SALUTATIONS TO A GREAT LADY

CYNTHIA BOWER, the former head of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has broken her silence to complain that she has been 'hung out to dry'. Ms Bower was forced to resign her £200,000 post last February, taking with her a £1.35 million pension pot. But before we mellow toward this lady, let us recount what the cover-up administered by the CQC entailed.

            

             Some 16 babies and two mothers died at the maternity unit at Barrow-in-Furness general hospital between 2001 and 2012 due to poor care; while another nine infants were born with brain damage  The CQC tried, according to a report published by consultants Grant Thornton,  to cover up the scandal. Instead of fulfilling their primary function of protecting the patients, the CQC tried to avoid adverse publicity about the NHS.

            

             Ms Bower has said she has been 'on the run' since her name had been released and was consulting Sue Grabit and Run about a possible further financial enhancement to her already lucrative pension, after all, the CQC did promise her anonymity.

            

             There is another women who is 'on the run'. Julie Bailey is the founder of the Cure the NHS campaign group, which exposed the Mid Staffordshire scandal where no less than 1,200 patients died needlessly through cruelty and neglect by staff.

            

              Ms Bailey has been threatened and her mother's grave desecrated. She has closed her café in Stafford and is moving out of town and issued the following statement: “I am having to leave my home, my livelihood and my friends because a few misinformed local political activists have fuelled a hate campaign based on proven lies. The final straw for me was the desecration of my mum’s grave. It is a sad day today, but I have no alternative than to move out of Stafford.  The last few months have been a very distressing time for myself and Cure the NHS; our main aim has always been a safer NHS for all. Difficult as it is for people, everyone must finally realise that patient safety must be the priority. The main focus for every hospital must be the patient."

            

           This lady has no  million pound pension to live on. All she and her group were doing was what the CQC should have been doing. Those tormenting her in such a way are as fanatical about the NHS as Islamists are about the Koran. She has done society a great service; she is no enemy of the NHS, but a reformer.

            

            The NHS needs her kind to keep it honest. Quangos like the CQC  are there to divert the flack from politicians. Politicians create such entities while promising their extinction during an election campaign…but they never get round to it in office.

THE NHS IS SUFFERING FROM an acute case of idol worship which blinds the worshiper from any misgivings. The NHS has been the great totem of the welfare state; criticism amounts to blasphemy, as Ms Bailey has found to her cost. 

            

             Ms Bower, on the other hand, will be inundated with support from  NHS worshipers; usually, but not wholly, associated with the Labour Party and the Left generally. She will survive on a generous pension, paid for by the taxpayer, that equals, and may even surpass that of some City of London financiers, much loathed by the Left.

            

             The NHS is as fallible as any other man made institution. But it cannot continue on its present path without some kind of critical oversight. In the coming years, the NHS faces problems that cannot be overcome by censorship of the kind the CQC has attempted.

           

            I believe the NHS is on its last legs and some kind of private initiative is required which will be heavily contested and may never happen. If so the NHS will become a third rate service slowly dying and ill serving future generations. Modern medicine is becoming ever more expensive: the NHS had billions spent on it by the Blair government, only a third of which met patient needs.

            

            As far as the NHS is concerned, we are living in the twilight zone. This state created and administers it, this cannot continue unless the private sector is allowed a further presence in its delivery.

           

            Julie Bailey is the kind of human being who has to become involved when a scandal involving the deaths of hundreds of the NHS's patients take place. As for those now menacing this woman and driving her from her town; they are not only criminalizing themselves by their acts, but doing so against a woman who probably cares more about the NHS than they do…certainly more so than  the wretched Ms Bower.

            

            These cowards who say they care about the NHS, should have congratulated Ms Bailey for doing the CQC's job for them. The NHS is not a utopian construct; it is fallible, and those working in screw up (even criminally so), and when this happens we need the likes of Ms Bower to bring the public's attention to it…God  knows, the CQC were never up to the task.