Britain is a great country. It’s produced some of the world’s greatest innovations in science and industry, gave the world the concept of freedom of speech and Parliamentary democracy, has world beating arts and entertainment sectors and to be quite frank has punched above its weight and laid the foundations for the building of the modern world.

OK now I’ve got the patriotic praise out of the way here’s a criticism. For all Britain’s greatness and potential greatness once we finally get out of the EU, Britain does sadly contain a large number of morons. All too many of these morons clap like performing seals for what has become Britain’s national religion, the National Health Service. As regular readers will by now know, I really do not like the NHS, it’s killed members of my family, nearly crippled others and treated some like dogshit that has become inadvertently stuck on a nurse’s shoe. The NHS is all too often inefficient, inhumane, not effective, mired in bureaucracy and excessively expensive. I will not and never will applaud the NHS.

But now, according to a report being carried in Sky News, parts of the NHS could even be criminal in the way that they have mistreated their patients. The Sky report said that the maternity services in Telford and Shrewsbury hospitals have been judged to be so bad that the conduct of the hospital has been referred to the police. What started out as one case of a complaint into one mother to be being treated so badly and incompetently that her baby died, morphed into an investigation that concluded that the hospital trust had a ‘cluster’ of 23 possibly avoidable deaths of babies. Now it has been revealed that there may well be 1,200 cases where babies or mothers have been injured or killed or where babies have suffered permanent brain damage.

Here’s part of the Sky News report. The original text is in italics whereas this blog’s comments are in plain text.

Police are investigating whether criminal charges should be brought against a hospital trust where hundreds of cases of poor maternity care are being examined, including allegedly avoidable deaths of babies and mothers.

Failures in care at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust have been described as the worst maternity scandal in the history of the NHS.

It might be being described as the ‘worst maternity scandal’ but it’s just one horrific scandal among many that can be laid at the feet of the NHS. The handy list below provided by the BBC shows that whilst the Telford and Shrewsbury case might be the worst in the maternity field, hundreds and possibly thousands of other Britons have lost their lives due to the incompetence and sometimes cruelty of the NHS.

Here’s the BBC list of NHS scandals. It is by no means complete as it doesn’t include those deaths or injuries that were not subject to major inquiries or where individual patients or their relatives have sued the NHS for bad practise.

Dr Harold Shipman – Responsible for killing at least 215 patients over a 25-year period from the mid 1970s. Many were elderly women who died after he injected them with lethal doses of diamorphine.

Stafford Hospital – Criticised for causing suffering to hundreds of patients during the late 2000s. Trust in charge of hospital later placed into administration.

Bristol heart deaths – Thirty-five babies died and dozens more left brain-damaged by poor practices identified at child heart surgery unit between 1991 and 1995

Morecambe Bay – An inquiry said a “lethal mix” of failures in maternity care led to the deaths of 11 babies and a mother over nine years.

Gosport War Memorial Hospital – Independent panel found there was a “disregard for human life” at hospital where inappropriate use of strong painkillers linked to the deaths of over 450 people.

As well as the list of scandals about which there has been some sort of public inquiry and the cases where individuals have taken their own legal action against the NHS, there are also many others, possibly hundreds of thousands of Britons, who have had piss poor treatment from the NHS. With these cases the patients or their relatives have either been fobbed off with excuses for poor treatment by medical staff or do not have the financial wherewithal to bring a civil case against the NHS. It is my belief as a person who has had relatives really badly treated by the NHS that the big scandals and the cases where individuals have sued the NHS represent only the tip of a very large iceberg of NHS incompetence and cruelty.

On the subject of the latest scandal to engulf the NHS Sky News continued:

A leaked report last year found that clinical malpractice was allowed to continue unchecked for 40 years at a trust with a “toxic” culture.

To the clapping morons out there I say this. Remember, when you are applauding the NHS you are also clapping for a hospital that allowed malpractice to continue for four bloody decades without being stopped or ameliorated. You would really have to be a brainwashed moron to clap for this.

Sky News added:

Assistant Chief Constable Geoff Wessell from West Mercia Police said: “Today we have met with NHS Improvement, The Department of Health and the independent reviewer to discuss complaints made against Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital Trust in relation to maternity services and provision. The independent review is ongoing.

“We can confirm that a police investigation will be conducted to explore whether there is evidence to support a criminal case either against the Trust or any individuals involved. The investigation is now live so we are unable to comment any further at this time.”

Whilst I welcome the involvement of the police I have to say this: I hope that West Mercia Police are more effective in investigating this latest example of NHS ‘death houses’ aka hospitals than they were at investigating another major crime on their patch, the Islamic Rape Gang issues that are suffered by the people of Telford. In the Telford Islamic Rape Gang case up to 1000 children and young women were raped, abused and enslaved by gangs made up in the majority of Muslim men. These crimes were in large part ignored by West Mercia Police for decades and only in recent years, in last decade, have West Mercia actually started to investigate these crimes. Let’s hope that the West Mercia Police force does a better job investigating deaths and disabilities caused by the NHS than they did over the Islamic Rape Gang issue.

If you’ve read this piece and have read not just here but elsewhere about the malfeasance of the NHS and you still feel like applauding this organisation, then you are not just a moron who unknowingly claps along with ever other moron, you are worse than that. If you applaud this appalling and dangerous healthcare system then you are a person who has actively chosen to be a moron and that to me is far far worse than merely being stupid.