Former BMA deputy chair Dr Kailash Chand condemns COVID hospital scam after Sunday Times reveals £1m per patient cost
Leading medic and health campaigner Dr Kailash Chand has condemned the outrageous cost of the government’s ‘Nightingale’ hospitals, calling for the shaming of Health Secretary Matt Hancock after the Sunday Times revealed that only 200 patients were treated in the hospitals because of staff shortages, with each one costing the taxpayer over one million pounds.
Chand, former deputy chair of the British Medical Association (BMA), tweeted that Hancock should be ‘shamed’ for setting up a system that benefited only ‘privateers’:
Dr Chand was speaking in a private capacity, but BMA chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul has also blasted the Tories’ handling of the pandemic in a searing speech.
The Sunday Times has highlighted a ‘staff shortage’ as the reason for the issues and for the fact that only two of the seven hospitals built ever treated patients. But in fact, the shortages and inefficiency were baked into the system: while a list of criteria for admission barred many of the most vulnerable from accessing treatment in a Nightingale facility, the Department of Health also required hospitals sending patients to Nightingale units to also provide staff to treat them, meaning that trusts had to divert staff away from their own hospitals to staff Nightingales if they wanted to send any patients, rendering the facilities near-redundant.
As with so much else the Tories have done in power, Nightingale ‘hospitals’ appear to have been an expensive scam to make the Tories look like they were taking meaningful action and to enrich their backers and friends. Kailash Chand is absolutely right to call for them to be publicly shamed.
The SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you can afford to, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep bringing you information the Establishment would prefer you not to know about.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
“Kailash Chand is absolutely right to call for them to be publicly shamed.” Or publicly sacked!
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/885C/production/_115280943_st-nc.png
Read down to headline ‘Vaccine czar runs 640,000 PR bill. ” another looter, married to a Tory minister. The trouble for them is, other sectiojs of the ruling class who are unable to get in on the act like the Times are getting jealous and spilling the beans it seems.
I can remember a time just 11 months ago, when Tories and rightwing “Labour” MPs, reckoned that the 2019 manifesto was obviously “unaffordable.”
Where are their self-righteous cries now?
The Tory “Nightingale” field hospitals were NEVER even remotely appropriately staffed. They were contrived show pieces to bamboozle the trusting general public that something was being done.
A “hospital” is of no value without adequate and appropriate staffing. The “Nightingale” sites are i believe ALL majority owned by Tory donors and associates. The Excel owners returned or canceled their invoice around just after i posted about it on Skwawkbox.org. Ask AH to provide the exact time to the last minute of my post.
I also posted that private hospitals were also commandeered by Johnson & Cummings AT A PRICE / FEE / UNSCRUTINISED. Zero questions from Starmer on that also. Have they been used to save lives❓❓❓
FOLLOW the money. ALWAYS, follow the money. Especially when Tory snouts are scrounging. They always are.
Suited BANDITS‼️‼️‼️
Got to be profoundly impaired to think building warehouses with beds was going to be remotely useful with nobody to staff them – particularly obvious when the NHS went INTO the emergency short of 40,000 nurses & dog knows how many doctors – in a GLOBAL pandemic with no possibility to poach medics from abroad.
The Tories began building this disaster in 2010 with their wildly over-the-top austerity cutbacks – if Starmer doesn’t get off his arse and make them OWN their pathetic incompetence he’s as guilty as they are.
“profoundly impaired to think building warehouses with beds was going to be remotely useful with nobody to staff them”
McNiven, your idea of “useful” is different to theirs. THAT is what is “profoundly impaired”. Their PRIORITY is CRONYISM ie SNOUTS IN TROUGHS … any trough. Scrounging from the many for the benefit of a very tiny few.
AH could if he wished, point out my posts MONTHS ago when i highlighted this. Despite the thousands of deaths, the Nightingales were almost TOTALLY empty. Even at set up, Casualty… the soap that is, donated or lent a few ventilators. No joke. But not a peep out of Starmer re any of these absolutely SCREAMING scandals of through and through moral degenerates.
Starmer does not DARE, re Covid-19, name Soames & SERCO, Dido Harding & her Tory MP husband and their chums, Kate Bingham & her Tory husband. Starmer wants his turn. He cannot upset the looters and bandits. They almost ALL have bespoke suits at thousands of pounds per suit. Much Stitching & Sewing cannot hide their greedy nature. Every STITCH, every situation to enrich THEIR ONE PERCENT. Starmer must keep himself sewn in tight to their filthy immoral garment. If i am mistaken then, I DARE SIR Starmer to raise a single “forensic” question about:
1️⃣ SERCO
2️⃣ Dido Harding
3️⃣ Kate Bingham re vaccine info to hedge funders
4️⃣ The multi million pound Covid-19 contracts.
