OK then, let me be clear about this from the start. I am all in favour of incompetent business being punished since that is the essence of the free market, as the strong and efficient prosper and the weak and unprofessional fall away. So in that regard I welcome the investigation the BBC has conducted into the private ambulance operator in Birmingham uncovering totally unacceptable practices.
But there is something about this that bothers me and it lies in the almost malicious glee with which the BBC “uncovers” this failure in the private sector. If you read through this you will come to the curious line from Sam Oestreicher, of the militant health union Unison, who says that privatising services was “always going to cause problems. Private sector providers, their priority is profit not the patient. We are seeing the growth of an uncontrolled and unregulated industry as far as the NHS is concerned.” My question is given the horrendous numbers of patients who die in our NHS wards across the UK, having acquired infection in the filthy wards, why does the BBC not investigate how public sector standards kill more than even Islamic terrorists could dream? I’ll tell you why; the BBC shows an underlying contempt for private enterprise and instead likes to prop up thoroughly discredited NHS standards such as those extolled by Mr Oestreicher.