Notes from a hospital bed

Too late, minister

2011-10-13T10:30:00.000+01:00

Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health, is all over the media today criticising findings by the Care Quality Commission that has found 20% of NHS hospitals mistreating the elderly and failing to feed and hydrate patients properly. The minister speaks as if it's a bit of a shock to him.

And yet, last February I made a film for Channel 4's Dispatches that highlighted this problem. After the programme was shown I sent the minister a petition signed by 4000 people asking him to do something about the issue. I did not receive even the courtesy of a reply from Mr Lansley. And yet, today, the minister claims he wants to encourage whistleblowers and to stop patients being starved when in the care of the NHS. Incredible.

Only now that the minister's position is threatened is he willing to do anything. It's shameful behaviour.

On yer bike!

2011-08-31T17:38:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I was watching a rerun of Francesco’s Italy, a charming programme following the journey of Francesco da Mosta around his home country. Last night he reached Naples. The busy streets were packed with mopeds and pushbikes. No one was wearing a crash helmet and often there were three to a bike or even young children riding on the crossbar of the pushbikes. As far as I could tell, no one was injured and the population of Naples hasn’t been decimated by this cavalier attitude to road safety.

Contrast this with the news that a father of a two-year-old boy was fined £200 for carrying his son on a crossbar seat on his bicycle in Burton, Staffordshire. The seat was bolted to the crossbar and further fastened using duct tape. The child was wearing a cycle helmet. Ghulam Murtza was handed a fixed-penalty notice by a police officer for the offence which he duly ripped up and threw on the floor in disgust. He was then handed another fixed penalty notice for littering.

Technically Ghulam was in the wrong as, according to the Highway Code, the bicycle hadn’t been adapted to carry a passenger, although one could argue that as the seat was bolted to the cycle frame, it was an adaptation. At court Ghulam was fined £100 for the cycling offence, £85 costs and the pathetic £15 victim surcharge that automatically gets slapped on any fine in this country, just so a bunch of quangocrats can enjoy fat pensions and gilded salaries by pretending to care about crime.

Meanwhile, cycling groups throughout the country are supportive of people being able to carry children on bicycles, as we’re all supposed to be going green and reducing our carbon footprints by using cars less.

However, the most chilling aspect of the story for me was the Orwellian weaselspeak from Chief Inspector Phil Fortun, commander of East Staffordshire Local Policing Team, which covers Burton. He said: 'It is our duty to protect people and ensure the safety of the communities we serve.

‘The bicycle was not made to carry a child in that way and officers took action to protect the young child from potential injury or worse, should the bike have been involved in a collision. The bike's owner was well-meaning in his efforts, but misguided with regards to the safety of himself and his son. Road safety is a priority for Staffordshire Police and we will continue to take the necessary action to keep all road users safe.’

They're only doing it to keep us safe. They could have had a quiet word with Ghulam if they really felt it was their business, but no... far easier to get the fixed-penalty ticket book out.

Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it? Which way is Naples?

Make your mind up

2011-08-17T10:24:00.003+01:00

Barely more than a week ago the liberal-minded citizens of Hampstead and other leafy enclaves of progressive thinking were demanding that rubber bullets and tear gas be used to quell rioters and stop total anarchy sweeping the nation. Fast forward a week and some 3000 miscreants have been arrested and hauled up before the beak. Exemplary sentences are being handed down in order to show how serious society takes the matter of civil disorder. The courts have been sitting around the clock and magistrates have discovered that they do in fact have a backbone if the Department of Justice tells them they can impose tough sentences.

The latest hardline sentence to be handed down from the Crown Courts is a prison term of four years for two boneheaded youths who posted details of a riot they wanted to start, using Facebook. The riot which never happened thanks to the apathy of the good people of Northwich, was advertised on Facebook by the two youths with a time and a place for the mayhem being suggested. The two chaps who clearly are a little bit short changed in the intelligence department didn't even disguise their identity and so plod was able to track them down after members of the public became alarmed at a mob uprising in the commuter belt of Cheshire.

So now the two young men are starting a four-year sentence for inciting riot and already the good people of Hampstead are wringing their hands and muttering that the courts have been too harsh and that this is wholly disproportionate. The depressing thing is the inability of the liberal elite to make the connection with their softness and unwillingness to make examples of wrongdoers with the riots that broke out a week before. They seem totally unable to connect the two. It's no wonder we have so many problems when the great and the good that still largely run this country are so prone to panic and so quick to reverse their hardline views once the moment of danger has passed. No wonder our young people are confused about what behaviour is and isn't acceptable.

Yobbery knows no age or class

2011-08-12T10:58:00.003+01:00

There's a marvellous piece in today's Telegraph by Peter Oborne pointing out how moral decay has set in to our society at its so-called top end as much as at the bottom. The article perfectly captures the sod-you attitude that seems to pervade our sick society. I got a taste of this for myself on Wednesday during a routine visit to the hospital...

I was due for an appointment at my local hospital's physiotherapy department. Fortunately there's a car park for people who are disabled and who can't walk very far to get to the hospital. As you'd expect, many of the people who visit the hospital are disabled and have a disabled parking badge. They vary in the severity of their disability and the demand for spaces is high. For this reason I set off early and arrived with at least 35 minutes to spare before my appointment.

I joined the queue of cars waiting for a space and turned my engine off. A couple of minutes later a car drove past me and the car in front and took a space that was being vacated. As you can imagine, I was incensed. I wasn't bothered about waiting I was just really angry that someone should jump the queue... let's face it, until recently, jumping a queue is just about the worst thing you can do in Britain.

I got out of my car and walked with some effort over to the car driver who had just stuck two fingers up at the rest of us waiting for a space.

"Excuse me... What do you think you're doing?" I asked the rather prim and austere-looking woman who was doing her utmost to avoid my gaze as she rooted around for a wheelchair in the back of her car.

"I'm late for my mother's appointment," she said as if that was some sort of an explanation. I looked at the woman to try to see whether it was worth reasoning with her. She wasn't tattoed or pierced; she didn't look like she was a member of the much maligned underclass. She was (and I'd bet at least £200 on this) a retired school teacher in her late 50s.

"We're all waiting for a space and we all have appointments," I said.

"Well I had nowhere to park and I was blocking the road waiting for a space," she reasoned with a hefty helping of irritation in her voice.

I tried to explain that what she'd done was unfair and she just huffed and puffed and kept repeating that she was late and hadn't been willing to wait in the queue. I got nowhere with her and, in the end, just told her she was no better than a rioter.

"Oh get over it!" she snapped at me before marching off, pushing her mother in a wheelchair that she'd just pulled out from the car.

That woman was the epitome of the nasty, snarling and snappy middle class sense of entitlement that's every bit as ugly and selfish as the looters of London. Is it any wonder that the young look at the selfish ways of some of the baby boomer generation and take their cue from them?

Cruel to be kind?

2011-08-10T10:27:00.005+01:00

It’s becoming quite clear that our country’s problems are deep rooted and have probably been simmering for the past 50 years or so… about the time when our welfare state decided it was going to be a cradle-to-grave affair proposing to fulfil every citizen’s needs.

That well-meaning project now not only looks misplaced and idealistic, but has morphed into a toxic culture of social dependency which has seen our country top the league tables for single parents and divorce rates. The very system that was supposed to support and nurture family life has actually turned out to be its undoing. We’ve literally destroyed our society with kindness and hand-outs. In some parts of the country there are families where a lifetime of idleness has now spanned three generations. This isn’t going to be an easy problem to fix.

Since the riots began we’ve all become amateur sociologists with our own theories of what’s gone wrong. There’s a good reason for this… most of us have experience of these things and can draw our own conclusions of what’s wrong. For example, a friend of mine runs a café in the city in which I live. He employs three staff for most days of the week. Surprise, surprise… they’re all foreign! This isn’t because they are cheaper to employ than British workers as they are all employed legally paying £6 an hour and with full National Insurance contributions. The reason my friend discriminates against British workers is that he has problem finding any. Young British people don’t want to work in catering. The thought of standing at a sink and washing up for four hours is more than they can bear. Many of the British applicants he has interviewed for a job and taken on then fail to turn up for work, or turn up late, looking dishevelled, hung over or scruffy. There seems to be little pride in their appearance or even a wish to work. The Polish and Spanish workers he employs (and he has employed many) are without exception: hardworking, smart, well-educated, willing to learn and reliable.

Now, why is this? What makes a Polish or Spanish worker more willing to put in the effort? In a word: welfare. It would seem that the absence of comprehensive welfare support has meant that these foreign workers have grown up with role models who they have seen going out to work to support their family. Working is seen as normal. Also, the fact that those two countries are nominally Catholic nations with lower divorce rates also makes a difference. Whatever it is, we need to look at what those countries are doing differently to us and then adopt some of those practices. Welfare it seems is quite simply killing our children’s initiative and offering them nothing better than a life of idleness and boredom.

If we are to cut back on the welfare state that has severed the ties of interdependence between generations and family members, we also need to be certain that we offer the chance of an excellent education in the form of grammar schools as well as technical and vocational educations for those who don’t like or want to follow the academic route. We need to encourage businesses so that there are employment prospects for these kids. It’s a two-way contract and we need to completely rewrite the deal between the state and the individual. Iain Duncan Smith’s reforms don’t go nearly far enough. A wholesale rethink is required if we’re ever to get ourselves out of this dreadful mess.

Time for change

2011-08-09T09:34:00.007+01:00

Last night’s rioting in London and elsewhere in the UK was truly shocking. It wasn’t just shocking to see the devastation, the burning buildings and the total lack of public order, but it was shocking to see kids as young as 10 motivated to get out on to the streets to steal things as shallow as a new pair of trainers, a bigger plasma tv or the latest smartphone. Is that really the pinnacle of this generation’s aspirations? To get their hands on some tacky gadgetry! Is that what it’s worth smashing up your community for?

What really concerns me is the potential for further unrest and violence. If this is what these very young individuals are capable of at such a young age, what on earth are they going to be doing in ten years’ time? Ten years during which they will have gained little or no meaningful education, virtually no engagement with their communities and zero prospect of employment. This is surely a social menace waiting to happen.

And how has it come to this? How have we managed to create a society where pockets of people have no interest or respect for the place they live? How have we managed to produce a generation that’s happy to defile its own doorstep?

Part of the problem must surely be the chronic overcrowding of our cities; the transient populations and the breakneck speed of immigration that mean successive waves of newcomers have had little time to put down sustainable roots. We live in an age where many people don’t know their neighbours and have little wish to do so. The tyranny of multiculturalism which has created ghettos rather than communities may have been well-meaning, but the failure to create a cohesive society where everyone speaks a single language and shares a common standard of ethics and behaviour has brought us to the point where our streets are burning, shops are being looted and the vast silent majority is afraid to venture out from behind their heavily barred and locked front doors. This is no way to live. Something has to change.

We now need leaders with vision, optimism and hope. People who can take their snouts out of the trough for more than five minutes and who can help us build a more decent place in which to live; where those with courtesy and concern for their communities are rewarded and encouraged. It’s surely time for change.

Total bull

2011-08-03T07:58:00.004+01:00

Long-time readers will know that I have a healthy disrespect for authority and an intolerance to bullying and overbearing officialdom. Imagine then how much I enjoyed receiving this from my friend Sam.

A Drugs Enforcement Administration officer stopped by at a ranch in Texas and talked with an old rancher.

He told the rancher: "I need to inspect your ranch for illegally grown drugs."

The rancher replied: "Okay… but whatever you do don't go in that field over there," as he pointed to the field behind the officer.

The DEA official verbally exploded and screamed: "Mister… I have the authority of the Federal Government with me!"

He reached into his rear trouser pocket and removed his badge and shoved it under the rancher’s nose.

"See this badge? This badge means I’m allowed to go wherever I want… on any land I like! No questions asked or answers given! Have I made myself absolutely clear? Do you understand?"

The rancher nodded politely, apologized, and went about his chores.

A short time later the old rancher heard some loud screams. He looked up, and saw the DEA officer running for his life and being chased by the rancher's big Santa Gertrudis bull.

With every step the bull was gaining ground on the officer, and it seemed likely that the official would be gored before he reached safety. The officer was clearly terrified.

The rancher threw down his tools, ran to the fence and yelled at the top of his lungs…

"Your badge! Show him your BADGE!"

Get a life!

2011-08-02T10:43:00.011+01:00

Another day… and yet another slagging-off story about the BBC’s Top Gear motoring tv programme, courtesy of The Daily Mail. Now, I know Jeremy Clarkson can be a boorish buffoon at times but he’s undeniably funny and a breath of fresh air in the stultifying tyranny of political correctness that we’re subjected to in this country. Since when did people start having their funny bones removed? Has the whole country lost its sense of humour?

The latest nonsense from the Top Gear knockers involves the latest episode of the show, which was screened on Sunday evening. Presenters James May and Jeremy Clarkson were testing electric cars and in a very informative feature explained many of the drawbacks of these ridiculously impractical milk floats. Part of the film showed the evil pair discussing their findings. But rather than parking in normal parking bays, the diabolical duo parked in spaces reserved for disabled people - causing 'a storm of protest' from disabled motoring groups who said it was 'typical' of Clarkson.

Cue the demented rantings of complete nitwits with a humour bypass castigating ‘the evil Clarkson’. According to The Daily Mail: "It was as they stepped out of their cars - with Clarkson and May even standing on top of a disabled road marking - that shocked viewers realised they had parked in disabled bays."

Now the Mail doesn’t make it clear how many of these viewers were shocked, or how much medical attention they required following such a heinous crime. I'm more likely to believe that some bone idle journalist noticed the faux pas and decided to call up some professional offence takers who would supply a suitable quote to beat Clarkson with. The Mail clearly has it in for the overgrown schoolboy.

Clearly having sucked on a very unripe lemon, Jim Rawlings, of Disabled Motoring UK, was quoted in the article saying that he was sure that Clarkson 'wouldn't have cared' about parking up in a disabled bay. He said: ‘I'm sure the last thing on Jeremy Clarkson's mind was that he was parked in a disabled bay.’

Yes, Jim… and you’d know exactly what was going on in Jezza’s head, wouldn’t you?

He went on to say: 'The abuse of non-disabled people parking in disabled bays is rife, and with people like Jeremy Clarkson and James May doing this other motorists will just think they can just park wherever they like.

'People who are patently not disabled, like Clarkson and May, obviously didn't have a passing care that a disabled person might have needed those spaces.

'I'm sure Jeremy Clarkson especially would not feel contrite about parking in a disabled bay - it shows a lack of feeling and care and a total lack of compassion.'

Peter Lyne, of the Disabled Motorists Foundation, said it was 'extremely frustrating' watching non-disabled people park in disabled parking bays.

Clearly both Peter and Jim aren’t getting out often enough in their Motability chariots; certainly not often enough to get a reasonable perspective on life.

A Top Gear spokesman said: "Top Gear does not condone the misuse of disabled parking bays. The programme had permission from the owners of the car park to use the bays for a short period of time to enable filming to take place unhindered, and members of the production team were with the cars at all times. There were other disabled spaces available, and of course had anyone needed to park in one of the spaces occupied by Top Gear, we would have moved immediately."

