Failure in Staffordshire NHS trust highlights systemic government meltdown

It has been reported by the Healthcare Commission that between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years. The investigation found that Staffordshire Hospital was undermanned by inadequately trained staff, junior doctors were left alone in charge at night and patients were left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled. Patients were left in pain or forced to sit in soiled bedding for hours at a time and were not given their regular medication and receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E.

The Trust's chief executive, Martin Yeates, and chairman, Toni Brisby, resigned earlier this month. Good bloody riddance!

Now I've been looking to write about something all day that really makes me angry and this is it over and above Lord Myners smugly slithering all over the MPs committee set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the extraordinary pension which was awarded to Sir Fred Goodwin, the failed RBS chief executive. It has also come in over and above Gordon Brown manipulating and using the financial crisis he drove us head long into to justify his previous policies to massively increase the use of nuclear energy in the UK. I have also decided to delay my anger over proposals (actually announcements) by universities in England, Wales and NI that they want to increase their fees in the middle of the worst financial climate for almost a century by over 50% - so much for New Labour's "university for all" promises.

So why does this slip-up by the NHS pop more veins in my cranium than all the rest of the lying, cheating and back-stabbing that happened today? Well, it is because there is something about treating vulnerable people who are sick and in pain this badly that just pushes me beyond it all.

These people needed help. The government, NHS, doctors and staff promise and are paid to help these people and in this instance they have failed. The individuals who worked at the hospital failed. The managers who were in charge of the hospital and who are coincidentally paid exceptionally well, failed. The NHS failed and the government yet again has failed.

Failure, failure, failure!

That's all we hear at the moment. Sorry about the housing market. Sorry about your job. Sorry about your hospital treatment. Sorry about lying to you about WMD. Sorry about the banking system. Sorry about this, sorry about that...except nobody will bloody well say sorry...Will they?

The only sorry the public gets is a transparent political gesture by the leader of the opposition to hold the government to account for their economic policy failure. That's not good enough.

This government need to be held to account. It needs to be held to account now or we will be subjected to more and more failure as Brown holds on to power for grim death, long enough so he can justify writing memoirs and publishing them for £millions. Enough is enough. I feel at the moment as though we might as well have a chimpanzee running the government, country and its institutions. It couldn't do any worse..could it? and it would probably make PMQs a lot more amusing and Dave would probably face more of a challenge (not that he's doing much challenging himself these days).