Read this BBC report and you would be given the distinct impression that the utter shambles of the NHS PFI schemes are in fact a Tory led Coalition (To use the preferred BBC moniker) disaster….and you would also not realise that Hinchingbrooke Hospital would have closed had it not been privatised.
You would have no idea that Peterborough Hospital was a Labour Government plan, read the article and it deliberately places all the blame within the last two years….in other words …nothing to do with Labour.
This is nothing less than a highly politicised attempt to protect Labour and smear the Tories.
We all know of course that the NHS is safe in Labour hands…despite hospitals being ‘immune to the sound of pain’ under them.
The Independent tells it like it is:
‘A hospital now losing £44m a year was allowed to go ahead with a private finance deal to build new premises despite the Government being warned that the project was unsustainable.’
‘It is embarrassing for Labour because, at the time of the approval, Andy Burnham was a Minister of State in the Department of Health. He is now shadow Health Secretary.’
“This was a disastrous Labour PFI blunder. Labour was warned repeatedly by their own regulator that this PFI deal could bankrupt Peterborough Hospital but they pressed on regardless.”
This BBC report…not a mention of Labour or a Labour politician…however it does say:
‘In response to the inquiry, Prime Minister David Cameron apologised for the “truly dreadful” mistreatment and neglect.’
This BBC report also gives virtually no clue that Stafford Hospital was a case of massive Labour government neglect and incompetence.
This BBC report…which mentions Labour but only to pass the buck to the hospital management….
‘It also achieved the elite foundation trust status, which is given to the best-performing parts of the health service.
Its bid was approved by another regulator Monitor and signed off in June 2007 by Andy Burnham, who was then a junior minister but later became health secretary and now holds the shadow post in opposition.
In fact, it was the decision by the board to go for foundation trust status that contributed to much of the cost-cutting drive that undermined care.’
I imagine that if you look at many of the BBC’s reports a pattern might emerge….Labour involvement is quietly sidelined with minimal comment whilst any Tory involvement is twisted to turn responsibility onto them.
‘you would be given the distinct impression that the utter shambles of the NHS PFI schemes are in fact a Tory lead Coalition’
Job done then.
From Breakfast to Newsnight and all inbetween the sh*t sandwich that is the BBC’s commitment to professional, accurate, objective, news reporting, the Conservatives deserve all they are being served.
The country however does NOT deserve to have policy decided by a niche (albeit with a £4Bpa monopoly) unaccountable broadcaster and its staff, installing a compliant political regime via propaganda and censorship with the current level of bent editorial, by rigging an election of a kind that they of course are never subject to.
The claim of holding power to account is the biggest joke I have heard from Hugs’ claims to Patten’s stout refusal to entertain such a thing applies to them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/posts/helen-boaden-director-of-bbc-news-at-the-lse
(Comments now back again after another bout of mystery offline).
On the plus side the Flokkers will at least steer clear of this one as they continue to strafe the already mutilated corpses (down all BBC staff at the back from another time) of the only chinks in the media village narrative.
Cameron and Gove may indeed be humiliated and embarrassed on gay marriage and u-turns, and this may cause a warm moist sensation in the nethers of the Westminster remora coven, but I frankly could not also despise them much more or care less about their feelings.
However, Labour overseeing the deaths of a bunch of folk, and the national broadcaster doing its level best to stitch up anyone but their boys (and girls) on the fallout in guise of nationally treasured ‘reporting’ still… that vexes me.
C’mon, you have to admire that euphemism. Andy Burnham wasn’t involved, he just ‘signed off’ on it.
See? Just a little dopey. Forgot to check what he was actually signing. Could happen to any of us.
And, of course, that couldn’t possibly be anything even remotely equivalent to Jeremy Hunt ‘signing off’ a completely independent enquiry and report regarding the BSkyB issue, could it ?
Well you wouldn’t know it from the BBC/Labour Party response to both issues.
Firstly:
“The MPs said the trust had accumulated a deficit of £45.8m by the end of 2011-12, on a turnover of £208m – the highest deficit to turnover ratio of any NHS trust.” BBC staff still do not understand (or, more likely, are not willing to explain) the difference between “debt” and “deficit”.
The trust is accumulating debt at a rate of £45.8m per year. They are spending 124.5% of their income every year. Even Steff understands that.
Secondly:
“The MPs said there had been a “complete lack of strategic oversight” of NHS services in the region. ”
“the strategic management of health resources across the East of England SHA [Strategic Health Authority] has failed”.
“The decision to approve these two deals flies in the face of past and present government policy to treat more people outside hospitals and to concentrate key services in specialist centres.”
So can anybody in the BBC see the glimmering of a common thread with the Mid Staffs disaster. Perhaps a fundamental policy issue and ‘canteen culture of institutional complacency’? BBC Trolls reading this site, I have three suggested questions for you that might elicit some actual answers and for fun I have supplied my hypothetical answers as well……
Q) Who was the incompetent that approved this cluster***k?
A) The Labour Party was in power at the time and ‘signed it off’ despite warnings….
Q) Why did they do this if they knew this was an inappropriately sited hospital that was going to cost a fortune?
A) A combination of short term political advantage to demonstrate ‘investment in the NHS’ for a quick headline such as a PMQ’s point and plain old-fashioned gross incompetence, ignorance and a belief that money grows on trees
Q) Does this indicate systematic failure of the NHS senior management and decision making processes?
A) Yes, the report says so. Loudly
Like you, as-I-see-it, I thought this level of deficit was incredible, given the turnover of this hospital. However, the BBC has become adept at confusing what is debt and what is deficit. As you point out, basically a deficit is the level of overspend made in any one period. Debt is the sum (or accumulation) of deficits over time.