Technically, I am a disabled motorist (although I don’t feel the need to belong to Disabled Motoring UK or the Disabled Motorist’s Foundation in order to drive my car) and I found the Top Gear item hugely amusing and wasn't offended in the slightest. Shame on The Daily Mail for this nonsensical piece of 'journalism' and as for the disabled motorists... they haven’t got a leg to stand on!

Hello again

2011-08-01T10:30:00.002+01:00

Thank you for the lovely messages asking me to post again and to give you an update on how I'm faring. Things are going pretty well on the health front. My broken leg has finally fused and is now a single piece after two years of being 'non union'... I presume I can expect it to go on strike fairly soon now that it is 'union'.

The bad news is that I've lost nearly five centimetres of my leg left which means that I now walk round in circles unless I wear my special shoes to level me up. Now the long slog back to work begins. I am hoping to make another tv programme but these things take such an unbelievably long time to commission and arrange but I'm hoping something will turn up. In the meantime I need to turn my efforts to getting back to my writing and broadcasting work. It's not the easiest sector to get back into, particularly in the depths of stagflation, but I'm hopeful.

As far as the hospital food campaign goes, I managed to collect just over 4000 signatures for my petition which was sent to the Health Secretary. Unfortunately no reply from the government even though they've had it for five months. I suppose that tells us how important nutrition is to the people who manage our health service. It's probably time for me to embarrass the Health Secretary but I thought I'd wait until he started his holidays. Doesn't do any harm to keep them on their toes once they've departed for the beach.

I'll let you know what happens.

Hang your heads in shame!

2011-05-26T10:28:00.000+01:00

Anyone who's spent more than a couple of days in a modern British hospital will recognise the symptoms: the stench of unemptied bedpans, the emergency buzzers deliberately left out of reach, the unfilled drinking water jugs and the moans of patients who have gone too long without pain relief. I make no apology for saying this. I know that not all hospitals are the same, but there's too much of a pattern of familiarity running through a report released today that says elderly patients are having to have water prescribed because staff aren't ensuring their patients are adequately hydrated. This is a scandal. There's no other word for it. And to all those doctors from the BMA complaining about the government's plans to improve the health service... you should be ashamed of yourselves. Not content with taking telephone number salaries and treating your patients like Medieval serfs, you spend your time blocking basic improvements to patient care while the people you're supposed to heal are dying of thirst. Physician heal thyself!

Hospital breakfast American style

2011-05-05T17:22:00.000+01:00

Looks fairly healthy and well presented

Nanny goes to work

2011-03-23T17:58:00.003Z

Quick! Hide your lunchbox. The boss is coming. Put that donut down and pull the reserve apple out of your desk drawer.

Sounds like some sort of Orwellian nightmare, doesn’t it? However, this sort of thing could be happening to you at work if the coalition government gets its way. Despite pledging to butt out of our business and roll back the nanny state, it appears that our politicians have been hijacked by the usual bunch of self-serving busybodies who infest the third sector these days.

Under the sinister sounding Health at Work Network, companies and other organisations are being urged to sign up to ‘guidelines’ to help employees get fitter. The actual words used are: ‘help employers use the workplace to improve the health of their employees’ and ‘help people at work lead healthier lifestyles’. These days the word ‘help’ is pregnant with threat and euphemism.

So, as well as managing your work, your line manager could soon be responsible for monitoring the food you eat, the alcohol you drink or even whether you smoke. These guidelines, as with all government guidelines, are there to change people’s behaviour. But if companies don’t enforce these guidelines vigorously enough, the government menacingly hints that laws could be introduced to make sure that we’re all poked and prodded into doing physical jerks and never sampling a bacon sandwich ever again.

If you think it sounds far fetched, you only have to look east, in the direction of Japan. There the government has charged companies with making sure that employees lose weight and get fit. Companies that fail to literally slim down their workforce face fines and sanctions. Presumably all employees are weighed weekly, in much the same way that a farmer might weigh his cows to gauge when they're ready for slaughter. Well, now it’s about to happen here.

So what sort of things could we expect from this nonsense? Free gyms in the workplace? Possibly... but far more likely we’ll see cheaper options such as workplace vending machines stocked with apples and mineral water rather than Cola and crisps. Expect to see limits on the amount of alcohol served at the company Christmas party or even physical fitness playing a part in your annual performance appraisal. For instance, the proposals call on companies to offer ‘responsibly-sized portions’ in works’ canteens. Only government can make the word ‘responsible’ sound sinister.

How on earth have we arrived at the situation where the government is now poking its corporate nose into the grown-up relationship between employer and employee? We already have companies laying down government inspired rules on things like jokes in the workplace or other behaviour in the office, and it’s about to get worse. Perhaps we’ll soon have a government sponsored spook in every office in much the same way that the SS had a man on every U-boat during the war.

All I can say is... thank goodness I’m freelance.

The figures speak for themselves

2011-03-21T17:22:00.001Z

Prisoners get more money spent on their meals than NHS hospital patients, shocking figures have revealed. The average prison meal costs £2.10 but cutbacks mean some NHS hospitals allocate as little as £3 per person a day - just £1 a meal.

Figures suggest the food budgets overall have dropped by as much as 62 per cent at hospitals in England compared with five years ago. The NHS spends around half a billion pounds on catering every year, but it has been hit by a welter of complaints about poor-quality food and malnutrition, especially among the elderly. Around one in five trusts has reduced spending on food since 2004-05, with 36 out of 191 cutting back, according to figures analysed from NHS Information Centre data.

At least 20 trusts spend less than £5 a day feeding each patient, with St George's Hospital, south London, spending least - just £1.04 on each meal or £3.11 a day. It used to spend £6.67 a day, but a spokesman said the figure did not include snacks or late meal requests. Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust spends £1.11 per meal.

The biggest percentage drop in spending took place at the Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in West Sussex, where there has been a 62 per cent drop over the past five years. The amount spent per day went down from £10.97 in 2004-05 to £4.11 last year. A hospital spokesman said the cash only covered the cost of providing three main meals and a drink.

There was a 61 per cent cut at St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospital, down from £23.67 to £9.06 per patient per day and at Ealing Hospital, London, down from £10.37 to £4 last year.

Roger Goss, co-director of Patient Concern, said the problem would only get worse as hospital struggle to make efficiency savings. He said: 'Hospital food is a disaster. Each hospital is allowed to decide how much it spends but the Department of Health should set a minimum amount and ringfence the budget.' A spokesman for the British Association of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (BAPEN), said it was 'outrageous' that NHS hospital patients fared worse at mealtimes than criminals. She said: 'Nutrition care in hospitals is about more than just the food quality, and not enough is being spent on it.'

She said screening, assessment and support were all vital, as patients needed to be treated as individuals and where necessary given help to eat the food put in front of them. We're wasting money in the long run because of a failure to get these policies right. This isn't a new problem, there have been disjointed attempts to address it but the problem remains that it's an easy target for the finance team,' she added.

TV chef Lloyd Grossman, who headed a £40million revamp of NHS menus in 2000 that was shelved after he quit five years later, revealed last month that he was blocked by a 'chronic lack of common sense'. The former presenter of BBC's Masterchef, who was not paid for his involvement in the initiative, said patients were suffering unnecessarily because of poor hospital food. He was continually frustrated in his efforts to get healthy and tasty recipes into hospitals and blamed lack of political willpower.

The Daily Mail's Dignity for the Elderly campaign has repeatedly highlighted abuses caused by underfeeding and poor nursing practice in hospitals and care homes.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'It is important that patients are fed well so their health improves. Hospitals make their own decisions about their food and therefore, over time, the amount spent will differ between hospitals. Patients must not be left without enough to eat or drink. The Care Quality Commission has tough enforcement powers for cases where proper standards are not being met.'

© Daily Mail

That's one way to make them take notice

2011-03-15T10:45:00.001Z

A patient who took controversial hospital caterers to court has won a £200 compensation payment. Michael Cooper branded Medirest’s meals a “disgrace” and said he would not have fed them to pigs after a 14-day stay in Southampton General Hospital. Instead he defied the pain from a knee operation to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in the canteen racking up a £200 bill. When Mr Cooper left hospital he asked Medirest to reimburse him but the firm refused.

So the 59-year-old from Millbrook launched a county court case and won a legal judgement ordering the contract catering company to pay him back the money. Now Mr Cooper hopes other unhappy hospital diners will follow his lead and force catering and health bosses to take action to improve the food. But Medirest bosses dispute Mr Cooper’s claims and say they did not defend the case because “the relevant personnel” did not receive the court papers until after the deadline for response – despite Mr Cooper delivering them by hand a fortnight earlier.

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust (SUHT) awarded private company, Medirest, the five-year £17m contract in 2009, to supply meals that are pre-prepared in St Albans, Hertfordshire and then steamed in microwaves in ward kitchens. Hospital bosses insisted that a four-week action plan early last year had improved standards. But disgusted at the food offered to him in October, retired lorry driver Mr Cooper made the trip down to the canteen every mealtime.

Mr Cooper, who is due to return to hospital for another operation in 12 weeks, said: “If I had pigs I wouldn’t even feed them the hospital food I was given. I would have rather starved than eat anything they served up for me. It is a disgrace.

“I’m not looking forward to going in again but I have told my wife to get the rolls and sandwiches ready because I will not eat what they have to offer.”

After serving the Southampton County Court papers to Medirest himself last month, the company failed to respond. Now the court has ordered the company to pay Mr Cooper the full £200 he had claimed.

Mr Cooper said: “I hope I have started something here and that other people might follow in my footsteps. If Medirest gets a flurry of people claiming against them I am sure they will be forced to take action.”

Medirest claims that the latest survey revealed more than 70 per cent of patients were very satisfied with the food. A spokesman said: “We dispute Mr Cooper’s claim and had the relevant Medirest personnel been aware of the claim being issued we would have taken the necessary steps to defend this. However, on the basis that the judgement has been entered we will abide by the court’s decision in this particular case.”

© Southern Daily Echo

Out of sight, out of their minds

2011-03-09T16:15:00.002Z

Those nasty smelly things that really make many of us sick have decided to ban displays of cigarettes. Yes, MPs have decided that we need to have temptation put out of our way by hiding fags. As I've said before, I'm not a smoker but these knee-jerk reactions that result in banning anything that offends or could be a bit dangerous leaves me feeling really uneasy.

Cigarettes are still legal. The government doesn't have the balls to ban them because it's too addicted to the taxes they raise. However, the government has decided to ban smoking in enclosed spaces and is now going to ban displays of cigarette packets by making shops keep the evil weed under the counter. Experts believe this will stop people smoking.

Let's think about this logically, shall we? Illegal drugs aren't displayed or even available for sale anywhere legally and yet drug consumption has risen exponentially for the past four decades. So how will hiding cigarettes help stop smoking? Won't it just make them even more exciting and mysterious to kids?

By all means, let's discourage smoking which is, after all, a disgusting, smelly and unhealthy pastime. But where does all this banning end? How about alcohol? What about meat? Should we ban butter? Where do we stop?

If we carry on like this there won't be any displays in shops and everything will be under the counter. Shopping is soon going to be as mad and hilarious as the Two Ronnies sketch involving fork handles. We'll have to play charades to get what we want. Won't someone treat us like grown-ups?

Ihre papieren, bitte

2011-03-02T11:00:00.004Z

The country may be in the grip of a fierce recession as public services are being cut back to the bone, but thank goodness there are some frontline public sector workers out there still carrying out vital work. For example, the brave council wardens and officers of Essex Police who are planning random inspections and roadblocks across the county to look for evidence of illicit cigarette use. They will even hunt for cigarette butts in the ashtrays and smell the air inside vehicles in order to clamp down on people smoking in commercial vehicles..

When the Health Act was introduced in 2006, workers were banned from smoking in their company cars. Vehicles used primarily for business purposes by more than one person must be smoke-free zones. Anyone caught breaking the law faces a £50 fixed penalty fine or a possible court conviction, which carries a £200 fine. The culprits’ employers will also be informed and also be heavily fined.

Chris Kitchen, acting head of environmental services at Tendring District Council in Essex said: “Police together with council officers will be stopping lorries, vans, company cars and public transport vehicles on the highway. We have noticed that people are smoking in commercial vehicles where in fact it's banned and we will be looking for evidence that people have been smoking." He added: "We will be looking for ashtrays and whether the vehicle smells of smoke."

Ian Wilkins, environmental officer at Tendring District Council, explained that the scheme was intended to raise awareness of the law. He said: "When the new legislation came into force on July 1 2007, it became illegal to smoke in virtually all enclosed public places and public and work vehicles.

"I think it is fair to say that most people understood the rules when it came to public buildings, but there was some confusion over the rules about smoking in vehicles. We will use the month of March to carry out inspections, offer advice and generally try and make sure people are aware of and compliant with the legislation. This is primarily about raising awareness but, if we feel the case is appropriate, we will take action where contraventions are observed."

The scheme which is being carried out throughout March has been organised to coincide with National No Smoking Day which takes place on March 9.

I'm not a smoker but this sort of thing makes my blood run cold. How long before we hear those words: "Halt! Ihre papieren, bitte"?

Jurassic thinking

2011-02-28T15:11:00.003Z

The idea that, one day, dinosaurs might roam the earth again is no longer fiction. Step forward Bob Crow, leader of the RMT trade union. Mr Crow has suggested that we can deal with the UK’s budget deficit by putting a 1p tax on every email sent in the UK. That way we can avoid making any pubic sector workers redundant, including no doubt our highly efficient and very courteous railway workers.

The man’s a genius - an absolute bloody genius! That crafty little plan is going to be just the ticket for promoting inward investment and increasing business communication. It’s amazing how Mr Crow hasn’t managed to become prime minister. Why the hell didn’t anyone else think of that idea? It makes you realise that he’s really worth the £95,000 a year he’s paid, up a mere 12% on last year.

In other news, drivers could soon be required to employ a man in with a red flag to walk in front of their cars in a bid to cut road accidents.

Dying to get home

2011-02-28T07:34:00.003Z

Tonight's Dispatches exposes the heartbreaking way that elderly folk are being denied the dignity and peace of dying at home, surrounded by loved ones and the things that are familiar to them. The shocking undercover footage of elderly patients being treated with cruelty and disdain will break your heart.

Death is the last taboo in our society and yet it is something we must all face. We strive to live a good life and yet some people are being denied a good death. Despite government promises to allow everyone the right to choose to die at home, half of primary care trusts are still not providing the 24-hour nursing care required to make that a possibility.

Channel 4’s Dispatches uncovered the case of 80-year-old Ken Rasheed, who spent his last days in East Surrey Hospital with Parkinson’s and pneumonia. Nursing staff seemed to have no idea he was close to death, and are filmed telling him off for not swallowing his pills – even though he was so ill he could only swallow them with yoghurt rather than water.

One nurse is filmed telling him impatiently: ‘This is a busy ward; [other] people need some care as well’, as her colleagues callously discuss the impact of spending cuts while leaning over Mr Rasheed to change him. To make things worse, he contracted E.coli and septicaemia while on the ward. He eventually died in hospital – despite wanting to die at home in front of a Manchester United game or a cricket match.

