The ongoing NHS scandal

Shock! Horror! Another report reveals the shameful care given to the elderly in British hospitals. People in the twilight of their life reduced to begging for food and rattling the bars of their beds in a desperate attempt to get the attention of medical staff paid to care for them. The findings came in reports of random inspections by the Care Quality Commission watchdog that found concerns in 55 of the 100 hospitals visited, with 20 of them — one in five — breaking the law in its levels of neglect. They found patients starved of food, denied water, spoken to rudely or simply ignored.

It is sickening stuff. But what is so disgusting, so shameful, is that this is just the latest in a series of reports into the way our sacred National Health Service treats elderly and disabled patients. The Patients Association has heroically drawn attention to scores of similar cases of horrific neglect.