Thursday, August 29, 2013

Cure the NHS tactics

Cure the NHS tactics 

There are a lot of admirers of Cure the NHS for their campaign to highlight poor care in the NHS. This is a laudable aim, but some of their other aims and more importantly their tactics are rather unsavoury. 
They have got the public inquiry they wished, which found there was poor care. Contrary to their constant accusations, no one has questioned this. There is absolutely no one denying there were instances of poor care.

However, the most repeated "facts" have been thoroughly debunked. No one can seriously argue that there were 1200 unnecessary deaths at Mid Staffs. No one can serious believe that patients were forced to drink dirty water from flower vases either. Any nurse will tell you that wards have not had flower vases for years.
Cure the NHS might argue that these are small details. What is more damning is the party political line Cure the NHS is taking. There was a concerted attack on Andy Burnham on the basis of leaked figures from the Keogh report, which were so vicious that Professor Sir Bruce Keogh felt he had to apologise to Andy Burnham (even though none of this was his fault and he disavowed the newspaper reports).
They have also tried blackmail and lobbying people against their opponents (unsuccessfully). One mentally unstable Cure supporter regularly describes critics as "vile" without being able to articulate why. The blackmail attempts are ironic, given that a prominent member of Cure is reputed to have a past conviction for fraud which resulted in a prison sentence. Gary Walker, after complaining about bullying in the NHS, uses reprehensible tactics to try and silence critics on Twitter, making frankly libellous comments and making ad hominem arguments, here is one example:
 https://twitter.com/Modernleader/status/372657707557601280
Utterly false, but in any case irrelevant to the issue. A very transparent "monstering" tactic to shut up opponents, which demonstrates the character of the man. Indeed the rumours I've heard through back channels from Lincoln suggest that his sacking was not so unfounded.

Julie Bailey has also claimed that there has been a campaign of harassment. The police investigated after reading of the allegations (it appears that the incidents were not reported to them by Julie Bailey), and found no evidence to lead them to any particular individual. Indeed it is not clear if they found any evidence at all. In the newspaper accounts of the alleged harassment, Julie Bailey mentions a 'Thank You' card she received that read inside "Thank you for closing Stafford Hospital. Ha, Ha, Ha, you better now spend more time watching your mother’s grave". Unpleasant, but not a threat to personal safety and not even a direct threat of criminal damage. A comment from a paramedic stated "Julie Bailey, I hope you suffer a life-threatening illness at night where you have to travel further than you should do because your local hospital is closed (your fault). Serves you right, go back to your bacon butties girl and leave the staff alone." This was reported as being a death threat, which it clearly isn't. She also complains that people are "boycotting" her cafe (as if the people of Stafford were not free to choose where they drink coffee).These are the incidents that have been reported in the media. These must be some of the  most serious incidents, so exactly how this constitutes a "sinister and orchestrated campaign" is frankly baffling. On the other hand, Julie Bailey has accused a local Labour activist of being behind this with no evidence whatsoever. Not the first example of her double standards, and unlikely to be the last.

Julie Bailey has formed a limited company, presumably for the fees she intends to earn talking about "patient safety".  She lists herself on LinkedIn as leading a "government agency" with over 10,000 employees. Quite what has led her to publicize these fantasies is not clear, but she's becoming increasingly erratic in her pronouncements. If her book is anything to go by, she will be ranting and vilifying NHS staff and anyone who did not assist to her satisfaction. A local councillor is consulting with lawyers over the issue of defamation re her book. It's unclear what their purpose is now. They claim to be interested in patient safety, but it's not certain how they intend to achieve that. Their mantra is "accountability" when in fact they mean "vengeance". They claim that they only want the truth, when what they want is heads to roll.

No comments:

Post a Comment