Dispatches, Secret NHS Diaries is on at 8pm tonight on Channel 4.

Something for the weekend

2011-02-25T16:47:00.004Z

I've had so much response to the clip of me eating Braised Liver & Bacon Hotpot that I've decided to print the recipe here so that you can make your own version of this recipe from the Better Hospital Food recipe vault.

Now, this version feeds rather a lot of people so you may need to ask a few friends round. Unfortunately the recipe doesn't have any tips on how to make it taste as bad as the one I had. A good place to start would be to buy the oldest and toughest slab of ox liver that you can find and then some mechanically recovered slivers of connective pig tissue. Serve with waterlogged cabbage and unseasoned mashed potato. Here's the recipe. Let me know how you get on.

Braised Liver and Bacon Hotpot

Ingredients For 100 Servings

9	kg	Liver Sliced
350	ml	Vegetable Oil
1.8	kg	Bacon Back
1.5	kg	Onions Diced Fresh
2	kg	Swede Diced
2	kg	Carrots Diced
180	g	Flour Plain White
370	g	Mustard Whole Grain
7	lt	Chicken Stock
120	g	Sage
8	kg	Potatoes Cooked Sliced
250	g	Butter
10	g	Black Pepper Ground

Method

Texture:	Slices of liver and pieces of bacon with lots of diced vegetables all under a crisp sliced potato topping. The stock/sauce element should be quite thin.
Colour:	The top will be a golden brown and the stock will be pale and will have a slight orange/golden tinge to it. The colours of the vegetable should be seen.
Flavour:	Lots of strong flavour to the stock from the vegetables, bacon and liver. The dish contains grain mustard, which should be noticeable but not overpowering.

Heat 200ml of the oil and fry the liver browning well on all sides. Remove and drain well. Arrange the liver in trays

Heat the remaining oil and fry the bacon pieces till it starts to brown, add the diced, onions, swede and carrots and cook for 3 minutes without colouring the vegetables. Sprinkle in the flour and stir in well, cook for a further minute stirring often. Stir in 250g of the mustard and then gradually add the hot stock stirring in well till smooth.

Add the sage then pour the vegetable and bacon mix over the liver.

Par boil or steam the slices of potato. Allow to cool arrange the slices over the liver ensuring a complete and even covering.

Melt the butter and mix in the remaining mustard. Brush the sliced potatoes with it. Season with the salt and pepper and bake in a preheated oven 180ºc/350fº/gas 4 until the potatoes are fully cooked and golden brown

Calories	314
Protein	23 g
Fat	20 g
Carbohydrates	16 g

This can't be right

2011-02-24T07:14:00.003Z

Sshh... listen carefully. Can you hear the unmistakable noise of heavy breathing, chomping and snuffling? It sounds just like a pig eating out of a trough. But no... it's only the nation's new breed of fat cats helping themselves to even more public money to fund their engorged lifestyle.

Top NHS managers have enjoyed an average 50% pay increase over the past five years. In health trusts up and down the country these glorified paper shredders are now earning more than the prime minister while wards are staffed by medically qualified individuals on salaries that are below the national average.

The NHS has to cut spending by £20 billion in the next three years and the way this will be achieved is by sacking 50,000 frontline workers. Actually, I'm so pleased that they aren't axing any managers. I mean, when I was in hospital I know I could have managed without the nurses and healthcare assistants on the ward, and at a push I probably could have done away with the doctors, but if you'd taken my managers away I would have been just left there in a room, on my own, without any managerial support of administrative backup of any kind. I would never have been able to get better and get out of that hospital.

It's time the public stopped carping on about people like the chief executive of The Heart of England NHS Trust who receives a reported £240,000 a year. In my view he's worth every penny. Oink!

Watch it here

2011-02-23T14:42:00.002Z

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3164059

It's all part of the problem

2011-02-23T13:01:00.015Z

The hospital that I spent ten weeks in has hit back at the programme I made for Channel 4. Now let me get this straight from the start: I love the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. Do you want me to say it again? I love the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. It's a fantastic hospital with the most amazing staff. Everyone from my surgeon to the healthcare assistants on the ward were absolutely brilliant. Even the catering staff did their best. But the problem is the food supplied by the outside food contractor.

Sadly, the Nuffield has responded with the same sort of denial that every hospital trust issues by implying that somehow I must have been mistaken. Well, I'm sorry chaps. Just look through my blog again and ask yourself if you would serve some of that food to your family? No, I didn't think so. Burying your heads in the sand and pretending this didn't happen is silly. You won't improve things and you end up looking silly. Embrace the criticism and improve things. Make a positive out of a negative. Here's the statement issued by the hospital

“We are sorry to hear that Mr Sparrow’s experience of hospital food during his time as a patient did not meet his expectations. We recognise that patients with extended stays in hospital, as in Mr Sparrow’s case, may result in menu ‘fatigue’. During his stay at the hospital between September and October 2009, Mr Sparrow was provided with a variety of meal options in addition to the daily menu choices. Our records show that he received regular visits from catering staff to ensure his needs were met.”

So the blog and my video diary was a complete fantasy brought on no doubt by a fevered imagination fuelled by excess quantities of morphine. Barmy! Look, guys, I'm on your side. I love your hospital, I love your staff but your catering supplier is letting you down. Most places would take that sort of criticism constructively and would do something about it. Would the chief executive really eat my liver and bacon hotpot? I'd pay really good money to see her try.

Until this denial in the NHS is dealt with, nothing will change. Anyone who saw Heston Blumenthal's documentary filmed at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool can see the problem. The defensive caterers refuse to see there's a problem. The staff eat better food than the sick children and the poor kids are left at the bottom of the pile. Meanwhile the majority of the chefs are used to cook food that's sold in the hospital's cafe and restaurant in order to pull in £2 million a year. Is it me or does anyone else find this upside down logic baffling?

What is it?

2011-02-22T19:32:00.002Z

Absolutely vile but what is it? Thanks to Kelly for sending the photo in

Thank you

2011-02-22T07:47:00.000Z

Thank you to all of you who posted here or emailed me after last night's programme. Some of your stories were heartbreaking and I will try to get round to replying to you but I am snowed under with the response and there is only me to deal with all the correspondence.

Thank you too to the people who posted some fairly vile comments about me personally and my ingratitude at the state for honouring my National Insurance contributions. All I can say is that some of the more rabid posters neither listened not digested the full argument. I wasn't moaning about my healthcare. I had excellent nursing and surgical care and I would do anything to support the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre. It's a fantastic hospital and I am more grateful than I can ever say for the love and support that many of the staff showed me. However, I feel under no obligation to be grateful to Sodexo or the catering contractor. They are paid money to do a job. If the money on offer from the hospital is insufficient to provide decent and nutritious food then I suggest they turn the contract down. It's not difficult.

The NHS has faults and the programme uncovered some disturbing information about how vulnerable groups are cared for and fed. For those who blindly defend the system as it stands, all I can say is that you probably haven't been in hospital with a serious illness yet. It is, of course, always possible for friends and family to help feed a patient, but sometimes patients don't have family living locally or they may be at a specialist hospital some considerable distance from home. Then there is the argument that they should pay for the food. Overlooking the fact that medical insurance normally covers food costs, it can be difficult if you fall seriously ill and can't work. Money becomes tight or non-existent. The last thing you need is the financial worry. That's why the NHS was set up. If you pay for food, then how about drugs? What about dressings? Maybe personal care too? Where do you want to stop?

I could go on but I'm really tired so forgive the shortness of the post.

Let's make a change

2011-02-18T08:10:00.001Z

I've been writing here for the best part of 18 months, lamenting the dreadful state of hospital food in some of our hospitals. On Monday 21 February (Channel 4, 8pm) the documentary I've been making for the past year finally reaches the tv screens of UK viewers. I think it takes a fair and balance look at nutrition in our hospitals and how it affects different types of patients. I hope you all get a chance to watch it and let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I've started a campaign to push for better hospital food. If you're a UK registered voter then please visit the campaign site and consider signing the petition.

I'd also like to point out here that although my experience of hospital food wasn't very good, I have only the highest praise for the medical care I received at my hospital. NHS workers take a lot of criticism, much of it deserved, but there are still thousands of dedicated and wonderful people who care for the sick and go the extra mile to make their patients comfortable, often in the face of amazing obstruction from petty regulators, managers and consultants.

To the frontline workers of the NHS who really do try to make a difference... thank you.

Can we sink any lower?

2011-02-16T08:01:00.003Z

Just when you think the world can’t get any more insane you read another story about the NHS and realise that the lunatics really are running the asylum. Take today’s announcement that hospitals are to start using trespass laws to evict elderly patients whom, in the hospitals’ view, are bed blocking.

Anyone who has ever had to take care of an elderly patient or relative will know that the provision for home care is patchy at best. Sick elderly people who live alone and don't have any close family are not able to take care of themselves. What home care there is available is about to become even rarer than hens' teeth with local councils determined to slash frontline services before reforming their gold-plated pensions and stratospheric salaries. Dave Cameron’s Big Society will have to take up an awful lot of slack to fill the void.

My own experience of care of the elderly in their homes includes a 79-year-old lady being left to nurse her sick husband , including having to change his catheter bag, administer drugs and deal with washing the bed linen once a day and changing bed sheets with her husband still in the bed. There was an offer of some care workers to pop in on a daily basis, but these individuals were pathetic excuses for help. They often arrived late, spent most of their time texting friends on their mobile phones and refused to do anything that involved lifting the patient or cleaning him up. Frankly, I don’t know what the point of sending them round was.

The same lady needed help herself last year. Her husband had died and now she needed nursing. The same useless bunch of poorly educated young girls turned up with one aim in mind: to get their time sheet signed – complete with falsified arrival times – and then to push off to the next ‘client’. All they did was microwave the old lady’s dinner and make her a cup of tea. In the meantime, she was left to sit in a chair that was soaked in urine.

And now our hospitals want to use the law to throw out people who need nursing and send them back to their homes in the care of useless carers, which, incidentally, the elderly must pay for. The number of spaces in council run homes or funding for places in private care homes has reduced dramatically so what's to become of these vulnerable people?

Is the NHS really proposing that we throw out elderly patients and let them fend for themselves? Because that’s what these proposals will mean in practice. Once again, words fail me that we can be such a barbaric and uncaring society that we can't even manage to feed, bathe and care for the elderly and give them a little bit of dignity.

Proof at last

2011-02-15T07:39:00.008Z

I’ve been banging on for ages about the poor treatment of our elderly at the hands of the NHS. I've heard first-hand reports from patients’ families who've told me how their loved ones were often left untended and unfed. Tales of dehydration, of being left in soiled bedlinen and denied kindnesses the rest of us take for granted meant their final days were spent in misery. The families’ complaints were brushed aside with callous disregard as the NHS damage-limitation machine cranked into action.

Since raising the matter on my blog I’ve also had a few abusive posts from NHS supporters or people who work for our health service, but the truth remains that some of our elderly are treated worse than animals when admitted to some of our hospitals. There is an endemic culture in some sectors of the NHS that sees the elderly as simply not worth saving or worthy of dignified and caring treatment.

Fortunately, at last, the establishment is grudgingly admitting the truth. The Health Service Ombudsman has published a report today that says the reasonable expectation that an older person or their family may have of dignified, pain-free end of life care in clean surroundings in hospital is not being fulfilled. NHS provision is failing to meet even the most basic standards of care.

It goes on to say: “These often harrowing accounts should cause every member of NHS staff who reads this report to pause and ask themselves if any of their patients could suffer in the same way.”

According to the Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, the patients in the ten cases that she studied had all been loving, active people of a generation that didn’t like to make a fuss. She goes on: “They had simply wanted to be cared for properly and die peacefully – but they all suffered unnecessary pain, indignity and distress while in the care of the NHS. As a result, they were transformed from alert and able individuals to people who were dehydrated, malnourished or unable to communicate.”

Shocking examples of lapses in care contained in the report include:

• An 82 year-old who died alone because staff did not realise her husband had been waiting to see her for three hours.

• A woman was not washed during 13 weeks in hospital, did not have her wound dressings changed and was denied food and drink.

• A woman who was discharged from hospital covered in bruises, soaked in urine and wearing someone else’s clothes.

• The life-support system of a heart attack victim was switched off despite his wife asking to leave it on while she contacted the rest of the family.

In response to the report, Nigel Edwards, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “It is of course important to put these 10 examples in perspective. The NHS sees over a million people every 36 hours and the overwhelming majority say they receive good care. But I fully appreciate that this will be of little comfort to patients and their families when they have been on the receiving end of poor care.”

He still doesn’t really get it, does he?

Words fail me

2011-02-08T07:27:00.007Z

What on earth is it supposed to be?

A friend sent me this photo last night. It's a 'meal' that was served up yesterday to a child who had just undergone an appendectomy. Poole Hospital should hang its head in utter shame. I don't even know what it's supposed to be.

Since my upcoming documentary on hospital food was announced, the propaganda machine of the NHS and the Hospital Food Caterers' Association has swung into action. I've experienced smear tactics and a robust response from the hospital caterers on the possible content of my programme, even before it's been shown! Some feathers have been seriously ruffled.

I make absolutely no apology for naming and shaming hospitals that serve muck like this or where patients aren't even afforded the dignity of receiving adequate food and drink. The more these vested interests and arrogant forces have a go at me, the more I shall do to make sure they are held to account for the scandalous waste of public money and the nutritional neglect of patients. I won't be bullied or intimidated into shutting up.

Racism is everywhere

2011-02-07T14:32:00.010Z

Sometimes I get the overwhelming urge to rush back to hospital and place myself back in traction. At least when I’m safely tied to a hospital bed there’s less chance of me seeing things that will send my blood pressure to dangerously high levels.

Today my blood pressure has been needlessly cranked up thanks to one Sonia Carr of Warminster. This humourless and sour individual has cost the taxpayers of Wiltshire thousands of pounds by reporting a chairman of a local health watchdog for racism.

Mrs Carr was at a meeting of Wiltshire Involvement Network (that’s WIN, in case you hadn’t already got it) when the chairperson of the group commented that rumours of pending changes to the NHS were likely to spread like wildfire. The expression the chairperson actually used was: ‘You cannot help the jungle drums.’ The 70-year-old responsible for uttering such a viciously racist comment was one Anna Farquhar, a former bigwig from the Citizen's Advice Bureau and a lifelong member of the St John Ambulance service.

Incidentally, the meeting was held in the notorious ghetto of Potterne Wick, a mere petrol bomb's throw away from the dangerous inner city of Devizes, in the hideously multicultural county of Wiltshire. Mrs Carr immediately challenged Mrs Farquhar at the meeting for the dreadful faux pas. Mrs Farquhar then apologised and carried on with the meeting.

Unfortunately, Mrs Carr, who just happens to be a member of Wiltshire’s Race and Equality Council, wasn’t satisfied and wouldn’t let things go. She decided to report Mrs Farquhar to the local council and a six-month investigation ensued, resulting in a ten-page report on the incident. At an estimated cost of £10,000, the report is an absolute bargain at just a grand per sheet of A4. Tsk... anyone would think we were in an age of austerity or something.

