Comical 'Blair', private equity and patient 'safety'....

Could Tony Blair be copying the tactics of the mighty comical Ali?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2020424,00.html

An excellent piece on those lovely fellows who work in the world of private equity, selflessly making the economy a better place for us all in the long term.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2019475,00.html

A highly respected diplomat tells us what he really thinks of Blair and Iraq.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/22/niraq22.xml

"Sir Ian Kennedy, chairman of the Healthcare Commission, said health ministers had imposed a welter of targets on the NHS since 1997 to change behaviour in hospitals and GP surgeries. But they did not give patient safety the attention it deserved. Apart from a target to reduce deaths from MRSA, there were no other signals from the centre that patient safety was the NHS's most important issue, he told a safety seminar in London.
"Even when targets ruled the day, there were none relating to the [overall] safety of patients. Yet targets were the way the government indicated its priorities. I am not advocating a wholesale return to targets. But I am saying patient safety should be everyone's business and everyone's responsibility," he said."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2019386,00.html

Indeed, there seems to be no one in the management hierarchy, including Sir Liam and the DOH, who is actually looking after this much repeated phenomenon 'patient safety'.

Could it be something to do with the complete lack of a holistic understanding of the health service in general? Could the deliberate manipulation of systems to fiddle targets, in order to produce ammunition for government spin, be anything to do with the problem?