The Spectator's notes

20 October 2007

Charles Moore on what really did for Ming Campbell

Last week, a farmer pointed out to me that this will be the first year ever that more people will have switched back to conventional farming than will have gone organic. I do not know if he is statistically correct, but the trend is certainly there. The huge rise in the price of wheat makes it enticing once again to be a conventional arable farmer: your yield is double the organic one. Part of this rise results from the ecologically correct craze for biofuels, but more relates to the serious problem of feeding the world. Until recently, we were saved from a global food crisis by the technologically induced increase in yields. This has ceased, and will not resume without further technological change, such as GM. Not for the first time, the organic movement is exposed as a game for the rich. When there are hungry mouths, something else is needed.

Perhaps you cannot blame the media for hounding James Lee, the chairman of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells hospital trust, who has resigned after the deaths from C.difficile. But it is nevertheless possible that he is right — that central government denies power to the board and subjects the executives to ludicrous micro-management. He tried to be fair, but he said, in effect, that lots of nurses are useless and very little can be done to improve or get rid of them. This is visibly true. Far from being the ‘angels’ of popular mythology, nurses have become too grand and ‘professional’ to make sure that patients are healthy. They have actually killed people. If they were bus drivers or building workers, they would have been sacked. But because they work for the sacred NHS, the media considers them beyond criticism.

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MK

October 18th, 2007 11:07am Report this comment

Your statement about nurses is crude, insensitive and harsh but actually fair. In fact you could also include us doctors! Sadly you have missed the point about hospital infections. Medical staff unwittingly contribute to the problem. Male doctors should probably never wear ties and smart trousers. Jackets and long sleeves have already being outlawed in some hospitals! It will be too expensive to implement full uniforms and changing rooms for NHS staff so the infection rates are unlikely to drop dramatically. MRSA, C.Diff, VRE, MREC etc. are not just excerbated by bed pressures and targets. The hospital environments are not properly cleaned(this really started in the 1980s) and the designs of these new PFI hospitals(early 2000s) are grossly inadequate with too few private, "side" rooms and too few disposable curtains. The spores of C.Diff can remain in the environment even when chlorine-based agents have been used. Once you have dealt with C.Diff, you then need to consider that there will be more and more resistant microbes emerging which have evolved as a result of modern farming practices involving blanket antibiotic use. Ordinary Joanna Public carries some of these resistant superbugs around her even when feeling well. This government is quite cluelesss about hospital infections and should have imported the more expensive but "safer" methods of providing healthcare used widely in continental Western Europe. Both main parties are responsible for the current mess. Michael Howard's 2005 election bullet points are beginning to look more and more sensible each week......

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