So I sat through Jeremy Hunt's presentation about how he invented patient safety a few months back. It was slick and wierdly hypnotic. He cheerfully admitted that he'd done the talk about 80 times. 1/n
This is nonsense of course: for example, Safety First was published in 2006 by Liam Donaldson the Chief Medical Officer.
And I thought about the ideological choice to implement austerity and increase child poverty.
I thought about the cuts to public health and the innumerable announcements about mental health while actual services were cut.
And people waiting frightened and in pain on hospital trolleys, like we had back in the 90s and I had thought we'd not see again.
And I remembered how the Francis report safe staffing recommendations were rejected.
And noticed how he aligned himself with victims of healthcare failures so that criticism of him would feel like criticism of them. Clever. Cynical.
Maybe not the worst health secretary ever - there's Powell, Clarke and Lansley but still a sort of bully in chief. And also the author of so very, very, much avoidable harm.