Mrs Farquhar and her fellow committee members were then asked to accept the report’s findings that the language had indeed been racist. It seems that for something to be racist, all that’s needed is for one person to be offended by something someone says: that’s all it takes.

Because Mrs Carr thought ‘jungle drums’ was a racist comment, the law says it must be racist by virtue of the fact that she thinks it is. In effect, Mrs Carr has acted as judge, jury and executioner. She claims she wanted a more fulsome apology from Mrs Farquhar and for her to be subjected to equality and diversity training. No doubt she’d also like her to wear sackcloth and ashes just so she can feel morally superior. According to council sources, Mrs Carr has plenty of ‘form’ for this sort of thing having raised allegations of racism against against the police, the fire brigade and council officers.

I daresay that Mrs Carr’s chums at the Wiltshire Race and Equality Council were very pleased with her as they could end up delivering the race and diversity training. I mean, what else do they do for the staggering £113,463 of public money they receive to spread this sort of poison? By the way, a mere £216 of their funds were donated by private individuals... that's not exactly what I call a ‘grass-roots’ organisation.

Mrs Farquhar quite sensibly refused to accept the legitimacy of this McCarthyist nonsense; as a result, the invertebrates running Wiltshire County Council have now banned all members of Wiltshire Involvement Network from all council premises and meetings – after all, they're practically members of the Klu Klux Klan, aren't they? The group’s funding has also been withdrawn.

How could such a ridiculous situation arise in a country that’s supposed to be a developed nation of intelligent people? How does someone like Mrs Carr manage to persuade an entire county council to partake in her hideously distorted view of the world? It’s political correctness gone mad, I tell you.

Oldham weighs in with fat tax

2011-02-02T12:07:00.050Z

According to The Sun newspaper, health-conscious councillors in Oldham want to slap a £1,000 ‘fat tax’ on takeaway outlets – in an effort to tackle obesity.

Can we just be absolutely clear about something here? Councillors don’t want to ‘slap a fat tax’ on anything... the meddlesome, unelected council officers do. I’ve never met a councillor of any political hue who ever had an original policy thought in their life. The vast majority of ‘initiatives’ that come from local councils are dreamed up by ambitious council officers anxious to be the first to introduce triple roundabouts, gay maths lessons, healthy eating programmes or any other fashionable nonsense that happens to take their fancy or will give them a step up to the next rung of the career ladder.

Anyway, back to the local council in Oldham, a town in northwest England, where the local council is reported to be considering charging takeaways a levy of £1,000 a year, which the council claims will go towards healthy eating initiatives. In other words, as local council budgets are cut, the local nomenklatura who run our councils are desperately looking for ways to stop their empires from being cut back. There must be hundreds of five-a-day coordinators and diversity champions quaking in their boots right now. Their bosses will be most upset at the prospect of losing staff; in the world of local government, having your department downsized is worse than having your private parts cut off.

Apparently not all food outlets will fall foul of the tax as the council is considering exemptions for takeaways that serve healthy options such as ‘smoothies’. Obviously, the town hall gauleiters don’t realise how much sugar, flavourings and other crap reside in the average smoothie. I doubt very much if any obese residents living in Oldham need fortifying with a smoothie.

This isn’t the first time that a local authority has tried to enforce healthy eating. Last year a number of councils distributed new salt dispensers to their local chippies. These new shakers have fewer pouring holes and therefore deliver less salt than the conventional shakers. This concern for our health is all very touching but it might be an idea if the jobsworths made sure our bins were emptied regularly and that local rat populations were brought under control before they turn their attention to salt and fat levels in our diet.

Frankly, the foodie in me doesn’t really care if these proposals to tax takeaways serving lard and other vile food are introduced. However, the libertarian in me certainly does. This Orwellian nudging and interference in our food choices is no business of local councils.

Dying for a drink

2011-02-01T10:57:00.009Z

Two patients a day die in our hospitals for want of a drink of water. According to figures released by the National Office of Statistics and reported in the Daily Mail, some 800 patients die of dehydration in our hospitals every year. That’s a higher figure than those dying of dehydration in elderly people’s homes. And those figures are just the officially recorded cause of death. The actual number of patients who die from dehydration could be far higher.

The figures for deaths through malnutrition in our hospitals stand at 284 in 2008, that’s up from 175 deaths recorded back in 1997. The squeeze on NHS food budgets and a lack of money made available for extra help feeding frail and elderly patients could be to blame. However, some of the problem may, according to anecdotal evidence, be due to an increasing reluctance by some nurses to attend to basic needs such as feeding and hydration of patients. Often this work is left to unqualified healthcare assistants.

These figures are for deaths attributable to malnutrition and dehydration. The true figures may never be known but we do know that a large number of elderly patients have their health impacted by poor nutrition. If these official statistics are true, then the NHS is owning up to more than 1000 people dying every year in our hospitals through lack of food or fluids. That’s one third of the number of people killed in road accidents each year. Unfortunately, unlike road deaths, where enormous sums of money are spent on speed cameras and other traffic calming measures, little appears to be done to address these entirely avoidable deaths.

There’s no other way of saying this… deaths caused in our hospitals through neglect in feeding and hydration need to be made a serious offence. It’s nothing short of state sponsored murder when patients die of thirst or hunger. Until someone takes responsibility and is jailed for this, patients will continue to die needlessly.

Richard's lunch

2011-01-30T13:30:00.000Z

Friend Richard is back in a BMI hospital for another op and here's his Sunday lunch. Not bad at all. Pass the Burgundy!

Pooling resources

2011-01-24T17:39:00.002Z

Times are hard for all of us but perhaps none more so than our local councils. In the past they may have been profligate, wasteful and careless but a swingeing budget cut of 20% is a wonderful way to concentrate the mind of even the most highly paid chief executive.

In an effort to save money, Redditch Borough Council in the West Midlands is the first local council to use gasses from a crematorium to heat water for the local swimming pool. The heat given off by the crematorium’s incinerators can reach a scorching 800 degrees C, and at the moment the heat just goes up into the ether, warming up the atmosphere and doing no one any good.

One or two squeamish residents don’t really like the idea all that much but it sounds eminently sensible to me. Smart thinking like this is essential if we’re to maintain enough cash in the coffers to keep those five-a-day coordinators in work.

Channel 4

2011-01-24T16:40:00.000Z

If you've arrived here from the Channel 4 Dispatches website and want to read some of the posts made from my time in traction then click here

A fruitless task

2011-01-24T11:04:00.002Z

Could it be possible that the five-a-day madness that has spawned an army of outreach workers is load of old codswallop? Do we really have to eat five pieces of fruit and vegetables every day? Well, no… some fibre zealots reckon we should now crank up our intake to eight a day. God knows what that’s going to do for methane emissions and global warming but no doubt the five-a-day coordinators will now be renamed eight-a-day and will have a corresponding increase in salary, bonus and gold-plated pension. Carrot juices all round.

However, according to a growing band of nutrition experts, the whole five-a-day fallacy may be a load of old rubbish. Apparently the original campaign was dreamed up in America (but you knew that) by a group of fruit and vegetable growers working with a cancer charity. Recent research points towards the advice being utter nonsense and that excessive consumptions of fresh fruit and vegetables doesn’t significantly reduce the chances of developing cancer and heart disease.

According to obesity expert, Zoe Harcombe, the health lobby would have been far better off urging us to eat foods that are more beneficial. She says: “I don’t agree with the prevailing view that we should all eat more fibre in order to help us feel full and keep our digestive systems moving.

“The fact is, we can’t digest fibre. How can something we can’t even digest be so important to us, nutritionally? We are told that we need to ‘flush out’ our digestive systems. But essential minerals are absorbed while food is in the intestines, so why do we want to flush everything out? It is far better to concentrate on not putting bad foods into your body.

“The biggest tragedy of all is the lost opportunity from this misguided five-a-day campaign. If only we had hand-picked the five foodstuffs that are actually most nutritious and spent what the Department of Health has spent on promoting fruit and vegetables over the past 20 years on recommending them, we could have made an enormous difference to the health and weight of our nation.

“If you ask me, these foodstuffs are liver (good for all vitamins and packed with minerals), sardines (for vitamin D and calcium), eggs (all-round super-food with vitamins A, B, D, E and K, iron, zinc, calcium and more), sunflower seeds (magnesium, vitamin E and zinc) and dark-green vegetables such as broccoli or spinach (for vitamins C, K and iron).

“Add milk (good for calcium, vitamins A and D), porridge oats (magnesium, zinc and B vitamins) and cocoa powder (magnesium and iron) and, hey presto, you’re provided with the full quota of every vitamin and mineral our bodies need.”

That sounds like sensible advice to me, and a hell of a lot easier than munching your way through a pile of tasteless vegetation that’s mostly water and fibre.

More liver, anyone?

The NHS juggernaut rolls on

2011-01-20T09:10:00.001Z

Few people can deny that the NHS needs to change in order to make it more responsive to the people it’s supposed to serve, rather than the people it’s currently serving: mainly management bigwigs and staff.

So, on the face of it, the government’s move to slash bureaucracy seems like a good idea. Around 30% (or 21,000) NHS pen pushers are due to be wheeled away in their office chairs, to the local Job Centre, stopping on the way to cash their redundancy cheques for £1 billion. A mere 40,000 will remain in post to provide vital management functions; after all, policy documents and gender monitoring reports don’t write themselves, do they?

However, before you get the Champagne out to celebrate this bonfire of the bureaucrats, temper your joy with the fact that much of the work these managers were doing is now being passed to GPs; and we all know how generous and public-spirited our doctors are. With the average GP scraping by on just £105,000 a year (not including evenings and weekends) these front-line angels of the health service will no doubt take on this extra work for a very reasonable sum and we shall all be better served.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? We’re going to swap one bunch of paper pushers for another grasping faction of the medical fraternity. This is all going to go swimmingly. Dare I suggest that the health secretary's plans are going to be as easy to implement as pushing manure back into a cow with the aid of a paperclip.

Why do we seem to have so many problems running healthcare in the UK? I know other countries have their problems, but there’s something seriously amiss here. Are we sure that mucking around with a crumbling structure is going to make any difference at all? If we were talking about something like a sports club or a large corporation then I’d say give it a shot but this is people’s lives and pain we are gambling with.

On one hand politicians are trying to save money and stretch budgets while, on the other, the unions and medical profession are trying to stop any erosion in their members’ interests. In the meantime the poor voiceless souls in the middle – the patients – appear to have been entirely overlooked. No one has asked us what we really want. Still, the NHS wasn't set up for the exclusive benefit of the sick and the frail. Perhaps it’s time for a far more fundamental reform.

The party's over

2011-01-18T08:09:00.007Z

I like a drink, occasionally; although I’m not dependent on the stuff. I managed to eschew alcohol throughout the six months of my incarceration. I sometimes drink a glass of Rioja with a meal at the weekend or maybe a flute or two of Champagne, when it’s on offer but I'm not, and nor will I ever be, the type of person to settle down behind the bins at the back of my local Asda with a bottle of White Lightning cider or a can of Carlsberg extra strength lager for company. They’re simply not my tipple.

However, just because I don’t choose to guzzle own-label alcopops from Lidl, doesn’t mean I should try to ban or price it out of someone else’s reach just because I happen to think it’s not good for them or that I know better how to protect their health by placing booze on the top financial shelf.

So, the news that our illiberal and nannying government, consisting of well-heeled Eton and Bullingdon types, has decided to introduce a minimum price for alcohol fills me with dread. I honestly thought that when Commissar Brown was exiled to a gulag in Fife, we’d pass into an altogether sunnier and more enlightened place where government would finally start behaving like the servant of the people rather than it’s cross and humourless governess. Alas, it was not to be.

But surely, these new price controls will only affect that nasty cheap booze that could so easily double as Toilet Duck or Domestos? Well, that may indeed be true, but don’t think for a moment that the illiberal meddlers behind this move will stop there. Once they've tasted the right to interfere with our personal liberty, these puritans will set up base camp and start lobbying for the price to be pushed up to a point where we have as healthy a relationship with alcohol as the Finns and Swedes do.

Do Cameron and his advisors not understand, as they quaff their Dom Perignon in the subsidised bars of the Houses of Parliament, that the Trojan lobby horse they’ve so convivially welcomed in will soon be eyeing up all types of booze, food, tobacco and other substances that might offer the tiniest crumb of comfort during this endless night of austerity?

No, thought not.

Bank teller narrowly escapes death

2011-01-15T10:53:00.011Z

A brutal and savage murder was narrowly avoided this morning in my local town centre, thanks to a quick thinking member of the public who intervened. Step forward Mrs XTM and take a bow for managing to avert slaughter in my bank.

Allow me to explain, I’ve been meaning to go into my local branch since receiving a scrap of paper explaining that my Individual Savings Account (ISA) had matured. I thought I’d better pop in to find out if the account had been rolled over for another year. The letter was deliberately hazy and poorly worded. It probably should have said something like this instead:

"Dear Sucker

Your ISA has matured. It's now earning virtually zero per cent interest and we're currently loaning it to some hapless sod at an extortionate rate of interest. If you wish to renew your ISA and place it on a derisory rate of interest for another year, then please call in at your local branch on any Wednesday afternoon between the hours of 3.15 and 3.30pm when one of our surly and uninterested customer service harridans will attend to you. Please bring two forms of photographic ID, a DNA swab and one of your first born's kidneys.

Yours faithfully

A Swindler

Branch Manager"

I approached the customer service assistant who was slumped at the front desk looking like a bored bunny. She had all the presence and dynamism of a tranquilised sloth.

“I’d like to talk to you about my ISA,” I told her. She looked at me as though I’d just asked her to unblock the u-bend of an elephant’s toilet.

“Got any ID,” she growled.

I passed her my bankcard and politely inquired if she could tell me how much interest the account was paying. I used to be able to look up this information online but the sneaky bastards have removed it as part of their new Smoke & Mirrors Customer Charter.

“You’re getting 0.1%,” she told me, with the merest hint of a smirk on her deeply unattractive countenance.

“That’s outrageous,” I replied. “Why do you automatically have to drop the interest rate from 2.6% to nothing? How would you feel if I did that with my mortgage? What if I made you come to me every year and renegotiate the interest rate you charge me? Would you lend me that money for just 0.1%? It’s sneaky, underhand and unprincipled.”

The woman sighed before gleefully telling me that all the banks are the same.

“So, you’re all sneaky, underhanded and unprincipled. That makes me feel a lot better. You’re nothing but a cartel,” I said. She responded with the uncomprehending, bovine stare of a cow with learning difficulties. “I’ve a good mind to move my account,” I snapped. She looked at me with a withering mixture of pity and insolence.

“It will take a long time to transfer your account to another bank,” she spitefully hissed.

By this time I was incandescent with rage… as incandescent as a scotch bonnet chilli or a jalapeno pepper. I wanted to lean over the counter and throttle this deeply unpleasant individual with the highly misleading word 'service' on her name badge.

She looked at me as if to say: 'you’re screwed and there’s jack you can do about it.'

The fact that the government now owns my bank just made things worse. Not content with ramping up charges and slashing services, these unprincipled bonus-awarding vermin are now raiding my savings to keep their own inflated lifestyles afloat.