5️⃣ Deloitte.
6️⃣ The “Revolving Door” of MPs and Directorships.
7️⃣ Failure to MEANINGFULLY investigate the conduct of the big Accountancy Firms.
8️⃣ FAILURE to investigate the hundreds of millions £ paid by UK governments over the last 30 years.
9️⃣ Failure to give FULL details of all his, Starmer’s, own funders DIRECT and INDIRECT.
🔟 ALL if any promises he has made to ANY entities here or abroad and ALL if any, they have made to him… Directly and or indirectly.
McNiven, just to clarify, my “THAT is what is “profoundly impaired”, refers to the Tories, not to you. You rightly assume that governments would build a field hospital with the intention of saving lives. Their gross mismatch of the Tory spin with substance, from the start of the pandemic here, rumbles them.
Tories had ZERO interest in acting with any honest care.
1️⃣ Refusing to screen at ports of entry, especially Heathrow and Eurostar.
2️⃣ Rejecting offers to conduct Testing and Tracing by any organisations outside the Tory chumocracy.
3️⃣ Refusing the NHS and Public Health’s LONG history and expertise in pandemic control.
4️⃣ Insisting on Tory centralised and PRIVATISED banditry instead of local ESTABLISHED NHS and Public Health ie PUBLIC SECTOR.
5️⃣ The blatant scam of “EAT OUT to HELP OUT”. Guaranteed to spread infection and “bung” money to the wealthiest restaurant owners ie Tory Party FUNDERS.
6️⃣ Allow a myriad of commercial activities to continue which demanded underpaid people eg construction site workers travelling to and fro to their families and colleagues spreading Covid-19 asymptotically. Ditto school children and later universities.
Every aspect of this DEADLY Tory mismanaged pandemic provides overwhelming evidence that HEALTH CARE should NEVER be privatised. Pillars of our public welfare: Health and Social Care, Education, Water, Energy, Transport, Prisons, Military PROTECTION, Housing and the Environment should always be protected from financial speculation and private monopolies.
Of course private entities should be free to conduct their business but WITHOUT direct or indirect SUBSIDIES of the state, eg HMRC “sweetheart deals”. Also, governments should not hand contracts to private sector chums eg SERCO, G4S, CARILLON, the now defunct A4E, the cabal of auditors who give OKs to all the above.
Government should also cease giving billions to train operators who swallow “profits” and leave the state ie US to soak up their inevitable losses.
The MYTHS of Tory and private sector competency, need to be demolished with CLARITY and with SUSTAINED energy. The banditry of Tory / Private Sector CRONYISM needs to be exposed and SMASHED‼️‼️‼️ Their long running scam will not be exposed by turgid academic limp attitudes of reading groups.
FACT: In my CLP, “Lefts” who “control” / “police” responses amongst the “Left”, re: every single issue over the last four plus years, ESPECIALLY since THAT is what is “profoundly impaired”. deceived his way to pocket the leadership, has been to suggest MORE reading matter and MORE discussions of the reading matter. That includes Jeremy’s suspension. The FIRST responses were “Read and discuss”… x y z… Reading a “welcome distraction”.
Been saying it since the implementation of those pop-up hospitals that they were easy money for these fraudsters and shysters.
They should’ve been requsitioned by the government – NOT seen the carpetbagging class paid grotesquely obscene amounts of taxpayer’s cash for sod-all.
Criminal charges simpy MUST follow.
My thoughts on the staffing needs. to care for sick people was constant was
impossible. The NHS has been short of qualified nurses for many years. Vacancies of many thousands exists. When the decision was made for nurses to be graduates I was thrilled having graduated myself) I didn’t need pay for myself because we had to graduate in order for Project 2000 to begin. By all means have nursing students study for 3years but then make them pay their own fees to join an unquestionable essential public service. I am still raging.
Former Nurse Teacher.
Keir Starmer urges Labour to learn from Joe Biden’s ‘broad coalition’
From the Guardian.
Does the bloke have NO self awareness? It is HE who is preventing a broad coalition!
It would appear to be far from a broad coalition:
Before the Dust Has Settled, Corporate Democrats Are Already Attacking AOC and the Left
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-democrats-aoc-biden-trump
Broad Church? Been there done ✔ done ✔that and look what we ended up with…Rodney the plonker knight and his misfits and a membership bailing out.
Who’ll take credit for this new vaccine first I wonder, Hancock or BloJob?
1,2,3, GO!
Too late, Trunt’ll already be boasting it was all his idea.
Trunt’ll be double-suspicious – Biden and Pfizer must’ve been in on it together – too much of a coincidence that the new vaccine just happens to be announced THE DAY AFTER he loses the election ffs.
What do you think Allan?