Overshadowed by this was a report into conditions in state-run institutions that made my hair stand on end. Inmates, it appears, were left hungry and thirsty, and sat for hours in pools of their own urine and faeces. Where did these outrages take place? Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo Bay? No. In British hospitals. To be exact, in Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, at Ipswich Hospital, and in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead. And to be fair, the report, by NHS watchdog the Quality Care Commission, did not mention the bit about urine and faeces. It said, "While the reports document many examples of people being treated with respect and given personalised, attentive care, some tell a bleak story of people not being helped to eat and drink, with their care needs not assessed and their dignity not respected". The faeculent matter came via a Radio 5 phone in on the subject, to which I listened whilst bowing parts for a concert in June. It made chilling listening.
The overall picture is bleak and scandalous. It also accords with a vignette observed whilst in the Homerton Hospital in London nearly fifteen years ago. An elderly patient, perhaps slightly demented, was in the bed opposite me. He had been badgering a nurse in a semi-coherent way about something trivial. She took exception to this, and took away his meal, saying, "And you won't be getting this back till you learn some manners".
No-one did anything. I didn't do anything. I thought, "Well he is a stupid old git". But I was wrong. She took away his food, and didn't bring it back.
I can't help feeling that if British soldiers had done these kind of things abroad, we would all be jumping up and down about it. But if British nurses do it to old people in Britain, it goes way down the news agenda. I searched in vain for mention of it in the Guardian this morning.
Two other reports were pushed out of the headlines by Mladic yesterday. One suggested that 20% of working graduates are now in non-graduate employment. Another that net immigration to the UK has reached an all-time high, with many Polish workers returning to Britain after finding that things at home aren't so rosy either. Given that a recent Department of Work and Pensions report (19 May) recorded that in the previous 3 months 81% of new jobs went to people born outside the UK, it will be interesting to see whether the government signs up to a similar open-door policy when the Serbs finally get the EU green light. Personally I wouldn't bet against it.