It was at this point that Mrs XTM managed to bundle me out of the bank saying: “Leave her! She’s not worth it!”

An hour and a half later and my blood pressure is slowly returning to normal as I sit here concocting evermore beautiful and exquisite ways of wreaking revenge on the bank from hell.

Charge of the tight brigade

2011-01-11T08:06:00.008Z

Insurance companies aren’t noted for their sympathetic approach or philanthropic nature, but even these vultures of the financial world understand that people who are sick or terminally ill with cancer have special needs and deserve a little consideration.

One health insurance provider is now including up to £300’s worth of parking fees in its policies for anyone who has to go to hospital for chemo or radiotherapy.

Hospital parking charges can really impact on cancer sufferers, many of whom routinely have to pay up to £6 a day to park their cars while receiving life-saving or life-prolonging treatment.

As usual in the United Kingdom, cancer patients of the NHS in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland get special concessions for parking but the stupid English must cough up (poor choice of words, I know) for their hospital parking.

The Health Top-Up cash plan from Western Provident Association covers parking costs and incidental expenses incurred by other family members. Insurance being a competitive business, we can expect to see this sort of cover becoming more widespread. But our healthcare is publicly funded, it's part of the reason we pay tax at 20% and an additional 12.8% National Insurance. We pay these things so that we don't need to go out and buy some private insurance to top up the ever decreasing public provision.

Mike Hobday, of Macmillan Cancer Support, said: ‘If insurance companies can recognise the distress and high cost of parking charges to patients why can’t NHS hospitals? ‘

Quite simply, Mike, because they’re run by a bunch of hard-hearted, pencil-pushing imbeciles who are far more concerned with ticking boxes, reaching targets and triggering bonus payments than caring for patients.

Mark my words; the bureaucrats will be be introducing hospital charges for food and medicines before we know it. Pay more, get less... that seems to be the way ahead these days.

First they came for the drinkers

2011-01-10T14:35:00.004Z

Since 2008, when the recession began to bite in the UK, British retailer, Marks and Spencer, has been offering its customers something called ‘Dine in for a Tenner’. In a time when fewer people can afford to eat out, the classic British clothes and food store bundled a main course, vegetables and dessert for two along with a bottle of wine - all for a very reasonable £10.

It was a generous gesture offering exceptional value to those who’d been hard hit by the economic downturn. So what could there possibly be to complain about? For once a major British business wasn’t ripping off its customers and was trying to offer a chink of cheer in these austere times.

Unfortunately, despite millions of Britons taking advantage of this fortnightly offer, alcohol campaigners complained that Marks and Spencer was tempting people with the demon drink. “What,” they asked, “would happen if people bought the promotion and ate it every night of the week?”

Well, ignoring the fact that M&S only run the promotion every other weekend, what’s so wrong with two people sharing a bottle of wine? Will the earth stop spinning on its axis?

The British Liver Trust claimed such deals should carry health warnings, as they encouraged heavy drinking among middle-aged professionals - yet were promoted in sections of stores away from the alcohol department.

The charity made its claim as official statistics showed 22 per cent of the middle classes drink at least five days a week - compared to just 11 per cent of manual workers.

British Liver Trust spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said: 'These meal deals are prominently advertised and make regular drinking at that level seem like a perfectly acceptable everyday habit. They are totally wrong.'

'If a couple share a bottle of wine every night, the woman would be more than double her limit by the end of the week and the man would also be way over.'

Marks and Spencer decided to give the promotion a try by excluding the bottle of wine. The result... a total flop. Guess what? People actually enjoy a glass of wine or two with their food, in common with most people in Europe. For years we’ve been lectured and hectored by the nut cutlet brigade, imploring us to be more like continental Europeans and to drink with our food rather than swilling ale in pubs. But now that pubs are closing at record rates because we’ve choosen to stay home and drink wine with our food, they’re trying put a stop to that too.

The term puritan springs to mind. And the definition of a puritan is: Someone who is haunted by the thought that someone, somewhere might be having a good time and enjoying themselves.

Let's tell nanny where to stuff her five a day

2011-01-08T01:06:00.009Z

Oliver Letwin MP

I thought our last lot of power-crazed politicos had taken the nanny state to new extremes but the coalition appears to be vying for the prize of legislators with the most intrusive and impertinent policies. It would appear that our new overlords are looking at ways to 'nudge' us into being healthier. They want to nag us into buying healthier food at the supermarket.

Oliver Letwin MP is in charge of the sinister and odious-sounding Behavioural Insight Team based in the Prime Minister's office. This nasty little group of snitches and sneaks has been set up to 'nudge' us into behaving in the way the government would like us to behave - such as eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day or not exceeding our recommended number of units of alcohol.

In order to nudge us into healthier eating the gastro-fascists would like to see unhealthy food placed on supermarket top shelves in much the same way that porn is in newsagents... er... or so I'm told. Of course this would discriminate against short people but as they are perhaps more prone to put on weight there may indeed be some logic in the suggestion.

Other brainwaves from the propeller-headed policy wonks at Number 10 include these nauseating little morsels from their nasty little policy document:

"Visual prompts are already widely used by supermarkets and food manufacturers. But there is potential for visual prompts to be introduced in more ways that help people make healthier food choices. Examples include experimenting with the design of trolleys and considering the order or height of healthier options on supermarket shelves.’

I don't want to be 'helped' to make 'healthier choices' and if I do choose to make healthy choices then that will be a decision I shall take for myself without anyone else's help. Why do politicians insist on treating us like small children with learning difficulties? Why don't they go and do something useful like making sure our rubbish is collected or that our airports can still function when there's a heavy frost?

The Behavioural Insight Team claims that action needs to be taken because of the UK's obesity problem. With six out of ten adults apparently being overweight it claims that the cost to the economy is £7 billion a year. Presumably this report wasn't written by the other set of idiots who reckon our poor eating habits are costing the NHS an unbelievable £13.5 billion a year.

Here's my message for the Behavioural Insight Team: When Ollie Letwin manages to slim down his porcine frame so that it can be squeezed into a 34-inch pair of Levi 501s, then I'll start taking healthy eating advice from him and his posse of policy prats. Until that day arrives they know exactly where they can put their five a day.

Rant over.

A large weight on the NHS

2011-01-07T17:35:00.005Z

Malnutrition costs the NHS (according to the Department of Guesstimates) a staggering £13.5 billion a year. Like me you’ve probably just skipped over that figure without really registering the amount. It’s almost impossible to visualise that much money. Well, if you consider that the coalition’s welfare cuts are going to save a paltry £3 billion, then £13.5 billion is an astronomical sum. So, can the NHS really be spending that sort of money sorting out the fallout from poor dietary habits?

I’m assuming this figure is encompassing the cost of medical care from every person suffering from heart disease, dodgy joints, diabetes and any other illness however vaguely connected to food. Obviously the figure also includes treatment for bulimics and anorexics as well as the case of one Paul Mason.

The 50-year old is now a relatively sylphlike 37stone (235kg) down from a staggering 70stone (445kg) and obviously a dead cert for Slimmer of the Year. Mr Mason didn’t lose weight all on his own, however. He was fortunate enough to have been fitted with a gastric band (or should that be an orchestra?) when his weight threatened to kill him.

Now Mr Mason is suing the NHS for compensation because he feels he wasn’t given the dietary advice that he asked for soon enough. At one point Mr Mason was hovering up an astonishing 20,000 calories a day and funding his compulsive habit by stealing money from letters at a sorting office. He then persuaded his mother to take out a second mortgage to keep the larder topped up.

A typical day's food for Mr Mason included a breakfast of an entire packet of bacon, four sausages and four eggs complete with bread and hash browns. Lunch was four portions of fish and chips along with a couple of kebabs while his evening meal would consist of roast dinners, curries, pizza and more chips. Daily snacks of 40 packets of crisps, sausage rolls and pasties damped down his hunger and helped his weight to balloon.

Mr Mason claims that any compensation he receives from the NHS will go towards helping other obese people to control their eating habits. Perhaps they’ll all go out for a curry to swop bingeing tales.

The care that Mr Mason has received so far from the NHS has cost the public purse an eye-watering £1 million, around £100,000 a year. When he originally asked for help, Mr Mason’s GP apparently suggested he ride his bike more often. By the time he was tipping the scales at a gargantuan 64 stone, Mr Mason was sent to a dietician.

And before anyone accuses this larger-than-life character of being a whinger, Mr Mason told The Sun newspaper: “I want to set a precedent so no one else has to get to the same size - and to put something back into society.”

Very public spirited of him, no?

Waste not, want not

2010-12-14T09:11:00.008Z

The Treasury Christmas tree

The term PFI may sound like a nasty medical condition but it is, in fact, a nasty financial condition. Those three innocuous letters – PFI – actually stand for Private Finance Initiative. Our previous Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was a big fan of PFI and he used the scheme to finance a lot of public expenditure when he was masterminding the nation's economic miracle.

PFI works in a convoluted Byzantine way that only an accountant could dream up. Say the government wants to build a new school or hospital but doesn’t want to borrow the money and thereby appear to add to the national debt, it does a sneaky little trick of going to some nice money lenders and asking them to build the school or hospital. In return the money lender gets a juicy contract to rent the building back to the government and provide all the services required to go with it.

Now, moneylenders aren’t known for their philanthropic gestures so the government has to offer them a pretty big carrot to get involved. Imagine a carrot that’s taller than Mount Everest and juicier than a ripe papaya; that’s the sort of carrot we’re talking about. To get the PFI companies ‘on side’, the government agrees to grant 30-year contracts to run and maintain these new establishments. Kerrching!!

So far, the government has managed to secure £60 billion of new public assets via PFIs, at a bargain cost of just £260 billion. The PFI schemes have produced a veritable torrent of cash for the providers of these dodgy financial instruments.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. When Gordon Brown wanted to tart up the Treasury, rather than taking money out of general taxation which he was far too busy hosing over his client state, he got a PFI set up to finance the whole thing. The deal meant that the company running the PFI would be responsible for everything that happens to the fabric of the Treasury buildings. This is something that the new Chancellor, George Osborne discovered a couple of weeks ago when the estimate for providing the Treasury’s Christmas tree dropped on his doormat. The Chancellor was staggered to see that the PFI firm responsible for the Treasury was going to charge a whopping £875 for erecting and decorating the tree.

Understandably, the frugal Old Etonian was livid so he instructed his top mandarin to pop out to B&Q and buy a £40 tree and have that put instead. “Sorry, no can do,” said the man in the bowler hat. "It’s PFI rules," he explained. Anything that needs erecting in the Treasury – be it a light bulb or a Christmas tree – is now the responsibility and the purview of the PFI contractor. It’s all there in the small print on page 187 of the contract that Gordon signed.

George was fuming and ordered a report on the ridiculous situation, only to be told that only the contractor had to put up the tree on health and safety grounds, and that if the Chancellor insisted on bringing in his own tree then the contractor would refuse to water it, turn the fairy lights on and off and there would also be problems in disposing of the tree on Twelfth Night since it would be classed as industrial waste and would have to be removed in a vehicle that was licensed to remove business waste. EU regulations, guv.

Well, George then threw all his toys out of his pram and the PFI contractor, no doubt anxious to please the new boy, agreed to donate a tree to the Treasury free of charge. However, the contractor refused to decorate said tree, no doubt feeling it had already done more than it should to celebrate the festive season. George's mandarin was duly dispatched to Argos and decorations were procured for a very reasonable £40. Treasury staff then decorated the tree but the contractor bridled at supplying a ladder in order that the star might be placed safely at the apex of the tree. Fortunately, the Treasury’s top mandarin, who had enhanced clearance for health and safety, having attended a ladder awareness course, was able to place the star on the tree himself. Job done.

Now all this PFI chatter may sound a million miles away from the NHS and hospital food, but when you realise the amount of colossal waste and overcharging that goes on in the world of PFI, you can see that billions of pounds are literally being poured down the drain in this dreadful waste of money in many of our hospitals. For instance, the PFI contractor in one of the hospitals I was being treated in charged the hospital a staggering £45 to provide a sandwich to patients outside of mealtimes. So, when patients returned to the ward late for a meal after having had an operation, the contractor got paid almost £50 for turning up on the ward with a cardboard box containing an apple, a dry little sandwich and a cheap low-fat yogurt. And we wonder where all the country’s money has gone.

Merry Christmas.

Breakfast

2010-12-14T08:38:00.003Z

Yet another yummy treat from Daniel in Perth, Western Australia. Looks like Weetabix that's been coated in breadcrumbs and then deep fried before being lovingly nestled on a bed of baked beans. However, I've heard from Daniel that it is in fact: a beef croquet (horrible things - like a cheap, soft meat pie), rice bubbles with full-cream milk, and orange juice, with some prunes in the covered bowl and toast in the bag in the top left.

Don't you just love the presentation? Eat your heart out Gordon Ramsay!

Gold snap

2010-12-09T17:16:00.003Z

TV chef Heston Blumenthal's latest recipe for this age of austerity is a pudding made of gold. The Spiced Popping Candy Chocolate Tart was created by Heston especially for supermarket chain Waitrose and features a hazelnut shortbread base with orange chocolate ganache on top.

The dessert is decorated with gold leaf, gold lustre and that horrible popping candy that was popular back in the 1970s when it was called Space Dust. For those who don't have any spare gold lying around in their larder, a sliver of gold leaf is available from Waitrose for a very reasonable £3.99, while gold lustre will set you back just £2.49 and Space Dust is priced at a mere £2.99.

Neil Nugent, Waitrose executive chef, said the gold leaf was an affordable way of adding a touch of Blumenthal's magic to home-made desserts. 'For those who missed out on the sell out Hidden Orange Christmas pudding, this is great way to stamp the Heston hallmark on your Christmas,' he said.

'The gold leaf is something that is fun and innovative – and a great way to recreate some of Heston’s theatricality and spectacle in your own home. It is an affordable luxury for Christmas when people want to add a bit of sparkle and glamour.'

I doubt NHS patients will get to taste Heston's little confection which costs as much to make as four days' worth of food budget per patient. Still, if you feel like a 24-carat Christmas then here's the recipe:

For the spiced chocolate popping candy tart:
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
Pinch of ground nutmeg

¼ tsp ground ginger
100g dark chocolate (minimum 60% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces
25ml grapeseed oil
50g popping candy

To decorate the tart:
Spiced chocolate popping candy (see above)
2 tbsp cocoa powder
½ tsp Rainbow Dust Gold Lustre
1 sheet edible gold leaf

Method
Measure out the ground spices into a bowl and mix them all together thoroughly.

Put the chocolate and oil in a bowl and place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Using a spatula, mix the chocolate until it has fully melted and is well combined with the oil. Take the chocolate off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.

Once cool, add the popping candy and mix well. Pour the mixture through a sieve in order to remove the excess chocolate and then spoon the popping candy on to a parchment-lined tray and spread with a spoon. Transfer to the freezer for 10 minutes to set.

Break the set popping candy into small pieces and add the spice mix. Toss them together in the bowl. Keep in an airtight container until needed.

