The first interviews by the Health Committee involved hearing some rather pathetic comments from the deputy CMO Martin Marshall; as he had to explain the reasons for railroading through MTAS 2007 against a massive majority of the medical profession:
Martin Marshall "On balance the benefits of continuing far outweighed the benefits of stopping the process"
( the benefits for the DoH that is)
When he was asked what the profession was saying at the time:
"There were a lot of letters, emails, blogs on websites that said that the process should be stopped, but I felt that the voice of those that felt it should continue was muted, particularly in the spring in the heat of the problems, their voice were expressed very strongly, by a lot of the candidates who had had interviews who wanted them to stand, by the service who didn't want a vacuum on August 1st, and by a lot educationalists as well"
Then when asked if there was an equal balance of people who wanted it scrapped and people who wanted it to continue?
"Not on volume, not on noise, certainly not, the people who wanted it stopped were making a much louder noise"
So then what was the justification for not listening to this noisy majority?
"It had to be a rational one, not one based on noise"
This sums up the contempt that the Department of Health routinely shows for the medical profession in trying to railroad through its unpopular and failing policy. It is hardly surprising that everything the DoH touches turns into manure, when they write us off as just 'noise'. If the majority of the medical profession are 'noise' then I would equate the efforts of Liam Donaldson and Martin Marshall to a gnawing 'sqeak' emitted from a dying rat. The recent Health Committee interviews with Crockard and Heard unveiled the fact that the MMC specialist training group contained zero, yes zero, people with a medical background.
We are being managed by buffoons. The health service cannot be adequately managed and run by people who have no understanding of medicine, the DoH are proof of this. Would it be acceptable if the Bank of England was run by people with no knowledge of economics and no background in finance? The DoH is even so foolish as to empower people with no medical degrees to diagnose and treat disease, this could only have come from people with no background in medicine. Negotiation with these fools is not productive, as they cannot detect sensible reasoned argument when it slaps them in the face. The police service has been treated with a similiar contempt by this government, and they have now realised that agitation and beyond is the only way ahead. How much longer must this go on before we do the same?
3 comments:
Since the Deputy CMO (and presumably the CMO himself) will not pay attention to loud and valid criticism from all quarters, may I send him a little whisper through your blog?
As a mere taxpayer, who because his children have suffered through this buffoonery, has had real stress and emotional problems to deal with, to say nothing of having to fund the idiots who caused it, I would encourage him to RESIGN IMMEDIATELY and take his prat of a boss with him!
Ask him to listen to the message repeatedly at 1 db increments until it registers.
Certainly I will be repeating it, following Cato's advice, until the man sees sense and goes!
"Would it be acceptable if the Bank of England was run by people with no knowledge of economics and no background in finance?"
Given that they just cut interest rates when oil is near record prices and the money supply is increasing by 14% a year, one could argue that it already is run by people with no knowledge of economics.
Giving high-level management jobs to incompetents seems to be standard Labour policy.
On an internet list on Wed 19/12/07: Channel 4 News at lunchtime had the story of the ICO's rebuke to DoH over MTAS. You could watch it again during the day, because the link was on the home page www.channel4.com/news/, and its probably still on the site. ICO Press Release is at http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/ pressreleases/2007/doh_undertaking_pr.pdf
Then came another post that said:
Those with a sense of humour, albeit mordant, might care to read the Department of Health's "Information Security" policy (http:// www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Informationpolicy/ Informationsecurity/index.htm). The giveaway as to how seriously the Department of Health takes it, and how often anyone who works for the Department of Health looks at it, is in the date: "24 Arpil 2007". Yes, Arpil. Quality stuff, eh?
Once you're beyond that, it's a little surprising that the ICO had to investigate this, because the policy clearly says: all breaches of information security, actual or suspected, shall be recorded, reported to and investigated by an appropriately experienced and skilled Information Security Officer;
And surely in this case, given the massive publicity that attended it, there must have been such an investigation? Surely?
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