Tory peer vindicated after Norovirus shuts three wards at 'grubby' NHS hospital he attacked



Lord Mancroft: The peer, who says he is lucky to have left the Royal United hospital alive, feels he might have 'lifted the lid on something'. When a Tory peer launched a stinging attack on the "grubby and drunken" nurses he encountered in the NHS, the hospital employing them defended them to the hilt. It demanded evidence of Lord Mancroft's damning allegations and still says it has found not a shred of truth in his complaints. But yesterday it had to defend its standards once more as it dealt with its third disease outbreak in five months.

Another bout of the norovirus - the winter vomiting bug - has forced three wards to close at the Royal United Hospital in Bath. Last November, the bug forced two wards to close, and a second bout last month shut nine wards. The highly infectious virus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting, spreads through closed communities rapidly if patients and staff fail to wash their hands.

Last month, Lord Mancroft, the 50-year-old vice-chairman of the Countryside Alliance, spoke of how appalled he had been by the "filthy" state of the wards at the Royal United, during his treatment there for gastroenteritis. He said he was dismayed at the heartless attitude of "lazy and promiscuous" staff and that apart from "one or two wonderful ones" the nurses were "mostly grubby with dirty fingernails and hair".

In a Lords debate on patient care, he said: "It is a miracle that I am still alive. The wards are filthy. "The wards, the tables, the beds and the bathrooms were not cleaned." The peer, who hunts with Prince Charles, said a splash of blood in the bathroom and a piece of dirty cotton wool under a neighbouring bed were there for the entire seven days he was in hospital. The Royal United said staff were left "extremely distressed and upset" by the peer's account, in which he said he heard a nurse say: "I really shouldn't be here because I had so much to drink last night and I feel like I'm going to be sick."

The Royal United is one of at least 40 hospital trusts to be hit by the norovirus this year. Relatives ringing the hospital or visiting its website have been told that visiting is banned unless strictly necessary, and reminded to wash their hands at all times. Last night, a spokesman for the hospital, Helen Robinson-Gordon, said: "Norovirus is extremely prevalent in the community at the moment and other hospitals have been affected by it. "Of course it is linked to hygiene and cleanliness in that we should all have clean hands at all times but it is coming into the hospital from the community. "Because it is so highly infectious, once it is here it passes from person to person very easily. "We recently had two spot checks at the hospital for cleanliness and passed both with flying colours. "We still have no factual basis for Lord Mancroft's evidence whatsoever. We have asked him for a meeting which he has agreed to but we are still awaiting a date from him."

Lord Mancroft said last night: "I am not the person to comment on this because I am the amateur - it is up to them to sort themselves out. "But I can say that subsequent to speaking out I have had the biggest postbag I have ever had since I have been in the House of Lords. "Quite a lot of those letters are relating similar stories in the same hospital. Some relate to other hospitals. "I suspect I have inadvertently uncovered or lifted the lid on something."

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Would-Be Rulers without Clothes

In her CNN debate with Sen. Barack Obama in Texas, Sen. Hillary Clinton scoffed at the idea that buying medical insurance should be voluntary. "It would be as though Social Security were voluntary [or] Medicare, one of the great accomplishments of President Johnson, was voluntary.... We would not have a social compact with Social Security and Medicare if everyone did not have to participate. I want a universal health-care plan," she said.

This is what passes for deep political thought these days. Look closely at what Clinton is saying. She wants something ("universal health care"); therefore people should be forced to give it to her. (No thought is given to how the free market could accomplish the goal peacefully.) If you and I claimed something like that in private life, we'd be branded as boors. And if we took steps to accomplish it, we'd be arrested for theft or extortion.

Why are presidents and presidential candidates exempt from the normal and reasonable rules of morality? All of us are taught as children not to hit others, not to take their belongings without permission, and not to break our promises. If we need the cooperation of other people, we are expected to rely on persuasion. Force is forbidden. These are sound principles that underpin any decent society, and we are expected to observe them when we become adults. Indeed, the core criminal and civil law embody these principles in their prohibitions against murder, assault, burglary, theft, and breach of contract.

But when a politician advocates forcing the people to go along with her grand plans, the normal rules are suspended and different rules take their place. In the political world, people who have never bothered anyone may be coerced into participating in a politician's scheme for no reason other than that the scheme allegedly won't work if there isn't universal participation. Well, excuse me, but that's not a good enough reason.

It's a measure of how far removed politics is from normal morality that even to raise this issue seems slightly peculiar. Comparing a politician to a common criminal just isn't done in polite society. But think about it. Imagine that Clinton was your neighbor and that she came up with an plan for a neighborhood association that would provide a variety of services, including medical coverage and pensions. "My plan won't work unless everyone participates," she says. She proceeds to threaten anyone who decides not to go along. What would you think of this woman? If she demanded your money at gunpoint, you would call the cops.

So why the moral exemption for presidential candidates? Force is force. Does it matter who wields it? The fact is that someone who refuses to participate in government programs - Social Security, Medicare, universal health care - has not disturbed the peace. He has simply minded his own business. Thus the government should leave him alone. The "live and let live" principle used to be valued by the American people. But it's been largely forgotten.

No one wants to face this issue. Where do government officials get the authority to compel peaceful people to finance and participate in their social programs? Some might reply that the authority comes from the people. But how can that be? We've already seen that you and I have no authority to initiate force against others. If we do it anyway, we are criminals. So how can all of us together have such authority? We can't.

Americans have let their freedom slip away because they have failed to exercise simple logic and common sense. They have overlooked the fact that politicians can have no power not possessed by private individuals. They have swallowed the propaganda that all people are created equal, but that some are more equal than others. Americans have become like the subjects who were afraid to tell the emperor he was naked for fear of being thought stupid. And the politicians intent on exploiting us like this arrangement just fine. Where is the courageous youth who shouts that the emperor - or empress - has no clothes?

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