Patricia Hewitt survived an effective vote of no confidence the other evening in the House of Commons after a debate brought forward by Tory MPs over her handling of the NHS.
Now, I'm finding this quite difficult, but perhaps if MPs had voted her out my Labour Government may finally have woken up to see the mess and chaos that the NHS is in. Staff morale gets lower every day. The wonderful PFI schemes are failing, new wards close almost as quickly as they open. Hopsital Trusts are expected to balance the books and by this force staff to be redeployed in the hope of avoiding paying out redundancy payments and lay off Doctors and Nurses, whilst expecting those that remain in the NHS to work longer hours.
Of course, we now have the disgraceful shambles of patients' details being sent off to India, Pakistan and South Africa and a colleague in the office that I work in found out yesterday that she is being "redeployed" as the majority of her work goes to India, on a personal basis, I'm relieved because if it hadn't been her, it would have been me.
Yet whilst all of this is happening, we have managers galore being appointed and their duties appear to be hold meetings to then arrange meetings to talk about targets, whilst having a sub-group to look into this, make a few lowly people redundant or freeze posts, so another manager can be appointed to sit on a task force, hold a consultation event which creates another committee, shut down a few beds, lay off a nurse or three, appoint a new manager and report that the Trust has just about broke even.
But at least Patricia Hewitt is secure in her job. She is failing the health service and has lost the plot and yes, she has lost my confidence. And you know what hurts more than anything, it was Labour that created the NHS, appeared to be saving the NHS in 1997 and now is overseeing it die off, so message to Gordon Brown, fewers managers and start caring about patient care when you become Prime Minister in a few weeks time get rid of Patricia Hewitt and some of the yes-men in the department of health (sic).
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Al, this is a very brave post - it can't have been easy. Nevertheless, well done.
She is really dreadful, isn't she? As you probably know, I have worked in the NHS and my partner, James, is a doctor. Apart from being crap at her job, she also has this condescending attitude. A real bitch, if you ask me.
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