and a "personal tragedy" for the Prime Minister. The former Hospital Trust Chief executive told the Sunday Telegraph "I have never seen so much money go into the health service and I have never seen so much money wasted”. He added that waste under Labour began with the reorganisation of the NHS soon after the party gained power. Millions were wasted on repeated changes to structures that had now almost reverted back to the position they were in 10 years ago, with money lavished on salaries, redundancies and creating offices. Government figures show 15,000 managers have been recruited since Labour came to power. The number of nurses emigrating to find work had doubled to 8,000 since Labour came to power in 1997 and the number will continue to grow, he said. The Government expects that Britain will be short of 14,000 nurses in three years' time, which will force the UK to poach replacements from some of the poorest parts of the world.

11 10 2007 Superbug hospital may face criminal charges. Police have launched an investigation into the infection of more than 1,100 Kent hospital patients, after a report published today blamed the spread of the disease on appalling hygiene standards. Inadequate staffing levels, dirty wards and too much focus on cost-cutting and government targets contributed to two serious outbreaks of C difficile in as many years at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, an investigation by the Healthcare Commission found. At the time of the outbreaks the trust was carrying out a programme to save £40 million over three years in the face of huge debts.

17 06 2008 hospitals kill some 8,000 a year by Edwina Currie. A record number of people are dying in NHS hospitals from superbugs. According to figures recently released, death certificates for 2006 showed that more than 8,000 patients in England and Wales died from either MRSA, the drug-resistant bug that infects surgical wounds, or from Clostridium difficile. Each year, we now kill more people with C.diff than die on our roads, while deaths from MRSA are the equivalent of two train crashes a week. The Government's own target, set in March 2004, is merely to halve the number of MRSA cases. That is a pathetic failure of will. It's five years since infection control managers were ordered for every NHS Trust. Well-paid but powerless, they've made not a scrap of difference. Yesterday, official figures showed that more than a quarter of health trusts are failing to meet basic hygiene standards.

Recently, I've visited friends in hospitals. The standards were not bad; the wards were fairly clean. But bed curtains hung off their hooks and needed a wash. Beds were too close together  -  an invitation to cross- infection. I didn't see anybody using alcohol gels and when I checked (this was a teaching hospital), several of the dispensers were empty. There wasn't a sink nearby in the ward; apparently THEY AREN'T DESIGNED THAT WAY ANY MORE. The Government advises a 'bare below the elbow' uniform, to encourage hand-washing; on one ward with elderly folk prone to C.diff, the doctors were in scruffy clothes, sleeves down to the wrists. It took half an hour before one old lady was assisted to get out of bed to go to the toilet. Last time, I was told, they didn't get to her quick enough and she 'went' in the bed. Then they wonder why they still have problems?. There's a climate of complacency and even ignorance in some of the worst-offending hospitals.