When the Labour conference worshipped the National Health Service, their acts of exaltation and their accusations of sacrilege by the Tories (for daring to allow the wicked heresy of price to prevail), left them blind to its failings. And failings there are. Over a hundred and fifty people died of starvation or thirst in NHS wards last year. These are the most extreme cases. Underlying this is a cast of hundreds dying of malnutrition and thousands dying of infected wounds.
So, we have an elderly or incapacited person in the care of a profession, whose name defines their purpose as giving aid and comfort. Neither are achieved. Yet, we never hear of individual nurses or managers brought to account or struck off for this rollcall of daily neglect. How can teh sick, supposedly supervised and cared for on a daily basis, die of neglect? We know the root cause: a lack of accountability at a professional and at an institutional level. The Grauniad does not appear to cover the story.