To decorate the tart:
Sprinkle the spiced popping candy generously over the surface of the tart. Place the cocoa powder and gold lustre in a sieve and dust over the tart. Add the gold leaf for a really glitzy finish.

Nothing to do with us, Guv!

2010-12-08T16:41:00.005Z

A great-grandmother was left in soiled bed sheets for 12 hours as nurses chatted outside her room in a multi-million pound NHS hospital, according to The Daily Mail.

Ruby Hamilton, 75, had been admitted to the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Edgbaston, Birmingham, with heart failure five weeks ago but was forced to sleep in urine and vomit-covered sheets despite repeatedly buzzing the nurses for help.

Ruby's horrified daughter Christine, 48, said: 'I was so shocked a patient could be left in such an appalling state. 'My mother had been lying in her own filth overnight. It was so bad her sheets were drenched with urine. She was very distressed and humiliated but the nurses didn't seem to care. They just stood outside her room gossiping while my mother suffered.'

Ruby's family are now so concerned about her being left in squalor again they are taking it in turns to sleep in a chair next to her. She is expected to be discharged later this week when she will return home to Birmingham where she lives with her husband Hurbert, 85.

The new 1,213-bed Queen Elizabeth Hospital opened in June and was hailed as one of the most modern facilities in the world. Hospital bosses yesterday apologised to Ruby and her family.

Kay Fawcett, chief nurse at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, said: 'The hospital is concerned about the question of care delivered to patients at all stages of their illness. I am satisfied that the patient was not left for a long period of time in a wet bed and, as soon as the nurses were alerted, they took immediate steps to address the situation and to unreservedly apologise to the patient and the relatives.'

So, it sounds as though the hospital is saying Ruby's family made it all up and that the poor old lady wasn't left soaked in her own urine, vomit and faeces? Nothing to see here... move along!

Not as daft as it sounds

2010-12-07T16:20:00.004Z

An article in today's Daily Mail suggests that hospitals serve Big Macs or Pret à Manger sandwiches to short-term patients. I can already hear the likes of Gillian McKeith holding up garlic and a crucifix at the very suggestion, but hang on a moment... it's a fairly sensible idea. Besides, some hospital food makes the I'm A Celebrity bush tucker trials that so revolted Ms McKeith look like a hearty and welcoming meal.

Almost everyone, whether they're willing to admit it or not, would, if faced with the choice of a wholemeal tofu sandwich or a cheeseburger, probably opt for the fast-food option. Oh, of course they'll pretend to prefer the 'healthy choice' but unless they want to end up looking like Ms McKeith, they'd be better off with something a bit more tasty.

Now, no one is suggesting that you feed pizzas, burgers or baltis to long-term patients, day after day. However, so much food is wasted when fed to short-term patients that it's just a scandalous waste. Either do away with food for short-term patients and bring in an outside caterer from the high street from whom patients can buy their own food, or else serve up something edible. It's no good serving up Second World War slop just to keep Unison members in a job.

When it comes to longer term patients, hospitals really need to move up a gear and start planning menus of freshly cooked nutritious food that's tailored to each individual patient's nutritional needs. Alongside this, the hospitals should be offering vitamin and mineral supplements as well as probiotics for those who really could benefit from their use.

There... NHS food problems solved and money saved.

A matter of concern

2010-12-07T11:18:00.003Z

Stephen Neary is a 20-year-old man with Autism trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare. It's a story that should be on the front page of every newspaper – but it won’t be. They will keep silent. If you are concerned that we're marching towards an unaccountable and arrogant police state, then please read this heart-breaking story and spread the word.

More Aussie grub

2010-12-07T07:38:00.000Z

Yet another appetising snap from Daniel. It's a piece of fish with cubed pumpkin, murdered broccoli and some unnaturally white mashed potato. I will say one thing for Australian hospital food, they do at least try to give you whole pieces of meat or fish. Frankly, I'm not sure what I would have done with a whole piece of protein as most of my meals were mashed, hashed, sliced, diced or otherwise beaten to a pulp in order to accommodate patients without the benefit of their own teeth. That said, I'm still not sure that this plate of sustenance would do anything to raise my mood while lying in my sick bed.

Disgraceful!

2010-12-06T08:09:00.003Z

According to the UK Patients' Association, the number of elderly people leaving NHS hospitals in a malnourished state has doubled in just three years. Apparently, nurses are too busy to make sure that patients eat their food. Some 13,500 frail patients developed malnutrition in our nation's hospitals last year. How on earth nurses and doctors can allow this to continue is beyond my comprehension.

There's a lot of talk about serving food for vulnerable patients on so-called 'red trays' but the evidence I have collected so far on my research into the scandal of inadequate NHS food, tells me this is not always effective. Nurses may well claim they are too busy to care but I've personally experienced sloppy nursing, staff gossiping around the nursing station and a general couldn't-care-less attitude displayed by some healthcare workers.

No one on the wards of our hospitals appears to be in overall charge and more time is spent on form-filling and the collection of box-ticking statistics than it is on general healthcare. Many times when I was unable to move I was just tossed a cloth and a bowl of water and told to wash myself. Hardly ever was there sufficient time or care to help me maintain a reasonable level of human dignity. It's an absolute disgrace and made me really, really angry.

If I can do something about this scandal by publicising the problem here then I will. At least something good may come out of my experience. If any readers of my blog would like to email me stories or evidence of neglect and inadequate food then I'll do my best to publish it here.

It's time we stopped this stain on the reputation of the NHS.

Look at the size of that...

2010-12-04T17:54:00.000Z

Another shot from Daniel and just look at the size of that sprout! It's a mini cabbage. Where in Australia can you possibly source a brassica that large? Can't say that the unidentified dish is floating my boat. I can't decide whether this meal was put together as some cruel and unusual punishment or else it was assembled by a blind chef. Wise decision to leave this one, Daniel.

Masterchef reject

2010-12-03T09:08:00.002Z

Another photo from Daniel showing how dire hospital food can be. I can only assume that Australia has imported its hospital chefs from Blighty. We've done a few bad things to Australia over the years but they never deserved this. Time for reparations?

It's freezing here...

2010-12-01T09:40:00.001Z

While Britain suffers arctic temperatures and snow drifts, the Hot Air Carnival currently taking place in Cancun, Mexico, continues at a red hot pace. Some 20,000 delegates attending the green jamboree were enjoying themselves courtesy of the world's taxpayers at a beach party where the tequila flowed like rivers and the prawns were being served by the bucket. Meanwhile the delegates are calling for the rationing of food, transport and energy in the developed world in order to stave off global warming. Oh... and they want more green taxes to fund their eco fantasy. Pass the sick bag!

Upside down

2010-12-01T08:58:00.001Z

Daniel from Perth, Western Australia, has emailed me some photos of his favourite hospital food and so I thought I'd kick of with this excellent demonstration of why hospital chefs should never take LSD. Apparently, this offering is a pork medallion with apple sauce, pureed pumpkin and a dose of peas that have been artfully hidden under some anaemic mash. Daniel doesn't say whether it was tasty but personally I don't think I could have got passed that pumpkin without wearing sunglasses. Still, credit where it's due, at least Daniel has been given a lump of meat that hasn't been minced, shredded, macerated or liquified so that counts for something. That said, just imagine if this was the culinary highlight of your day!

Illiberal idiots

2010-11-28T19:29:00.003Z

When the last bunch of illiberal twits running the country were replaced by the Clegg-Cameron Coalition, I had high hopes that the micro-managing health bullies who never tire of lecturing us on our diets and alcohol consumption might have become a thing of the past. However, I'm an idiot to presume that any politician can be anything but an illiberal moonbat who gets off on pushing people around.

It seems that our new overlords are on the verge of introducing a minimum unit price for alcohol in order to protect us from ourselves. The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, is going to introduce a white paper on a range of interventions intended to 'reduce health inequalities'.

Rather than clamping down on the minority of people who cause a nuisance by binge drinking, they feel it necessary to introduce punishing alcohol taxes. This sounds like nothing more than a revenue raising exercise. The highly educated morons masquerading as politicians have learned nothing from America's disastrous prohibition experiment or the experience of countries like Sweden and Norway. Oh well, let's give this a go... after all, the bars in the House of Commons are still subsidised and a rise in the cost of our politicians' favourite tipple is hardly going to put an overpaid MP out of pocket.

If politicians are so hellbent on protecting us from ourselves by controlling everything we eat and drink, they should at least pay some attention to the crap that's being served up in our hospitals. Maybe the extra cash they rake in from a burger tax or higher alcohol duty could at least be ploughed into the catering budgets of our hospitals. Fat chance!

No Common Sense

2010-11-14T11:38:00.002Z

According to the Daily Mail, MPs were under fire last night for wasting taxpayers’ cash on a £500-a-day ‘Commons food-taster’ to ensure Westminster’s restaurants are up to scratch. They have drafted in the food consultant to run the rule over the Palace’s catering. Hospitality expert Jon Hewett will work on a daily rate as an adviser to the Commons administration committee. Sources were unable to confirm what Mr Hewett would be paid but insiders estimated he would receive the £500-a-day fee.

The move comes amid furious complaints from some MPs that Commons food is now ‘overpriced’ and ‘literally uneatable’, with ex-Labour Cabinet Minister Bob Ainsworth even calling for the entire operation to be privatised as ‘it could not be worse’.

But last night, the decision to pay an outside consultant to advise on Commons food was condemned as ‘ludicrous’. One senior MP told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It is ridiculous to bring in some outside food-taster to advise us on what the soup tastes of and whether the meals in the Palace are value for money.’

MPs have been up in arms since the summer when prices for the notoriously cheap Commons food were increased to save £500,000. A bacon roll in Portcullis House that used to cost £1.30 is now £1.90. MPs are also livid over the new ‘all or as little as you can eat’ £15 flat fee for up to three courses introduced in the MPs’ dining room.

According to the job brief, Mr Hewett, from leading hospitality consultancy EP Business Evolution, will receive a ‘per diem allowance for the work, which is expected to require a few hours per week until the early spring of 2011’.

A spokesman for the committee insisted it was ‘normal’ for Commons select committees to draft in expert outside advice and dismissed the idea that Mr Hewett would be ‘going round, tasting the soup and saying more salt is needed’.

MPs have vented their fury about the catering to the committee, with Lib Dem MP Lorely Burt complaining that ‘several of my colleagues, including at least one Minister of State, have now boycotted the dining room’.

Millionaire Tory Margot James complained of ‘a very specific flinty style of Chardonnay’ which was ‘frankly acidic’.

It gets better

2010-11-06T17:25:00.000Z

This stuff almost looks good enough to go back into hospital for. Apparently Richard is having scampi tonight. Any more food like this and he'll be leaving hospital on a mobility scooter.

Dinner is served

2010-11-05T21:29:00.000Z

Friend Richard had the slow roasted lamb with garlic mash for his evening meal. Looks very nice. Unfortunately I didn't get to taste it as he'd scoffed the lot before I got there. Still, good private hospital grub. Mind you, those carrots look a little unwieldy.

Posh nosh

2010-11-05T11:04:00.002Z

My friend Richard has just uploaded these photos on his slinky iPhone. He is being treated privately and this is the sort of grub on offer. I have advised him to go for the slow roasted shoulder of lamb and a decent half bottle of red from the hospital's wine list (yes... they really do have a wine list!).

Oh how I wish I could have gone private.

Soap dodgers

2010-11-04T08:39:00.002Z

Good grief! The mad greenies of this world appear to be turning their swivel eyes towards those of us who like to be clean and fragrant. Now, I know eco warriors have always had something of a loose acquaintance with personal hygiene and most are in need of a map to help them find their way to the bathroom, but there appears to be a definite trend towards infrequent washing in a bid to lower water consumption.

According to a survey published by tissue manufacturer SCA, 41% of British men and 33% of women don't shower every day, with 12% of people only having a proper wash once or twice a week. So what do these filthy beggars do to keep themselves from reeking to high heaven? Well, apparently some women wipe under their arms with wedges of lemon instead of washing while others have a quick rub down with half a Wet Wipe. Half of all British teenagers, according to research by Mintel, don't wash every day – with many opting for a quick spray of deodorant to mask any stink. Okay, so that's not much of a surprise, but the thought of grown-ups travelling on buses and tubes smelling like a piece of overhung game fills me with dread and makes me almost grateful to be virtually housebound.

However, there are, says The Guardian newspaper, environmental benefits in smelling like an old dustbin. Environmentalist Donnachadh McCarthy, 51, limits his showers to about twice a week. "The rest of the time I have a sink wash," he says. "I believe that I'm as clean as everyone else." It has helped him to get his water consumption down to around 20 litres a day – well below the 100 to 150 average in the UK.

As McCarthy points out, it's only recently that we have expected people to bathe or shower every day. "When I was a kid," he says, "the normal thing was to bathe once a week." Head much further back into history, and we find Elizabeth I bathing once a month, and James I apparently only ever washing his fingers. In 1951, almost two-fifths of UK homes were without a bath, and in 1965, only half of British women wore deodorant.

Quite right, Donnachadh. And in those days everyone smelt like a decomposing kipper and I doubt very much if L'Oreal shifted a whole lot of product either. Why do these soap-dodging greenies want to take us back to being neanderthal cave dwellers? I wonder if they really fancy the whole authentic experience. How about a world with no antibiotics or anaesthetics? There you are, in your cave, nibbling on an old bit of tofu, shivering in the freezing cold and you've got a raging toothache and a streptococcal infection that could scare the shit out of vancomycin. As you lay there in absolute agony, all you can smell is the fetid armpits of Ugg sat next to you. Is that the sort of world these people really want us to live in? It can't be long before they call for mandatory limits on the number of showers we can take.

I swear civilisation is going backwards.

Finger on the pulse

2010-10-22T10:35:00.006+01:00

A report commissioned by the UK’s Food Standards Agency is advocating a massive shift in our eating and cooking habits in order to combat climate change. The report was produced by a team at the University of East Anglia, the same institution that was recently at the heart of a row over possible manipulation of dodgy climate data used in a report about global warming.

The academics at the university want the UK population to move to a vegetarian diet, or a least a diet that’s very low in meat, cheese and sugary foods. They'd also like to see us drinking less tea, coffee and cocoa. They say our diets should, in future, be made up largely of vegetables, pulses and yoghurt. The report also says we need to change the way we cook our food, making better use of microwaves and pressure cookers so that we cut down on the energy used in cooking.

The report says schools and hospitals should lead the way and set a good example serving lentils, carrots and other yummy and appetising foods such as turnips and natural yoghurt. Naturally, the Food Standards agency is endorsing this silly report, probably because it’s staffed by the same swivel-eyed zealots who appear to at the helm of virtually every quango or public body in the country.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before the puritans who infest every crevice of public life got round to imposing compulsory vegetarianism. Now that they’ve banned smoking and are getting their miserable claws into alcohol consumption, meat was bound to be next on their miserable agenda.

These humourless cretins won’t be happy until we’re living in cold stone huts living off rations of tofu and rainwater. I can’t wait until they’ve created that particular paradise here in Britain. Needless to say I’ll be on the last boat out to somewhere altogether more tolerant and happier… Afghanistan, perhaps?

