By Dr Inthefigures
AS predicted by The Chronic way back in November, the NHS daleks in charge of the trust which provides health services in South Crumbria have got their own way.
Yesterday they announced they are going to be driving through a number of publicly unpopular changes at Furness General Hospital and Westmorland General Hospital – despite all the usual weasel words about “listening & engagement”.
Our over-paid, top-down NHS Daleks are free to do what they want to the little people because they very rarely have to worry about having their feet held to the fire over unpopular local decisions.
As we said at the end of 2024, this case has revealed how utterly POWERLESS local MPs and councillors are over the NHS in their area despite their posturing and muscle-flexing at election time.
It also shows how the decimated newsrooms of Crumbria’s local media have resulted in Scroogequest titles here pretty much giving up on any investigative or campaigning health reporting.
Let’s just say if the providers of local “journalism” in this county were subject to the same kind of ‘torch-up-the-arse’ inspection that our hospitals face, the overall finding would be Inadequate.
We won’t bore you with all the various shuffling of deckchairs on the Titanic that is taking place at South Cumbria’s two main hospitals.
NHS “communications” wizards did attempt to set out the changes but they still remain utterly INCOMPREHENSIBLE to the layman, and that’s probably deliberate too.
(If you try to understand them, you’ll end up looking like a dog shown a card trick.)
The headline figures are:
15 beds will close on the FGH Gynaecology Ward.
Twenty beds will close at its Abbey View unit.
At Westmorland General Hospital, 16 beds on Ward 6 have shut already.
It means that despite all the letter writing and table-thumping and headlines awarded in the Evening Snail and other places, Barrow’s Labour MP Michelle Scrogerm, the self-styled “NHS rescuer,” has been dismissed out of hand.
(A shocking state of affairs btw).
It also means that elected Councillors of all parties on Wokemoreland & Farcical’s Health & Adults Scrutiny Committee are wasting oxygen, time and taxpayers’ money by sitting around massive tables blowing concentric smoke signals up the arse of “NHS chiefs” while supposedly holding them to account.
Those in charge of running UHMBT clearly don’t care what elected officials say, think or do.
The changes at FGH and WGH were spelled out on Friday by the Trust in a news release signed off by its six top directors (jointly paid £1.3M).
Entirely coincidentally and not at all contrived, the news was weirdly ushered out AFTER the local media’s weekly newspapers had GONE to Press.
This is a sly PR tactic in the NHS to “control the narrative”.
Web-obsessed local “newspapers” will rush to upload the Trust’s sugar-coated, barely readable version of events FIRST, without time to interrogate the contents or seek critical/contradictory reactions that might cast the Trust in a bad light.
The Trust knows that.
The South Cumbria Integrated Care Board and the NHS were also asked by the Trust whether a public consultation was needed on these plans.
(Both organisations predictably fell into line with their mates on the Trust.)
How are they public services if the public does not get a say in how they’re run?
At a meeting in January, Aaron Cummins, head Dalek at FGH and UHMBT, was spouting geysers of invaluable drivel at a trust bored meeting.
On his wrist? A huge watch. Before him? An expensive-looking mini laptop.
The Chronic has noticed that, despite being a man well into his 40s if not older, he occasionally applies a ridiculous uplift to the end of his sentences.
You know the sort. The ones that deliver a flat sentence that isn’t a question but then lilt their words upwards sharply at the end to make it sound like ONE?
The phrases below are all direct quotes from Cummins at the meeting. An NHS David Brent.
“Connections of place.”
“Systematise performance management.”
“How do you create a left-shift investment?“
“A really honest conversation.”
“A wholesale restructure.”
“We’re starting to build a narrative now of how we’ll get there.”
“We use the phrase: The best of the system, the rest of the system.”
“It doesn’t shift the dial on delivery.”
“How we manage the collective collaborative.”
One bamboozled trust member sitting next to him had THIS to point out to the board:
“We’re having two Never Events every week (in our hospitals).
“By definition, they are not supposed to happen ever and there’s two a week happening…which is quite scary!”
(Never Events are a serious patient safety incident which should never happen.)
Cummins, paid up to £250,000 a year and on course to join the NHS Millionaire’s Club, nervously ran a finger across the screen of his mini laptop and then garbled his response.
“Ultimately what we’re looking for in Trusts is themes that are either indicating governance failure or breakdown in system or process that we can, kind of, support closing down,” said Cummins.
It brought to mind an occasional refrain of the meaty Mitchell Brothers in EastEnders:
OI! BULLSHITTA! SHUT IT!
PAST ARTICLES ABOUT THIS ISSUE….
£1m NHS CHIEFS AND WOKE BADGES
thecumbriachronic.co.uk 
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