A good example here is a "puff" piece where we have a Dr David Bennett telling us all that the new White Paper, which should (in my view) be entitled 'Wrecking the Service: Creaming the profits', is going to be wonderful.
This piece, which regurgitates most of the party line is actually tapping into the expertise of Dr Bennett, who is the Chief Executive of the economic regulator 'Monitor'. Monitor it was, of course, the organisation that was giving a clean bill of health to Mid-Staffordshire trust, just as it was becoming apparent as to what was going on there (see posts passim).
Dr Bennett is not a clinical doctor. Here is some detail about him:
David [Bennett] was, up until 1 March 2010, the Chairman of The 10 Partnership, a company that provides strategic and operational support to the public sector, particularly in health. In addition, he advised boards on critical strategic and organisational matters, including working with Monitor’s Board over the last two years.
Previously, David was the non-political Chief Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Head of the Policy Directorate and the Strategy Unit in 10 Downing Street. Before this role, David was a senior partner at McKinsey & Co. In his 18 years with the firm he served a wide range of companies in most industry sectors, but with a particular focus on regulated, technology-intensive industries. Nearly all of this work was at board level, focusing on strategy, organisation and high-level operational issues.
Dr Bennett is not a clinical doctor. He has worked as a management consultant with McKinsey and at Number 10. He is an insider. He says it is all going to be wonderful.
He has worked for Tony Blair. Enough said.
The BBC should be giving more balance to their reporting.
7 comments:
I fear the same and posted a new link to what I inferred. This is beginning to look bad as McKinsey cannot fail, Enron was a success, was it not!
You have all the ex-Blairites on both sides: Private Providers and then the new regulator.
If the BMA voted against the Bill the government will just ignore it.
The only way is for Clegg et al to leave the coalition, but they wanted AV too badly. No one told them they will get more votes to keep NHS public.
"The BBC should be giving more balance to their reporting."
This is presumably irony on your part! You are a lefty after all.
No, it is not that I am "lefty" per se, but this is an uncritical piece of journalism that does not reflect any balance.
Does anyone know what David Bennett was doing before his 18 years at McKinseys? Back in the early 90s, I had a Science teacher at my school called David Bennett but I'll presume for now that's just a coincidence.
Neelu
I noticed this glaringly biased piece as well and it is consistent with the Beeb's downplaying of the scale of health professionals' opposition to this proposed corporate stitch-up. Fancy taking your entirely reasonable objection to that nice man Mr Bolton on R4's 'Feedback' programme? At least a senior news editor would be asked to explain this.
It is time that medical doctors started to describe themselves as something other than "Doctor", such as physician. In Germany the situation is quite clear, "Doktor" is an academic qualification. Medical doctors are "Artz", which is frequently prefixed by a word giving their speciality, a dentist being a "Zahn Artz" (Tooth Doctor). Its quite clear and far better than the British nomenclature. I'm sure that it would also be appreciated by the non-medical doctors, such as my son-in-law who is a Doctor of Mathematics, as he frequently has to make it clear that he knows absolutely nothing about medicine!
Lovely. Would the last person who thinks we have an NHS left in 2012 please turn out the lights before they leave?
Who knew the recession would be such a fantastic excuse for right wing people in the pockets of big business to dismantle our public services?
It is always very dangerous to be ruled by people who will not be affected by their own policies-see our millionaire cabinet.
At the next election, you know what to do. To hell with all of them; vote for any minor party you can. Send those buggers a message. Its all the power you have.
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