NHS and death

Another day, another NHS cover-up story!

What shocks me about the latest news of a cover-up, is the way that politicians and the media express faux-surprise that these events (the failures surrounding baby deaths at Cumbria hospital) occur.

What do we expect? 

We have an organization that has gorged on ever-increasing sums of tax-payer money and whose now almost sole purpose is to ensure that it can extract ever more funding.  Patient care or more properly patient-centred care is not even on the agenda. 

The NHS has been broken for years.  The Labour party, mindful of the strong union presence within the organization, has thrown money at the NHS and have very skillfully brought the debate (or actually the lack of debate) to such a state that funding for the NHS is almost considered sacrosanct.  Even the Tories and the 'tail wagging the dog' Lib Dems took office promising to ring fence NHS spending plans and funding.

So while the army gets sent to fight wars, poorly or ill-equipped and for their troubles then face redundancies, doctors, nurses and the whole plethora of middle managers get to enjoy job protections and perks that the rest of the world can only dream of.

The Taxpayers Alliance (TPA)  recently produced a report which showed the staggeringly large amounts of money that is wasted by UK government in its various guises.  For anybody that pays taxes this is truly a frightening read.  The low-side estimated total is £120 Billion.  And that likely excludes a whole lot of other waste that the TPA highlight but don't add to the total on the grounds that they might then be double counting.  If only the government spenders were so careful and acted with such probity!

Here are just a few examples of the waste that is found just in the NHS:

• £13 Million by London NHS Trusts on Public Relations (Source TPA and BBC)
• £6 Million paid by a single NHS Trust to five doctors to provide 'top-up' services in the period 2007 to 2010 (Source TPA and Daily Mail)
• £18 Million paid in gagging orders to 600 NHS officials (Source TPA and Daily Telegraph)
• £80 Million spent on prescribing Vitamin D, much of which is overpriced - for example, £2,400 was spent on a £16 Vitamin D treatment.  (Source TPA and Daily Mail)
• £128,383 paid to a healthcare assistant who falsely claimed the right to work.  (Source TPA and NHS Business Services Authority)
• £1 Million - spent on luxury vehicles for Strategic health Authority employees, including Porsche Boxters (Source TPA and Daily Mail)
• £1 Million paid as a golden goodbye to a former chief executive of the NHS Midlands and East.

Sadly, the list goes on and on.  Remember also, that these are just some of the examples that the gallant TPA (not government funded) manage to uncover through Freedom of Information requests. 

Also these include examples uncovered by the press.  The same press that Leveson and all of the political parties want to muzzle!  Draw you own conclusions as to motive.  My view is that the freedom of the press to uncover such waste, is much more important than a celebrity's right to have a blow job in public and not have the police case exposed!  I suppose it comes down to values, in the end.

Talking of values, search your news outlets and media organizations.  See if you can find any calls for the resignation of Andy Burnham (or just see if you can find Andy Burnham).  He was the minister in charge of the NHS in the last Labour government - remember?  he was the one in charge when 1,200 people died at Mid Staffs Hospital as a result of appalling levels of care being administered in 'our wonderful NHS'.   See also if you can find anything of Sir David Nicholson.  He is the head of the NHS.  He received a knighthood, presumably for his services to the Health Service (you couldn't make it up).  He was the head of the relevant Strategic Health Authority, at the time of the Mid Staff deaths.  he retains his knighthood and will leave the NHS, next year, with a rumoured £4 million pension pot.  That should give him something like £200,000 a year pension, for life!  Oh, and he will get that, even if he then, after a short break, goes and joins a health consultancy  or medical equipment provider, pharmaceutical company, etc.!

Surely the scales must be starting to drop from the eyes of the people?  Mid Staffs and Cumbria are just the tips of a very murky iceberg, I fear.   We likely won't ever know the full extent of the negligence and poor care that people receive at the hands of 'our wonderful NHS' because this 'national treasure' uses tax-payer money to buy-off potential whistle-blowers and usually settles cases of alleged mal-practise out of court and with confidentiality clauses attached.

It is surely time that the ring-fence was removed from the 'envy of the world' - which strangely no other country copies - and the  excessive fat removed.  Radical reform is required but in reality I hold out little hope of change.  It doesn't seem to matter whether it is old people in Mid Staffs or babies in Cumbria that are dying - no one in government cares enough about them to do anything.  I guess, what it comes down to is that the dead don't have a vote! 
  

Bad week for Blow Jobs

Well potentially, anyway.  Maybe a good week for short-term, let by the hour hotels, though!

Seems that most of the UK press have decided that they can do without the draconian and anti-free speech Leveson laws and won't participate or have anything to do with the so called Royal Charter establishments.

The Guardian and The Independent both accepted the gagging of free speech, that is inherent in this bad law.  Since they are losing readers (and money) faster than @Old_Holborn is losing followers in Liverpool, one needn't be too concerned about their kow-towing.

At the same time, it has been reported that the 'No to Page Three' has received a very poor response to it's campaign to ban photographs of topless women appearing on Page 3 of the top selling The Sun newspaper.

Maybe there is a connection?

Maybe people see such campaigns as a foretaste of what the Royal Charter will bring?  Minority interests pedaling and imposing their views on the majority and stifling any view that doesn't fit with their narrow perspective on life or current pet hate.

