Friday 22 February 2013

Liverpool Care Pathway - When The Law Is Not The Law

The Telegraph reports -


Forget hacking hacks, let’s jail some callous Mid Staffs NHS staff

Why are police officers poring over the evidence from phone-hacking scandal, while no one from the disgraced Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust has been questioned?

In Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt
said: 'I think it’s absolutely outrageous that potentially more than
1,000 people lost their lives because of poor care and not a single
person has been brought to book.'
 Photo: GETTY


9:14PM GMT 13 Feb 2013





Six journalists were arrested yesterday as part of a fresh inquiry into phone hacking. As you may have noticed, the police are frightfully keen on tracking down rogue reporters. This brings the total number of people arrested in connection with the News International scandal to 106. Very soon, we may reach an unprecedented point where there are more journalists in jail than down the pub.

I hold no brief for tabloid hacks who break the law by intercepting phone calls. Prosecutions will take their course, and rightly so. But the journalists didn’t kill anybody. The powers of the press are great, but my fellow journalists are not the ones who failed to give the correct medication to desperately sick people or ignored the pleas of terrified parents who knew their small son was dying. It wasn’t a newspaper that buried worrying mortality rates and staff concerns so it could hit targets. And even the rankest hack isn’t generally in the habit of dragging a half-naked elderly man with dementia by the collar and telling him he’s “an animal”. These, I think we can agree, are crimes of a different order.

That bears repeating...
Six journalists were arrested yesterday as part of a fresh inquiry into phone hacking. As you may have noticed, the police are frightfully keen on tracking down rogue reporters. This brings the total number of people arrested in connection with the News International scandal to 106. Very soon, we may reach an unprecedented point where there are more journalists in jail than down the pub.

I hold no brief for tabloid hacks who break the law by intercepting phone calls. Prosecutions will take their course, and rightly so. But the journalists didn’t kill anybody. The powers of the press are great, but my fellow journalists are not the ones who failed to give the correct medication to desperately sick people or ignored the pleas of terrified parents who knew their small son was dying. It wasn’t a newspaper that buried worrying mortality rates and staff concerns so it could hit targets. And even the rankest hack isn’t generally in the habit of dragging a half-naked elderly man with dementia by the collar and telling him he’s “an animal”. These, I think we can agree, are crimes of a different order.

That bears repeating again and again and again.
My Lords, Ladies, Honourable Gentleman and Ladies, wake up to the  clamour of protest at your gates, else shall your constituents consign you to Traitors Gate, for you betray the people if you fail to act.

A crime is committed. Must we march on Westminster and shout these words in every hall, in both chambers; shall we shake you from your slumbers...?

"I hold no brief for tabloid hacks who break the law by intercepting phone calls. Prosecutions will take their course, and rightly so. But the journalists didn’t kill anybody. The powers of the press are great, but my fellow journalists are not the ones who failed to give the correct medication to desperately sick people or ignored the pleas of terrified parents who knew their small son was dying. It wasn’t a newspaper that buried worrying mortality rates and staff concerns so it could hit targets. And even the rankest hack isn’t generally in the habit of dragging a half-naked elderly man with dementia by the collar and telling him he’s “an animal”. These, I think we can agree, are crimes of a different order."

It matters not a jot that Jeremy Hunt has urged the police to investigate. Are they waiting for the regulatory bodies, the GMC and N&MC to act...?

When is a crime not a crime?
- When the law is not the law!

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