What's the difference between Winifred Robinson, presenter on You and Yours, and David Behan, new CEO of the CQC (Care Quality Commission)?

Well when I listened to Radio 4's You and Yours today, I found the most pertinent difference was one of language. Winifred Robinson is an excellent presenter who always seeks clarity and is really good at winkling it out of her interviewees. The big problem with the interview with David Behan was that she spoke in English, the language of most of her listeners, I guess, and he persisted in speaking in gobbledygook, aka management-speak/jargon, despite all her efforts to get him to engage in a meaningful exchange. It doesn't augur well. When the next ghastly incidences of cruelty and incompetence inevitably occur in a care home or similar place of torture/care of the vulnerable, the relatives and others concerned about the welfare of the innocent victims will all be complaining, writing, speaking or weeping in English, and will be bewildered by his agency's bureaucratic lingo. Except that I'm sure they'll recognise that it's bugger-all to do with Care, in any sense of the word. - Judge for yourself. - You can 'Listen now' from this page.

Applications for jobs as Government Regulators

In view of recent events, vacancies may occur as regulators in various Government Departments. Applicants may be required to possess the following attributes:

for regulators working for the Care Quality Commission - complete lack of interest in the welfare of patients/residents in geriatric wards and in care homes for the elderly and for young adults with learning difficulties

for regulators working for the MHRA - phlegmatic/lethargic/catatonic response to matters demanding urgent attention with regard to protecting members of the public from adverse effects caused by pharmaceutical drugs or by substandard or faulty medical devices and equipment, e.g. silicone implants for breast enlargement (see Breast Implant Scandal)

for regulators of standards of the competence and probity of medical/dental/similar staff (i.e. General Medical Council, General Dental Council and similar bodies) - complete uselessness for the task itself and proven allegiance to errant health professionals over patients

Preference may be given to applicants with tunnel vision and/or appropriate 'conflicts of interest'.

Panorama: the shocking abuse of patients with autism and learning difficulties

Panorama: most people in the UK will have learned of and been horrified by the scandalous and criminal abuse of young patients in a British 'hospital' that purported to be a suitable residence for the care of these patients, some autistic, some with learning difficulties. In fact, it was for them effectively a locked prison in which they were physically and mentally abused by some of the 'carers'/gaolers, led by a bully who took pleasure in taunting and assaulting them. Most people in this country are aware of widespread, inhuman treatment of elderly patients in some hospitals and care homes, but the special extra horror that Panorama has revealed to us this week is this secret abuse of young, vulnerable patients.

But for Panorama's investigative journalist embedded in the hospital/prison and his video record of the assaults, the chilling probability is that those young victims would have spent the rest of their lives being tortured by warped 'carers' such as were seen in the programme last Monday. Because the shameful accompanying facts of the matter are that the abuse was repeatedly reported to the Care Quality Commission by a whistle-blower who had formerly worked at the hospital, but his evidence was ignored. - Ignored! - The poor victims have no voice themselves because tragically their complaints are routinely and automatically discounted as it is assumed that what they say cannot be relied on to be true.

Panorama has saved them from the continuance of great and unnecessary suffering: Panorama - not the managers of the hospital, not the CEO of the parent company, not - Perish the thought! - the indolent, unconcerned and negligent apology for a regulatory body, the Care Quality Commission! - And herein, in my opinion, is the most scary fact of all: that the highly-paid regulators were as useless to these tortured young people as a chocolate teapot...

Can there be another country that treats elderly patients worse than the UK?

Frankly, I doubt it. So many times I have blogged about elderly patients in UK hospitals being left unfed or underfed, dehydrated because no one gave them a drink of water, lying in bed in pain and in misery, humiliation and excreta, because no one had the decency or compassion to take them to the toilet or help them onto a commode or bedpan, often with bedsores or avoidable injuries because of poor nursing. Over and over and over and over again we read accounts of such awful suffering. It makes you sick to the stomach and sick at heart. This is our much-vaunted NHS! These are our healthcare professionals.

Yesterday was another of these days of shame, the news media full of the scandalous 'care' accorded to elderly patients in 3 hospitals in particular - 3 in particular out of 12 hospitals that the Care Quality Commission inspected unannounced and were appalled by. See this BBC News report. Yes, I know that not every British hospital and not every nurse treats elderly vulnerable patients in this disgracefully cruel way, but how does that excuse the ones that do?

What do we routinely hear after such sordid revelations? - It is usually a statement couched in strange jargon-ridden gobbledygook that favours weasel words and the passive voice. We are told that 'lessons have been learned' and other lies. And nothing changes. No one is arraigned and charged for their cruelty and neglect, no one is even sacked, for their dereliction of duty, for their failure to fulfil their duty of care. We all pay a great deal of money by way of taxes for our massively flawed NHS. Some of us, especially the elderly and the vulnerable, are getting a very poor deal indeed.

Dirty ambulances pose infection risk

The Telegraph reports that "Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission said they found ''dirty'' vehicles and that staff for the East of England Ambulance Service were ''unsure'' about preventing infection."

It must be very difficult to keep ambulances properly clean, with so many people in and out of them all the time, but it seems a good idea to draw attention to the matter so that it can be improved.

The death of a patient accidentally given a lethal morphine overdose is to be investigated.

BBC NEWS reports that "Dr Daniel Ubani gave David Gray 10 times too much painkiller while working for a Cambridgeshire health trust."

Surely the packs of morphine could be manufactured so that it is impossible for a doctor, however tired, to administer more than the normal dose?