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The only lesson. – politicalbetting.com
The only lesson. – politicalbetting.com
7 murdered babies. Attempts to murder 7 more.
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Right on the money @Cyclefree
"Seems to me that this story tells us that the "lead consultant" at a unit no longer even remotely actually runs his/her unit.
Frankly I am tempted to say this is the root of these problems.
Thoughts @Foxy ?"
says it all.
The senior professionals no longer run their units and teams.
Arse-covering admin people do.
FPT
Cowardice is well put, but so too is confusing the function with the institution.
A point that is equally true for the NHS, the Police and far too many other bodies where reporting a concern is taken as opposing both the institution and the function it is there to fulfil.
BBC News - Hospital bosses ignored months of doctors' warnings about Lucy Letby
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66120934
I for one appreciate @Cyclefree headers. Having written some myself it can be hard to shorten them.
[PS Oh, welcome back @Cyclefree.]
Will that do?
Far too many people just want a quiet life in the short-term and don't have the foresight or imagination to realise what that might mean in the long-term, and nor do they care. It's a tragic failing of human integrity that's depressingly common.
Another superb piece by @Cyclefree
Time to bring back the literal meaning of the “mess revolver”
Or maybe a blunt wakizashi
Instead, all the senior manager involved will get better jobs. And payouts.
NU10K
I mentioned earlier today the story of a surgeon who maimed many people in our local hospital. The Scottish government authorised an inquiry in April 2023, 10 years after he voluntarily removed his name from the GMC register. Tayside Health Board have fought tooth and nail to resist any investigation for a decade. Some of the story can be seen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65339744 It is genuinely shocking. It has been known for years that he was allowed to continue practising despite horrendous errors and gross breaches of good practice using, for example, an unauthorised glue to refix someone's skull which caused brain damage.
Nobody has accepted any responsibility for this.
To improve the future governance of the NHS, these people should be gibbeted.
I promise to forgive them first, if that helps.
Looking forward to wit and insight contained within the publication of your 6.74 word thread header.
Nice to see you're still pushing out the columns, Miss Cycle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcement)
(i believe they have had some success, but don't know of any large-scale study of them in the whole United States.)
Second, there are, in some cases, bounties for whistleblowers. They seem to have had some success in encouraging people to report tax cheats, and in uncovering waste. (The bounties can be quite large, since they are often a percentage of the money involved.)
Third, the federal government has Inspectors General: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_general
If that Wikipedia article is roughly right, they are more common in the US than the UK. (By the way, reporters often use their findings as the basis for articles, so their reports aren't always buried, along with all the rest of the paper the federal government puts out.)
(Good to see you back, Cyclefree.)
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-89#
(Judging by that press release, the whistleblower may have been earning about $1 million per hour, which, unlike most of you, is more than I have ever earned.)
Karen Rees, who refused to take Letby off duty against the wishes of 7 consultant paediatricians
You know what? You can investigate and then reinstate them if it turns out they are innocent of allegtions. What you cannot do is bring babies back from the dead.
SEVEN consultants wanted her off duty. Now, they may have merely thought her incompetent rather than evil. But still. How many are needed to get someone moved?
or Brexit made her do it.
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/plus246973856/Kranker-Mann-Europas-Deutschlands-Wirtschaft-beunruhigt-die-Welt.html
Russian firms have received tens of thousands of Chinese shipments since the war in Ukraine began
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/08/19/china-helping-arm-russia-helicopters-drones-metals-xi-putin/ (£££)
I strangely enough felt some sympathy for Letby. Her own diary showed she hated herself for doing it, but couldn't stop. The Hospital management did no one any favours.
But psychiatry is two centuries behind the rest of medicine. Does it really count as a science?
Are Rishi and Suella really cynical enough to use the Letby case as reason enough to call for the ultimate sanction? Who wouldn't vote to see Lucy Letby's televised hanging by the neck until dead? I am not sure about Sunak, but I would bet my boots the thought has already entered Suella's head.
And if God forbid the CPS have got it wrong, they have killed the wrong person.
There’s a nice exhibition of dead Russian tanks across the road, just in case anyone forgets about the war going on.
Universities need to get away from teaching information as facts, and get back to questioning all the suppositions in each subject area. Why do we believe this? What evidence is there?
And leave technical training to technical colleges.
The death penalty is absolutely barbaric, if the Tories propose to re-introduce it I will never vote for them in my life. Same for Labour.
Getting that in health- safe whistleblowing, looking for systemic faults rather than scapegoats to blame- ought to be possible. But something stops us. "Evil person did evil thing but they were stopped in the end" is too comforting a story.
And I fear it's the damnable bits of human psyche again. We want heroes and villains. We choose more pain later over minor inconvenience now. Politicians present easy, cowardly, dishonest options every bloody time. And we vote for them. And I don't know what we do about that.
I am sure they will do it - and it is absolutely disgraceful.
I have participated in and even led a number of investigations both internal and external to my Trust, though nothing close to this in terms of seriousness.
The biggest problem encountered is getting evidence of a level sufficient for action. Almost always along the way someone hadn't followed procedures correctly, meaning that the case would fall apart if it went to the Employment Lawyers.
We often wound up with action short of suspension or sacking. Someone would leave the Trust, but no sanction after that was enforceable, usually to employment elsewhere. Not very satisfactory, and often it would be the wrong person leaving.
Cases of wrongful dismissal are often very expensive, due to loss of earnings awards, sometimes stretching into the millions of pounds, as well as reputational damage. I know of some (external to my Trust) where I was staggered that the person had walked away with millions, rather than being struck off.
There is a need to correctly blame and sanction people where blame is due, but the problem of such a system is that it leads to a culture of omerta and cover up. There is a widespread recognition that safety improvements are more likely in a "no blame" cuculture but "no blame" is not always compatible with justice.
If Labour were in government and introduced it I would write to Keir Starmer directly, I would rip up my membership card and I would leave the country.
The thought that any party would go there makes me so angry, Pete.
There is a very clear and indeed institutionalised conflict between the 'justice' - police investigation, etc. - and 'engineering etc lessons to learn' in accident investigation in rail and plane crashes, as I understand it.
Even with a war going on outside, one can still get a delightful Eggs Benedict here.
< / Leon >
I am writing to apologise for anything I have said and written that might have hurt your feelings.
I realise now that conflating tens of thousands of deaths, injuries and mass destruction with those events happening on your watch is unfair and that I have learnt a lesson not to point out that bad things seem to happen whenever a particular person can be linked to those events clearly and without any doubt.
I do hope that others in this world learn this lesson and that you have a long and unblemished career in the murdering business.
Yours with fulsome apologies,
Boulay
Interesting interview with the BBC reporter who sat in the courtroom right through. There’s something from her going on the web, if it hasn’t already appeared.
I don't agree with everything Dura_Ace posts but there was very little wrong in what he said. It's clearly obvious that Ukraine uses the media etc to boost its war effort (I support them in doing so). To deny that is to literally deny reality.
I am appalled that anyone here would support the death penalty.
As to Psychiatry the chief problem is one of observation. You are incredibly reliant on the information relayed by the patient. Even with a perfectly honest patient this will be imperfect, as language is imprecise, and as the patient's mental state ebbs and flows.