As Circle Healthcare’s decision to throw in the towel on its stewardship of Hinchingbrooke hospital is mulled over, one media outlet that called it totally wrong, partly in order to smear one of its political opponents, has kept totally schtum. No prizes for identifying the NHS-bashing, private-sector loving source as the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog.
Fart in lift Inquiry suffers embarrassing leak
The Great Guido was rather more ready to sound off about Circle Healthcare’s very wonderful intervention into the NHS last May, when they swallowed the Kool-Aid in one, telling readers “48 hours after Ed Miliband claimed that private companies were sending the NHS ‘backwards’, Circle-run Hinchingbrooke Hospital has been named the best hospital in England”. And there was more.
“Which makes Ed’s speech look a little silly, especially the the bit about how Cameron ‘has put the principles of markets and competition at the heart of the NHS like never before’”. Yes, the Fawkes rabble were in their element: after all, Hinchingbrooke had been given the award by “Experts”. What could possibly go wrong? Well, it seems rather a lot could go wrong, and, what’s worse, the presence of Éoin Clarke has doubled their embarrassment.
Why this should be can be seen by consulting one of the Fawkes folks’ hatchet jobs, something this group of allegedly politically non-partisan operatives (ho ho ho) loves to indulge in whenever their target has a stance anywhere to their left, which includes most of humanity. Clarke had passed severely adverse comment on Circle Healthcare, whose lawyers had leant on him to shut him up.
After Clarke issued the apology demanded, the Fawkes rabble went in with both feet: “Éoin Clarke has been busy apologising again this afternoon. Clarke came to prominence with his seminal PhD study of the history of Irish feminism entitled ‘Feck arf, get me dinner’ and has now risen to the very top of his new field: conspiratorial online left-wing smearing”. Yes, I know, The Great Guido calling others for smearing.
Clarke was dismissed as a mere “left-wing loony”, and it was alleged that his “only reader” was the leader of the opposition. Well, it seems he may have been on to something. In any case, the Fawkes rabble’s eager repetition of claims that Hinchingbrooke was “the best hospital in England” leaves them looking even more ridiculous than usual this morning. And they can forget excusing their wrong call as some kind of public sector stitch-up.
As Prof Sir Mike Richards, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, noted, “[the findings] are not a judgment on the role of the private sector in the NHS or on franchise arrangements. Where hospitals are failing to promote good care, we will say so regardless of who owns and runs them”. If only The Great Guido could figure out that kind of thing, eh?
Éoin Clarke won’t be getting an apology from the Fawkes rabble. But he doesn’t need that to know who called this one the right way. Another fine mess, once again.
Wonder if Mark Simmonds MP still gets his £50,000? And whether Circle still the fee worth paying?
ReplyDeleteMark Simmonds MP - peoplesnhs.org
Accepted a trip to the United States to look at hospitals there from Bupa UK. Mark Simmonds, who was a minister when the controversial reforms were drawn up, is paid £50,000 a year to work just 10 hours a month as "strategic adviser" to Circle Health ..."
It was a shame he "forgot" to mention it before speaking in the House and had to apologise, wasn't it?
Amnesia the new pandemic disease?