60 steps to NHS care could prove terminal

THE FRIDAY THING: IT’S unfortunate that the people who would probably know best about the quality of care they received in hospital are now in the cemetery.

I wonder if health minister Andrew Lansley is going to hire a medium to help set the 60 targets against which care will be measured?

According to Mr Lansley, 24,000 people a year could be saved from an early death if his 60 so-called benchmarks were prescribed — along with, of course, medicines, drugs and bed pans for the needy.

Quite how Mr Lansley’s efforts to keep people alive longer will fit with the Collision government’s plan to reduce the amount of money spent on pensions and sickness benefits (genuine or otherwise, though mostly otherwise) remains to be seen. Demotion to the back benches would not be a surprise.

One of Mr Lansley’s key benchmarks is a commitment to prevent unnecessary early deaths. I thought that was already, while possibly not a benchmark, at least an ambition of those administering treatment to the poor souls unlucky enough to be hospitalised.

While we and our nearest and dearest (we hope) would like to see us returned to full fitness at the earliest opportunity, we sincerely hope those on the other end of the suppository, hypodermic syringe or fresh-out-of-the-freezer stethoscope also hope we don’t snuff it on their watch.

Mr Lansley says he will have failed if his 60 new benchmarks are not met and knows that he will probably lose his job. But patients will hope Mr Lansley’s targets are all met . . . as they will have far more than their jobs on the line if they are not.



A PARTNERSHIP between the Guardian newspaper and the London School of Economics is truly a match made in heaven so it is no surprise that their coming together gave birth to the notion that the summer riots, costing the country upward of £500million, were the fault of the police.
But was it the police who were smashing their way into shopping centres or providing matches for the fires that raged in shops and stores?

It is worth recalling that 75 per cent of those arrested were convicted criminals.

The LSE and the Guardian concluded that police stop-and-search tactics were the reason hundreds of young villains went on the rampage.

Even Labour leader Ed Miliband (certain to be a Guardian reader) said: “There can never be any excuse for the behaviour we saw in August.”

While that is hardly an outright condemnation of the mayhem it is as much as we could expect from Ed.



FINAL WORD: Is it just me or is there something not quite right about forking out for a private jet to bring two pandas, cute though they are, to the UK? At a time when we are all being told to tighten our belts, is it right that we are prepared to splash out £70,000 a year on food for Tian Tian and Yang Guang, as well as paying the Chinese £600,000 a year for allowing them to live here? The hope is that they will produce a baby panda but as the female is up for it for only 48 hours a year (and you thought you were hard done by), it’s an expensive gamble.