I am sure that the overwhelming majority of decent people, will have shared the revulsion felt by publisher/owner, Rupert Murdoch, at the allegations that his own The Sun or The News of the World, hacked the phone of the schoolgirl, Milly Dowler.   Sympathy for the parents of this young girl, who was brutally murdered, would naturally, and rightly, be high.  That the subsequent police investigation doesn't seem to have found evidence that this 'journalistic activity' was criminal, doesn't excuse it.

It is a hell of a leap from there to allowing criminal activity to go unreported, just because the criminal is a 'celebrity'.  When a famous actor is caught 'in flagrante' getting a blow job, from a known and previously convicted prostitute, in a public place, this has to be a reportable incident and within the public domain.

Equally, when a Daily Mail columnist (Jan Moir) questions the lifestyle of a 'celebrity' homosexual who dies at a very young age, and the death seems to be very much linked to such a hedonsitic way of life, why should such comment be stifled (it would be under the Royal Charter).  Again, with the Daily Mail, that paper's questioning surrounding the disappearance of Madeline McCann are legitimate areas for investigation.

Of course some journalists will step over the line and report erroneously or gather their information in an illegal way but there are laws already in place that can be applied.  New ones are not required.

So bravo for the majority of the press, national and local, who had the courage to oppose this bad legislation and to decide to have no part of it.  Now we will see if the enemies of a free press - the Labour Party, the Lib-Dems and their socialist and control-freak allies - will push for regulation rather than the so=called voluntary element that was included in this compromise law.  Just as importantly, we will see the true colour of David Cameron's Conservative party - libertarian and upholders of a free press or totalitarian and socialist by another name?

Oh! and the Hughs of the world?  While you now know that indulging in fellatio in a car, with a prostitute is very risky, consider that maybe those 'rent by the hour' hotel rooms might have CCTV installed.  Enjoy!
 

EU and the rule of law

So where do you think that the recent shenanigans in Europe, leave David Cameron and the possibility of the UK re-negotiating the terms of membership of the EU?

In my view, the Cyprus fiasco shows that any re-negotiation is meaningless.  The EU, and that includes all of its institutions such as the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Commission, have no respect for people, property ownership or the rule of law.  It will be seen as somewhat ironic to those nations that come a-begging to the EU for aid or reasonable trade terms, that these basic tenets of the 'Western style' of democracy can be so easily cast aside for the European Master Race but are an absolute must have for the rest of the world.  Oh, and those Americans that are reading this and smuggly thinking, that couldn't happen in the good old US of A, read on

Consider.  From the troika that was negotiating with Cyprus, the ECB, IMF and the EU Commission, we are told that the IMF made it a condition that whatever solution was arrived at, must not require to be put to the Cypriot parliament!  The IMF remember, gets lots of funding from the US - How would the founding fathers and all those who died in the pursuit of democracy feel about that?


We are told that the biggest losers will be those Russians that have flooded into Cyprus and deposited their money.  The strong suggestion is that this money has somehow been stolen by those depositors or is in some other way ill-gotten.  The inference is that the theft of this money, by the EU and Cypriot government, by applying a 'hair-cut' of 40% to 100% is therefore somehow not really theft.  This is moral hazard at its most dubious and odious.  The EU and Cypriot government are assuming, when they steal people's money, that all deposits over  €100,000 are illegal and that because the main-stream media pushes this story, they will get away with it.  It is to the shame of the media, though not sites such as blogs and Twitter (@zerohedge  @witchking1974 and @Old_Holborn particularly good), that they continue to push this message.

I can't help feel that if the following was carried out by the Conservatives, the spin would be different.

Many British people chose to retire to Cyprus.  They sold the house that they had purchased and paid for, in the UK and took their legally earned money to Cyprus.  Let's say they sold-up for £500,000 - not such a great sum for someone with complete equity in a house located in the South East of England.  Let's go further and say that when they went to Cyprus, they down-sized and managed to buy their next property, outright for £250,000.  SO now they have £250,000 in the bank.  They live modestly and don't eat-in to their capital.  Then, along comes the EU, IMF and the other governmental thieves and takes £100,000 of their money - overnight and without anyone listening to them or saying what it is that they did wrong!

Because the above is happening but is being perpetrated by the EU and IMF, the media is complicit by its silence.  Going back to my previous post, for a moment, maybe the media don't need censoring, they do a good enough job, censoring themselves.   http://bit.ly/164hrBE

Even if all the account balances above €100,000 are illegal, since when did two wrongs make a right?
I would have thought that Germany, above all others, would recognize that following 'the ends justify the means' school of philosophy, was a very flawed approach.  Has economic purity replaced racial purity?

Turning to the rule of law.  It is a fundamental part of the EU 'schtick' that there is free movement of goods, people and capital within member states.  You don't believe me?  Look through statement after statement from UK ministers who say that they cannot control immigration from other EU states because of EU law!   Now look at what has happened regarding the imposition of Capital Controls.  In their efforts to rescue the Euro, the EU and Cyprus have ignored the basic principles of the EU and put us in a position where a Cypriot Euro is now worth less than a German Euro.

So, back to the start.  What would be the point of re-negotiation?  Any agreement reached wouldn't be worth the paper that it is printed on.  The only discussions should be on the terms of trade and such, post the UK exit from the EU.  That's it.  We need to understand and accept that we simply cannot treat or trust with the corrupt EU.

Blowjob cost

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