NHS Burning Babies For Fuel

Sunday Mirror columnist Carole Malone says the health service’s ex-boss Sir David Nicholson is way off the mark with his attacks

Sir David Nicholson, the disgraced ex-NHS boss who presided over the 1,200 needless deaths at Mid Staffs, now says he wants to join a press regulator to defend the NHS against newspapers that “hate” it.

Pity Nicholson is so consumed by bitterness after his sacking – sorry, resignation – that it’s blinded him to the truth.

The press didn’t hate the NHS. They were just determined to root out “suits” like him on six figure salaries that did their utmost to destroy it.

People who’d rather patients died than have the truth of HOW they died (often from neglect and a lack of compassion) come out.

He doesn’t get the fact he was paid £211,000 a year NOT to protect his cronies, NOT to protect an organisation which in many areas had failed, catastrophically, to put patients first.

He was paid to protect people who put their lives into the hands of our once great health service. And he failed.

To blame the press for “hating” and damaging the NHS is laughable because it was HIM and executives like him who encouraged a culture where whistleblowers were gagged, sacked and often ruined.

Where patient care came second to that very important job for many executives – covering their own backsides.

NHS campaigner Julie Bailey says the reason Nicholson now wants to gag the press is that if it hadn’t been for journalists exposing him he’d still be on his big fat salary “reaping harm on patients and the workforce.”

And, as usual – Julie is spot on.