The scary truth!

Sir David Nicholson today takes one last swipe at his detractors by defending the obscenely high salaries of hospital managers in the NHS. His comments demonstrate yet again the full extent of his lack of understanding.

At a time when regional hospitals are being closed, ambulances are being turned away from District General Hospitals, A and E departments are buckling under the strain and a national GP shortage becomes more acute by the day, it's a bit rich to defend the £100,000 plus salaries of hospital managers when a hospital consultant earns less. The disproportionality here is staggering. Nobody decries the importance of the job carried out by hospital managers but salaries such as these are beyond common decency. This is just greed pure and simple. With respect to them ,the Prime Minister has to take on a great deal more responsibility but earns less. That is absurd and indefensible. 

The cash shortages within the NHS are being exacerbated by salaries such as these. Sir David's successor has elected to take a £20,000 cut knowing full well that he won't even feel it. Put simply, there comes a point above which earnings become rather meaningless because they are so far in excess of a living wage. These managers also subject hospital consultants to gagging orders for fear their own performance brings their salary entitlement in to question.

After all that went on at Stafford and many other hospitals on his watch, Sir David is quite wrong to make these comments. At best, these comments are ignorant but at worst they extremely divisive and once more illustrate the gulf between the Public Sector and everybody else. This would not be justifiable in the Private Sector because they are performance driven and answerable and accountable to shareholders. Sir David can only make himslef a little more loathed with every comment like this one. The sooner he departs, the better for all of us. It's time we left this culture of entitlement behind us and returned to the core purpose and values of the NHS: patient care!

If we really want to address the growing disillusionment within the health service, we need to remember why it was set up in the first place. It is to provide high quality health care at the point of entry to every man, woman and child. It is not and was never designed to be a gravy train!