Totally quackers

2010-10-20T15:34:00.001+01:00

A young mum who took her two young sons to feed the ducks in her local park in Hailsham, East Sussex has fallen foul of the local pond warden. Lisa was told off by the functionary who criticised the bread Lisa was feeding to the ducks. It turns out that the bread being thrown for the mallards to munch was white sliced bread. It seems that, these days, white sliced bread is about as hazardous as dining on fresh asbestos, especially if you read The Guardian. The park warden suggested that if Ms Taplin wanted to come back and feed the ducks again then she should be sure to bring granary or wholemeal bread for the birds next time. The warden also added that feeding ducks white bread was as bad as feeding children chips every day. Unfortunately, the jobsworth didn't say whether the granary or wholemeal bread should be organic or Fairtrade.

More Minho

2010-10-15T09:32:00.000+01:00

More Portugal goodness

2010-10-14T20:28:00.000+01:00

Another gratuitous shot from my recent stay in northern Portugal

Don't come out!

2010-10-12T10:19:00.004+01:00

I noticed the other evening while watching the tv news that a large Sodexo truck was parked up next to the giant drilling rig being used to make an escape tunnel for the 33 miners trapped underground in Chile. For those who may not know, Sodexo is a massive corporation that has its tentacles in so many pies around the world, mostly supplying catering on behalf of governments to schools and hospitals. The company is an enthusiastic supporter of the Private Finance Initiative scheme run by the NHS and supplies many of the disgusting meals eaten in hospitals in the UK. Having tasted the stuff they produce I would advise the miners to stay put until the Sodexo truck leaves the rescue site. On the other hand, it occurs to me that Sodexo may be producing the meals being sent down to the miners. What a dreadful thought. Have they not suffered enough?

More photos from Portugal

2010-10-12T08:27:00.001+01:00

Here's the view from the house I was staying in. Unfortunately, one week later it was raining like a monsoon and the roof was leaking. My clothes were damp, my money was damp, my book was damp... unbelievable humidity.

Here's a shot of one of the many granaries that can be seen all over northern Portugal. For some reason I have an unhealthy obsession with these espiguieros. Not sure what it is about these strange buildings but they are used to store corn and other foodstuffs through the winter. The strange platforms at the top of the stilts are there to stop rats and mice gaining entry to a free feast. Obviously, putting hospital food in the granaries would be another effective way of discouraging hungry rodents.

Hello

2010-10-09T15:53:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone...

Just returned from my first holiday in two years. It was challenging getting through airport security and thank goodness for wheelchairs, but we managed it and spent two very lazy weeks doing very little. I'll try to write a bit more later but here's a photo that gives a flavour of my rural destination.

Slow news day?

2010-08-19T15:52:00.004+01:00

My first act as world leader will be to ban infantile surveys dreamed up by PR companies during the silly season when the nation’s newspapers are even more devoid of meaningful copy than usual.

The latest piece of statistical nonsense to be published comes to us courtesy of Polo Mints. For some reason, the mighty Nestlé decided to commission a study of Britons’ eating habits in the post-dining room age.

And what did these geniuses discover? That a third of us think it’s acceptable to feed ourselves without the aid of a knife and fork. In fact, women are the worst culprits, choosing to eat with their fingers rather than using implements or ‘eating irons’ as one old colonel I used to know called them.

Not only do Britons use their fingers to eat, but a sixth of the population lick their plates clean. Why they can’t use hot water and washing up liquid, I really don’t know. However, the mind-numbingly banal survey goes on to reveal that 35 per cent of us save our favourite part of the meal until last. Thank goodness for that; you have no idea how long I’ve been searching for that particular statistic.

According to Judi James, Nestlé’s resident body-language guru, you can tell a lot about someone by the way they eat. “The way we eat and how we treat food can often give away more about us than a ten-minute conversation. Our subconscious food habits reveal our attitudes to everything from relationships to work, and define us as a nation.”

To round off this dissertation in digestion, the survey says that we are also a nation of quirky eaters with half of us choosing to lick our ice creams in a circular motion and preferring to suck our boiled sweets instead of crunching them between our molars. Two-thirds of us eat crisps one at a time instead of ramming them in our mouth by the handful… using fingers, presumably.

This behaviour, according to the buffoons behind this exercise in the bleeding obvious claim that these discoveries show that we are a nation that takes a delayed gratification approach to eating, prolonging the experience for as long as we can. Finally, the boffins claim that food is the way to our hearts because three per cent of those surveyed (yes… a whopping three per cent) said that their idea of a perfect date would be a candlelit dinner.

Apparently, Nestlé’s next survey will investigate the toilet habits of bears dwelling in woods and other heavily forested areas. Goodnight!

No more Mr Nice Guy

2010-08-09T07:51:00.005+01:00

Well that’s it! No more Mr Nice Guy for me. After a life spent being decent, kind and honest, I’ve finally decided to shed the Mr Nice Guy persona and become a Bond villain. Let me explain…

For most of my adult life I’ve tried to follow a path that includes being very soft and considerate. I’m the sort of sucker who opens doors for other people and offers their seat to elderly ladies in the hope that what my mother told me was true. As a kid, I was repeatedly told that being a fine, upstanding and polite individual would pay dividends and that my life would be blessed. I now know this to be an utter falsehood.

The past month or so has brought forth so many mishaps and misfortunes in my life; enough catastrophes to make your average rash of Biblical disasters look like an afternoon at Scout camp. I won’t go into details but as I sit here trying not to cough myself into an early grave thanks to the mother of all chest infections, I’m plotting the rest of my life on earth as Mr Evil. It’s only an experiment but I want to see if being a complete bastard might turn my fortunes round.

I’m not a religious person but at the back of all our minds are the words of teachers, aunts and grannies telling us how the meek shall inherit the earth and how when we pass on from this earthly existence we shall have a deckchair in Heaven and be ministered to by beautiful angels who will feed us our favourite sweetmeats and morsels while playing the lyre for us whenever we wish.

Well, I’ve been thinking about this fantasy and have decided that with my luck it wouldn’t really go like that when checking in with St Peter:

“Name?”

“Traction Man.”

“Ah yes. You're down here on the list between Mother Theresa and Albert Schweizer. Unfortunately I have some bad news. Heaven is closed at the moment. It’s been extremely tough up here since the credit crunch and we've had to cut back membership dramatically.”

“What do you mean ‘Heaven’s closed’?”

“Just what I said, mate. We’re not accepting any new members. I’ve got a couple of places in Hell Lite going, if you’re interested. It’s a bit like full-fat Hell but without the heat and the raucous parties. Is that any good?”

“No it’s bloody not! I’ve just spent my entire life being trampled on by estate agents, lawyers and politicians, trying to be a kind and decent individual, and all you can offer me is a place in Hell’s annexe. It’s not good enough.”

“Well how about Limbo. It’s a bit boring but it’s not all that bad. I can then put you on the waiting list for Heaven and with any luck one of our members will do something naughty and we can shift them downstairs and let you in. We’ve got that Pol Pot bloke in here at the moment; I shouldn’t really tell you this but he’s on his final warning. You might not have to wait too long.”

“How many people are on the waiting list, then?”

“Not many.”

“How many?

“Couple of million... tops.”

“ So how long am I going to have to wait in Limbo?”

“Couple of aeons… maybe.”

See what I mean? I just know that doing the right thing is going to blow up in my face and backfire spectacularly. What’s the point? Why bother? So if the next time someone fails to hold a door open for you or nicks your parking space, it could very well be me practising my new guise as a Bond villain in the vain hope that my life will finally start moving in the right direction.

Update

2010-07-18T22:27:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the recent silence. I'm progressing well but have been feeling so tired. I'm trying to do a bit more and to mobilise a little further and it's really hard work, hence my inability to blog. I'll try hard to get back to it as soon as I can.

We were only following orders

2010-07-05T13:14:00.001+01:00

The cretins at Barnsley Primary Care Trust have managed to comprehensively upset the parents of a 11-year-old boy by writing to them to tell them their son is fat and could be in danger of contracting type 2 diabetes or cancer. The boy in question, Tom Halton, is a fit and active young man whose weight and height placed his Body Mass Index slightly outside the Department of Health's guidelines.

As most schoolboys know, muscle weighs much more than fat so an active young man of above average height could probably look slightly overweight on paper. In a sane world, a properly trained nurse or doctor would take one look at the boy and realise that weighing 7st 10lb at 5'1" meant he was not in danger of keeling over at any minute. However, the semi-trained chimps and their computers at Barnsley PCT decided to spew out an automatic letter and cause offence by insulting Tom's parents by suggesting they were overfeeding him. The letter upset Tom so much that he stopped eating. Genius... we now have one young boy erroneously tagged overweight and no doubt anorexic within the next few months. What halfwits!

No doubt Tom was weighed at school and his data passed on to the PCT by an imbecile with a silly job title. This then triggered the Nanny State into full offensive action and ended up causing all the trouble. As the new Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, said the other day, government must stop lecturing people. Of course, NuLabour Super Nanny has been poking its nose into areas where it wasn't welcome for far too long but let's hope this stupidity is going to be increasingly rare now that we have a change of government. I hope that the fatheads whose job it is to send out these letters are reassigned to more useful duties very shortly... picking up litter or cleaning toilets would probably be more within their capabilities.

Barnsley PCT was approached for a comment and said it was only following national policy. Hmm... that old chestnut! They have since issued a grovelling apology. Not good enough. Send them to the gulag!

Latest x-ray

2010-07-01T15:11:00.000+01:00

I wonder how much I'm worth for scrap. Still, this ought to help keep me in one piece.

Bone-headed bureaucracy

2010-06-30T15:51:00.001+01:00

It's not just here in the UK where bureaucrats appear to have undergone a frontal lobotomy. Virtually every nation under the sun seems to have been taken over by complete morons. Take the example of a South African man, mistakenly listed as dead by authorities, who has spent four years fighting to prove he is alive so he can get a passport, register a car and change his wife's marital status from "widowed".

Claude Pretorius has been working to correct the bureaucratic error since 2006, when he discovered, while applying for a passport, that the Department of Home Affairs had listed him as dead. "They told me that I could not apply for a passport as I am deceased," the Johannesburg man told the The Star newspaper.

Mr Pretorius said he got a sworn affidavit from police affirming that he is alive and was issued a new identity number, enabling him to buy a car. But the problem resurfaced last year when he tried to register the car with the traffic department. "I found out that my status has again been changed to deceased," he said.

Three weeks ago, Mr Pretorius was given a ticket for failing to license the vehicle. "How is it possible for me to purchase cars, but the minute I need to obtain any form of licensing, I am declared deceased?" he complained. His wife has been unable to give legal help - since she is officially listed as his widow.

Amazing, isn't it? The poor man is declared dead and can't do any of the things he should be able to do but as soon as he infringes one of their petty rules they are able to issue a dead man with a ticket and bring him back to life as if he were Lazarus. I expect they're still taxing him too.

It never ceases to amaze me how efficient the punishment arm of government works but the bit of the state which is supposed to help people is a shambles.

Sweet Jesus!

2010-06-28T09:33:00.002+01:00

NHS Chiefs in North Wales have decided to ban sugar from vending machines that dispense hot drinks in hospitals. The miserable, shrivelled and humourless idiots that run healthcare in that benighted part of Britain think sugar has no nutritional value so they, egged on by the ridiculous Welsh Assembly, have decided that all their subjects must be prevented from exercising the personal choice and freedom to sweeten tea or coffee.

Experts claim that sugar is a 'risk to health', although probably nothing like as risky as a stay in an NHS hospital. Welsh Assembly documents circulated to NHS hospitals in Wales also recommend that water, juice, seeds and dried fruit be placed in vending machines as healthy alternative snacks. That's bound to cut the takings of vending machines dramatically which in turn can only lead to an increase in parking charges in order to recoup lost income. Of course, sugar in tea has little nutritional value but that's not why most people use it... they put it in their tea because they like the taste. Incidentally, the advice also recommends that Cheddar cheese sandwiches are also banned as they contain too much fat. That's vegetarians stuffed, then.

As a nation we really do have to begin asking ourselves how these brain-dead gastropods and incompetent fuckwits manage to worm their way into highly paid and responsible positions within the public sector. How can these fools possibly imagine that their pathetic attempts to micro-manage people's lives is going to go down well with anyone but themselves and their pathetically timid political masters? It's time we stopped being in thrall to these idiots. The Soviet Union had ways of dealing with people like this: gulags. Isn't it time we introduced the concept here? Or, at the very least, village stocks.

A bridie in the hand

2010-06-24T07:38:00.012+01:00

My thanks to The Englishman for passing on this shocking story of disgusting hospital food (I'm using the term 'food' very loosely here). The food in question was served up at Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, Scotland. A local doctor, Grace Campbell, was horrified to see the food her husband was given following an angioplasty at the hospital looked as if it was designed to fur his arteries up again as quickly as possible.

It appears that the local health authority feels that the best food to serve people recovering from coronaries and other heart conditions should include bridies (a fatty meat and pastry delicacy hailing from Forfar, that centre of culinary excellence and home of the deep-fried Mars Bar), cottage pie, sausages and haggis.

Following his angioplasty, Dr Campbell's husband, who also happens to be a doctor, was offered high-fat, processed food, most of which, according to Dr Campbell, was unrecognisable. She said: "The staff were very apologetic but they said that was all that was sent up for all the seriously ill patients in the coronary care unit. The poor staff were mortified as they served the meals which were at best inedible."

Mrs Campbell said that she was forced to bring meals into the hospital for her husband, "as if in a Third World country".

Complaints about the catering at Hairmyres date back to 2001 and NHS Lanarkshire was among the health boards criticised in a report on the quality of hospital food in March. It was one of four that received a "red rating" from a National Facilities Scotland report for failing to meet government standards. The report said that overall, Scotland's hospitals were failing to improve the meals provided for patients.

And the response from the hospital? "All inpatients are presented with nutritionally balanced menu choices, all of which are of nutritional value. We are aware a complaint has been received and we will be fully investigating this."

"All of which are nutritional value"! What sort of fuckwit with a PR degree came up with a quote like that? Of course it has nutritional value: a block of lard has nutritional value, but not necessarily very good nutritional vale. Where in god's name do they find these pen-pushing twats?

Another candidate for the gulag when the revolution comes.

Make your own Bridie

Pastry
12oz / 300g plain flour
3oz / 75g butter (diced)
3oz / 75g suet
Couple tbs. of cold water
Pinch of salt.

Meat Filling
1lb / 450g finely chopped beef
1 finely chopped onion.
3oz / 75g grated beef suet

Cook for 30- 40 minutes until golden brown and meat is cooked at 200 degrees C or 400 F.

Help needed

2010-06-22T20:45:00.000+01:00

Sorry for not blogging for a while but I've been paying attention to my rehab and doing quite well getting mobile again. However, I now need to turn my attention back to pushing the campaign along for better hospital food. I'd really like to hear from anyone in UK hospitals who would like to send me their images and experiences of hospital food. I need to collect more examples from a variety of hospitals in order to confront some of the catering companies who are supplying very poor quality food and making rather a lot of money out of the NHS in the process.

