Patricia Hewitt, Liar?

On the BBC's FOIA blog, Martin Rosenbaum reports:

It's a year since the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt told a rowdy and dissatisfied audience at the Royal College of Nursing conference that she would work a night shift with a nurse who heckled her, and that it wouldn't be the first one.

When a neonatal nurse from South Tyneside challenged Hewitt about the level of staffing on night shifts, offering 'If you would like to come and work a night shift, Patricia, please contact me afterwards', the Health Secretary promptly replied 'Of course I'll do that, and it won't be the first one either.'

It then transpired that any 'night shift' she had worked so far lasted a maximum of 90 minutes. So has she worked any night shifts since then? The Department of Health has now told the BBC in reply to an FOI request that 'the Secretary of State has not worked any night shifts since the Royal College of Nursing Conference last year'.

Interesting. I'm sure the Nurses would be interested to read this.

More on Patientline

My thanks to Shutter for pointing out this post about Patientline.

Please take a little time out of your day to read more about this greedy vulture preying on the weak and elderly.

Patientline: Parasitic capitalism

Most of us are familiar with the disgusting Patientline service enforced on those in NHS hospitals.

This greedy parasitic company is now facing up to the consequences of its extortionate costs.

In addition, the NHS is about to finally allow patients and visitors to use their mobile phones.

Its always been well known in the telecoms industry that the impact of these devices on equipment is minimal.

I've had cause to try and contact people in hospital over the last few years and have been charged a small fortune just to see how they were doing.

I'm sure others have too.

They also charge at least 3 x the standard rates for outgoing calls from hospital.

Of course, staff have (by and large) been totally brainwashed into believing quite the opposite.

Shows what happens when you allow people without a clue to dictate policy.

Finally, just take a look at the performance of the shares for Patientline (below):