So, I did a bit of looking, and it turns out that in this case, as in so many others, the BBC has got it wrong – and is causing all sorts of confusion because of that. From multiple other websites, it would appear that the ‘debt’ for this trust is £45.8 million. At roughly the same time last year, the debt was around £40 million, so the ‘deficit’ (or in even more simple terms – the overspend) this year is around £6 million.
This is big enough at around 3% of turnover (which MAY be the biggest deficit to turnover ratio in the NHS, I didn’t see any figures to support that claim), but it certainly has helped this trust to have the biggest debt to turnover ratio in the NHS.
This post is not an attempt to detract one whit from what you say, but confusion is one of the biggest allies of the BBC/Labour Party.
Sorry for being a blog hussy but: ’24 hours to save the NHS’…how did that work out for you? Oops. In 2007 the writing was on the wall; as in education, it was the introduction of ‘high visibility’ targets that could be ‘easily’ reached and then ticked off and waved triumphantly at the public as major achievements that sowed the seeds for the current unfolding NHS disaster. Those government targets – including those for waiting and A&E treatment – were and are attacked for ‘distorting clinical priorities’. Maybe you’ll think it in poor taste and too partisan but if the Conservatives had been in power the Beeb would be screaming with every minute of news on every channel and radio station yet nowhere – at least in the BBC entire online coverage – is any mention of Labour, New Labour, Frank Dobson, Alan Milburn, John Reid, Patricia Hewitt, Alan Johnson and Andy Burnham* (in case you didn’t know this is the motley crew who were all Secretary of State for Health between 1997 and 2010. No mention of Blair or Brown either (well they never mention Brown anyway, funny that). *This prime twat is Shadow Department for Health, looking forward to his grilling on the BBC political programmes… …tumbleweed…
http://owsblog.blogspot.mx/2013/02/obvious-outcome-iv.html
🙂
The vast majority of visitors to this site know that there is massive left bias in the BBC and that the BBC ‘campaigns’ relentlessly and ruthlessly for a return of a Labour government. The BBC has been like this for decades. So the mystery is why do the Tories put up with this bias from the BBC?
Mrs Thatcher made few mistakes when PM but she did when she didn’t privatise the BBC.
Spot on doublethinker!
All of us know what the BBCs game is…how they run their fetid leftist boot camps for the Guardian and vice versa…and all with the view to get Labour in, to finish the country off once and for all.
And the Tories?…that bulwark of freedom that began with Burke? Salisbury? Bonar Law?…CHURCHILL for Gods sake?
Scruton, Murray?…and Mel P/Peter H at the Mail?
The Tories offer us either Francis Maude or Peter May..and other floaters in the Westminster toilet bowl.
Jeez?…THAT is the level of sandbag that`ll stem the EU/New Order Socialism coming through for us?…maybe we deserve Qatada who at least has heard of God.
Peter May?…well probably a better leader that Theresa-who I meant!
Not that I should be surprised, but the BBC report seems to demonise the private company now running Hinchinbrooke hospital, getting the comments from a local Unison comrade, but not bothering to interview the hospital management themselves.
For a more impartial view see the recent report in the Hunts Post http://www.huntspost.co.uk/news/latest-news/circle_at_hinchingbrooke_one_year_on_1_1849987 which gives both good and bad comments.
Among the points in the article that the BBC forgot to mention are; ‘last week, the hospital’s emergency department was ranked best in the country for seeing people quickly and the whole hospital has consistently topped regional performance tables.’ Also, ‘When Circle first took control, job vacancies were attracting zero applications, such was the uncertainty over the hospital’s future. Now that permanent staff have been found, the locum budget has more than halved, down to £160,000 a month.’
The facts appear to be that a nearby hospital was built on a PFI basis (another one of Gordon Brown’s hidden debt gems), when one hospital in the area would almost certainly have been sufficient. Which is essentially why there’s a deficit at this hospital – there aren’t enough patients to go around !
But I guess when Gordon wanted to buy votes, this was a vote winner at the time – like almost all PFI initiatives, these were conducted in Labour constituencies. And I suspect that Mr Brown was banking on any future government of another party having to bail these damned PFI initiatives out, no matter what – or Labour MPs could just turn round and complain of discrimination against Labour heartlands, or complain about the level of profits private companies were making – which they agreed these companies should have in the first place.
And, true to form, in this particular case, Labour’s masters, the Unions, chip in to complain that this private company is trying to run this hospital within its budget. Far better, in their view, to just accumulate more debt, and let the taxpayer pay it off.
This hospital has now been taken over, and even when ‘under the cosh’ it still can’t live within its budget to the tune of £6 million a year (although things seem to be getting better in this case) – but there are many more of these events already a long way down the road to happening still. Unfortunately it’s a headache that probably has another 25 years to run as do all the problems which are surfacing because of these PFI initiatives.
The time-bombs left by the last Labour government are incredible in their scope – the PFI initiatives, immigration, dumbing down of education, avoidance of tackling the benefits system. As usual, the Socialists knew only too well how to spend money, but this time they compounded it by setting up debt situations for the future. And they have bare-faced gall to complain when they need to be sorted out before the country disintegrates before our eyes.
We did not have economic growth under the last Labour government – we had debt growth – and they laid the foundations for even longer-term debt growth in the future – and that’s what’s making it so damned hard for our economy to recover.
And, of course, none of these underlying causes of the shambles is going to be made evident by the BBC. You would almost believe the BBC set out to confuse the above issue in the first place – they certainly don’t seem to want to shed any real light on the issues facing this country today.
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Its been a long time since I was able to stumble upon a reliable post like this.
Hands up for a terrific job. All the stuff I have to have an understanding
of are here! Thank you so much!
I read this BBC report and there is not a single reference to “Labour” or the “last government”, only to “the government”. The BBC is worse than useless, it is dangerous for democracy.