Let them eat cake

2010-06-11T16:43:00.002+01:00

Give a simple job to a bureaucrat and then stand back and watch them make a complete hash of things. The latest example of the stupidity of officialdom is the response by the Department for Education to the call for a relaxation in school nutritional standards for boarding schools. Some of you may remember a few years back, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver tried to draw attention to the poor nutritional standards in Britain's state schools. The result of Jamie's campaign was the setting up of the School Food Trust: a bloated and overfed outfit that's provided a large stone for a number of nutritionists to crawl under.

The new stringent rules surrounding school food standards mean that the nation's 35 state boarding schools can no longer feed children in their care anything that is high in fat, sugar or salt... not even as a treat. A cake and a cup of tea after games and before homework? NO! Verboten. Sausages? Banned! Butter? Banned! Breakfast cereal? Banned... unless it's All Bran, of course.

The rules for school meals were designed for day schools, not boarding schools that provide children's food seven days a week. The poor little sods are now forced to follow some nutritionist's wet dream around the clock. Never mind the fact that the school is their home and that means a bit of comfort food or stodge is occasionally called for.

Paul Spencer Ellis, headmaster of Royal Alexandra and Albert School in Reigate, Surrey, said: "The whole logic is that the regulations are for a day school where the parents aren't going to feed them properly at home, but in a boarding school we do all their meals.

"But, as it stands, pupils come into the boarding house after school and they want to grab some carbs and it's illegal. It's illegal for me to give them a sticky bun."

Mr Spencer Ellis asked the bureaucrats what would happen if he relaxed the guidelines and was told he would be prosecuted if he did and could face jail for contempt of court.

There are times when I think only a stout piece of rope and a tall lamppost will solve some of our problems. What is it about some public servants? Where do they get their common sense chip removed? But as my father always says: "The trouble with common sense is that it's not that common".

More balls

2010-06-10T13:45:00.001+01:00

Not being a football fan, I might have missed this little gem had I not stumbled across it at the excellent Nanny Knows Best blog. It appears that the government is worried that we're all going to be sat on our backsides staring at 40-inch plasma screens for the next four weeks. Because of this, the Food Standards Agency has issued some guidelines to armchair footballers about what sort of food and drink they should be eating as they cheer on their favourite team. Now, put the salted peanuts and beer to one side and consider this helpful advice:

"If you're throwing a party for friends and family to watch a game, there are lots of tasty and healthy options you can tuck into as you cheer your team on. Why not serve a vegetable curry with boiled rice or a tasty chilli with plenty of kidney beans?

If it’s just nibbles, how about some tasty, healthier snacks, such as:

low-fat dips (less than 3g fat per 100g) with vegetable sticks, bread sticks or mini pitta breads for dipping
lower fat/salt crisps – compare labels so you can choose healthier varieties
some easy-to-eat fruits, such as apples and grapes
homemade plain popcorn – made in the pan from popping kernels"

If that's not bad enough, the advice goes on to tell you how to barbecue safely before going on to give some advice on which takeaway meals are better for you. In a cringing nod to the diversity industry there's even a piece of advice about how you can eat food with a multicultural twist. Naturally there are the usual warnings about drinking too much alcohol and not eating salty snacks and, finally, there's a hectoring jab to tell you how you should also take exercise during the competition.

If the government needs to find somewhere for its money saving axe to fall, I don't think it could do better than the department of tosspots who drew up this heap of bollocks.

I must be feeling better

2010-06-09T17:38:00.002+01:00

There's nothing like the feeling of raw anger surging through my body to make me realise that I must be feeling a bit better. And what is the cause of my current ire? It's one of those quangos which is currently leeching off the public purse in order to provide non-jobs for people who appear to be incapable of working in the real world.

Allow me to introduce you to the wonderfully named organisation: "Play England". This Lottery funded ragbag of do-gooders is part of the NCB. This 'charity' was founded in 1963 as the National Bureau for Cooperation in Childcare but now calls itself NCB. It has a staff of 270 and an annual budget of £19 million - most of which comes from the public purse! Its subsidiary Play England has the following flaky objectives:

promote local play strategies
build partnerships for play
research and demonstrate the benefits of play
promote equality and diversity in play provision
raise awareness and promote standards

Apparently it does this by providing:

resources and information
training, conferences and seminars
networking and referrals
advocacy and campaigning support

The NCB is currently moaning that the budget cuts proposed by the new leaders of our bankrupt nation will interrupt their vital work and harm play. Now, I know that turkeys don't particularly relish the sight of an Advent calendar being pinned on the wall, but it's this sort of bollocks (along with Five-a-Day coordinators and Diversity Tzars) that's got us into the supersize heap of financial crap we're currently covered in.

I don't ever remember anyone needing to teach me how to play. Children seem to manage to play and amuse themselves and each other quite easily without some twerp called Damien or India showing them how to kick a ball or climb a tree. Surely these people aren't using children as an excuse to dip their hands in the nation's piggybank, are they?

Rant over!

Thank goodness for that

2010-06-08T09:57:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the break in transmission but when your leg is leaking Lucozade and you're drugged up to the eyeballs, blogging comes way down the priority list. I'm happy to say that the good ship TM is back on an even keel and everything seems to be healing nicely. I'm still a frustrating 2cm short in my left leg and the ORIF (open reduction internal fixator) makes me feel a bit like a cyborg, but at least I no longer have a left leg with an extra hinge in the middle of the femur. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to walk when two thirds of your leg isn't properly attached to the top third... stop squirming at the back!

Anyway, my thanks for all those continuing messages of support. This really is turning out to be something of an education in how much punishment one body can take and home many litres of anaesthetic, antibiotic and opiates one human can digest. It tells me that the human body is a brilliant and durable machine that simply couldn't have been invented by a human being... unless they were Japanese or worked for Apple.

I'm feeling slightly more cheerful today following my perusal of the newspapers this morning. It seems that our new coalition government has decided to make hospitals responsible for their patients' care for up to 30 days after a person is discharged. This is music to my unscathed ears. I have suffered far more than I should by being sent home too early from hospital so that the Health Trust can meet statistics on waiting times demanded by our old government. From now on, if a hospital discharges a patient too soon or botches an operation, it will have to bear the cost of putting things right if the patient needs to be readmitted as a result. That should sharpen the minds of a few of our overpaid pen-pushers. At this rate the government may even do something about hospital food!

Another update

2010-06-07T10:21:00.000+01:00

Things seem to have settled down and I'm healing well. A combination of sore leg, antibiotics and painkillers isn't really making me feel great right now but it's good to be feeling a bit better. Once again, thanks for all your kind wishes and I'll try to get back to posting as soon as I can.

Update

2010-06-04T00:06:00.003+01:00

Thanks for all your kind messages. Not out of the woods yet but certainly no further down the track. Metalwork still inside and resting up in order not to upset the leg more than necessary. This is some sort of epic... no? It seems like a rollercoaster ride from where I'm laying.

Sorry

2010-06-02T16:35:00.001+01:00

Sorry for not posting. I seem to have developed some post-operative complications. May have to go back in.

The recovery goes on

2010-06-01T16:50:00.001+01:00

Still at home in a horizontal posture. This op was far bigger and more painful than I realised. It's going to take 3 to 6 months for rehab, apparently. At least the food is better at home.

The Recovery Position

2010-05-29T15:49:00.003+01:00

Whisky is clearly helping me to recover by recharging his own batteries. Tough life being a cat!

Update

2010-05-29T09:37:00.001+01:00

I'm out of hospital and resting at home. Things are going well and I feel far better than I have a right to. Thanks for all your good wishes and messages.

To conclude

2010-05-27T19:19:00.000+01:00

I've been here a week now and since my last stay in November I have to say the quality of the food is more consistent and slightly better. The recipes could be a bit more imaginative and ingredients more local and fresher.

Tonight's Scotch broth was tasty but strangely contained not a single shred of lamb in it. No doubt a cost-saving exercise but scrag end of lamb is not expensive and would have transformed this soup and made it more nourishing.

This cheese and tomato sandwich doesn't look too bad but the use of an extremely low-grade, non-dairy spread spoils the bread which itself is nothing special and certainly not local. The tomatoes were good but the amount of cheese in the sandwich is so small it's nutritional value is negligible.

At least the sandwich was better filled than previous examples I've been served but as a main course choice it is a bit pathetic. That said, I'm pleasantly surprised that there has been an improvement since my last stay when I fear I thoroughly embarrassed the hospital's management board. It's a small step but I really think change is on the way and the importance of the message of good nutrition in hospital food is finally getting through.

Healthy lunch

2010-05-27T13:42:00.001+01:00

Someone in the kitchen must have read my comments about the omelette masquerading as a shoe insole. Today's cheese omelette was very good indeed and accompanied by a passable salad.

Finally, a rather tasty apple crumble with pretty good custard. Move along please... nothing to see here!

New chef?

2010-05-26T18:39:00.000+01:00

Mushroom soup isn't my favourite but this one was perfectly adequate.

The vegetables may have been waterlogged but the Lancashire hotpot was very tasty.

Well, two out of three isn't bad!

New organic shoe insole launched

2010-05-26T13:19:00.002+01:00

This should sort out my slight leg-length difference.

The yellow peril returns. The custard has been resaturated with Agent Orange. I wasn't sure what the pastry thing underneath was, but don't expect to find it stocked in Waitrose or M&S in the near future

Why me?

2010-05-25T18:16:00.003+01:00

Sometimes you eat something and you know... you just know it's been recycled. Today's broccoli and cheese soup was just such a dish. I distinctly remember leaving some of my cheese last night and no one eats their broccoli in this hospital. Normally I have no intention of eating the soup I order as it's uniformly awful, but like some poor sucker who does the lottery each week, I tick the box just in case it might actually be edible for a change. The truth is we have more chance of being hit by a giant asteroid than I do of getting a soup that doesn't taste of sick. So here it is...

Oh well, I thought I was on to a winner with my main course. I mean, who can screw up Macaroni Provençale? A bit of pasta, some tomato sauce, handful of herbs and maybe a bit of cheese. Job done! Sadly I didn't get Macaroni Provençale. I got this instead.

I think even Stevie Wonder and Andrea Boccelli could work out that that was no Macaroni Provençale. I consulted the menu and soon deduced that this was chicken and leek pie. It was available with gravy but as I hadn't ticked the chicken and leek pie box, I obviously hadn't ticked the gravy box on the menu so I didn't get that either. I did however order green beans and croquette potatoes just for a giggle. As you can see, the green beans morphed into cauliflower while the potato croquettes somehow turned into something like turkey twizzlers. As for the pie crust... there's enough material there to repair all of last winter's potholes.

Apple Cake and Custard. It looks like a half a loaf of Mother's Pride sliced bread that's been ripped up in temper, added to stewed apple and lovingly smothered with NHS premium custard. What have I done to deserve this?

Lunch lotto

2010-05-25T12:44:00.000+01:00

Okay... what is it? Come on! Don't be shy. Tell me what you think this dish is called. To avoid any doubt, this was photographed before being eaten.

What a breakfast

2010-05-25T07:58:00.001+01:00

This morning my two free-range eggs nestled lovingly on all-butter muffins which had been lightly toasted and spread with fresh Normandy butter. The rindless back bacon with its distinct maple cure had to be one of the best rashers I've ever tasted. And as for the sausage... a perfect melange of spices and pork with a little wild boar to provide a subtle gamey undertone was just sublime. Finally, sun-ripened Pomodoro tomatoes and sweet button mushrooms, lightly sauteed in extra virgin olive oil finished off what has to be one of the best breakfasts I've ever tasted. I rounded the meal off with a slice of freshly toasted bread and Frank Cooper's Oxford marmalade, washed down with a cup or two of a most excellent Kenyan Peaberry coffee.

Then I woke up!

It didn't start off well

2010-05-24T20:34:00.000+01:00

In cooking, poor presentation can destroy even the tastiest dish. Still, you can't go wrong with a baked potato with cheese and butter, can you?

Oh dear, not quite what I had in mind but then I spied the tempting little tubs of low-fat, non-dairy spread. I also found a plastic cup of factory shredded cheese. Difficult to say what cheese it was. The menu said "cheddar" but quite how you turn fresh milk into something more garish that a Liberal Democrat poster remains a mystery to me.

It tasted okay but nothing like baked potato with butter and cheese. I won't mention the carrot and coriander soup I chose for starters... you've been punished enough.

Standards remain good

2010-05-24T13:46:00.001+01:00

Okay, so it does have peas in it, but this chicken casserole with white wine and rice was actually very tasty. I'm getting worried now... I've got to get a really bad meal or else no one is going to want to visit the blog.

Apricot crumble was a bit tart (not sure how a crumble can be a tart but there you are) and even the custard was less obnoxious than usual. Someone is clearly trying hard.

With this minestrone you are really spoiling us!

2010-05-23T18:09:00.000+01:00

I've made better but generally not a bad bowl of soup. I'm beginning to get worried about this. Could the hospital have drafted in an elite squad of chefs?

Er no... forget that. Here we are back at the wallpaper paste pasta with sluiced broccoli and bitter peppers with the occasional crusty bit of cheese thrown in. Obviously this one slipped under the radar.

Not bad

2010-05-23T12:47:00.000+01:00

This is an ocean pie. Very tasty with some nice baby carrots. I'm convinced hospital chefs can get it right if they try.

Unfortunately the chocolate sponge pudding and custard wasn't quite as nice. But notice how the custard almost looks normal. Someone's been tipped off.

Suppertime and the food is revolting

2010-05-22T18:48:00.000+01:00

Starring on tonight's menu is minted pea soup. I'm not sure if I spelled pea correctly but given its viscous nature it could be some other waste product.

It's a pie, Jim... but not as we know it. Turkey and ham, apparently. The regeneration pods certainly heat the food up well. Shame it doesn't taste of anything. That mashed potatoes would make good caulk for sealing boat decks.

And finally, I offer you the 'Baked Lemon Tart with Custard'. I think the lemon must have been a typo as it tasted just like the baked each tart that I was offered back in my days of traction. I understand that Iran has reached an agreement with Turkey to send its custard there for enrichment and hence onwards to Britain for use s a weapon of mass destruction within the NHS.

Buffalo ahead

2010-05-22T16:12:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I felt very cheerful in the recovery room considering I'd had a four-hour operation to break one of my legs. Today it's a different story. I'm lying down in bed, unable to move and I feels as though I've been trampled half to death by a herd of very angry buffaloes. The strong anaesthetics and painkillers have worn off and the morphine pump next to the bed mocks me with its pathetic 1mg every five minutes.

Never mind, it's all for a good cause and I'm hoping to be well enough to go home at the end of next week, as long as I don't encounter any more buffaloes.

By the way, those of you interested in what I chose for lunch today: I finally plumped for the honey-glazed ham sandwich with farmhouse pickle. All I can say is that the honey glaze was thicker than the ham and the pickle had never been within a hundred miles of a farmhouse. Good job Mrs XTM brought me in an M&S BLT.

I'm back

2010-05-21T21:06:00.002+01:00

I've just got back from recovery. Consultant said it went very well. He's pleased. I needed a blood transfusion but I'm okay. Even got most of my leg length back. I'm really hopeful. Update tomorrow if I can.