pumpkinstrokemarrow

For some reason, taken to leafing through the Crossman Diaries in the advertising breaks on ITV3. I have two volumes - were there three in all? - and have often thought of recycling them, not having looked at them much if at all for the last twenty years.

The things he writes about all seem a terribly long time ago. In another age. But he does write a lot better than most politicians and he does give a sense of how hard ministers have to work if they want to keep a grip on the greasy pole. Never mind actually doing any good. Came across a surprisingly student friendly comment on the troubles at LSE in the late sixties, closely followed by quite a lot of stuff on a scandal at the Ely mental hospital in Cardiff. There still appears to be a hospital of that name in that place although it seems quite likely that the scandalous one has been knocked down along with the rest of our provision for the mentally deficient.

Given the family connection with such places, read the stuff with a bit of care and followed up with a bit of Google. Which very quickly got me to a copy of the report by that well known dead sheep, then an up and coming barrister, Geoffrey Howe. For some reason the report was hosted by the socialist health association - http://www.sochealth.co.uk/ - the sort of gang that my father might have belonged to - being politically active at a time when most doctors and dentists thought that the national health service was a commy plot - a notion which still seems to fly in the US of A.

It seems that this particular hospital was underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded and in a bit of a state. Various members of staff tried to complain and eventually one, in desperation, went to the News of the World which ran one of its exposées (are such things masculine or feminine?) and which triggered the Howe led review. It turned out that while the hospital was indeed in a bit of a state and that some of the nursing was poor if not worse, there was not much, if any, active cruelty. Cruelty by incompetence rather than by design. The Howe answer, backed by Crossman, was the invention of an inspectorate. Couldn't trust management to keep their house in order. A bunch of busies which was needed at the time and which in time grew to be the army of supervisors (rather than doers) that we have now for what has replaced such places.

All of which puts a different colour on an anecdote from the Exminster mental hospital where FIL was the chief teacher of nurses at the time of the scandal. The story that I got told was that the News of the World came down (to Exminster) intent on stirring up trouble and that the best that they could do was report on the fact that some of the better class of patients were allowed to go to the pub occasionally. The tone of the story I got told being that the News of the World was just out to make trouble & sell newspapers and had no understanding of or real interest in the rather depressing and shabby world of mental health. Whereas now it turns out that there was indeed a public interest.

Asked FIL about the whole business today and he had a job to remember it at all. Which I found a bit odd. OK, so it was forty years ago, but I would have thought that the whole business resulted in big shake ups. Something that as chief teacher of nurses he would have been quite close to. Perhaps this blot on his profession has been repressed.

PS: even more red worms made it to the surface of the compost over the last couple of days. A bit pale; not the rich red I usually associate with their interior cousins.