You must challenge our friends with smart suits
YET again we are bombarded with the continual rise in train travel prices alongside disasters in aspects of the NHS. The media rightly spend time highlighting the problems.
Reporters are dispatched to ride on overcrowded trains and there are regular documentaries following NHS staff struggling to do their jobs.
This, however, does not inform us, as the general public, about the organisation and management of these important national institutions. When it comes to management the reports usually end with a spokesperson for the wealthy managers informing us that they are investing more and more each day in infrastructure and making our railways the best in the world. In respect to the NHS last week yet another hospital trust CEO who has presided over a catastrophe is interviewed outside his palatial home getting in his executive car and telling us he will not resign and he’s the right man to take the trust forward. This usually ends the report.
Why are these people not challenged more and not allowed to move until major questions are answered? Reporters often challenge train staff or NHS staff with questions they should not be answering. This can often be construed as bullying as they are picking on the little people because they are scared of the big guns.
Why in the fly on the wall documentaries, in hospitals on trains and other service industries like energy and water, do the reporters not follow a manager or CEO around for a day or two?
Why do we not see what they do for their money and their bonuses after all in the case of the NHS it’s our money. Why when news programmes put up costs statistics on a fancy chart do, we not see exactly how much money goes into the pockets of managers and shareholders, not percentage figures but actual figures? The train ticket costs up 3% managers salaries up 6%!
My concern is that when they get permission to film, the area of the following management is off the table.If so, shame on all you television producers for not insisting on full access.
You especially BBC, you are a public service broadcaster and the NHS is a public service. My second concern is that the BBC executives are too close to the executives of such companies.
A free and hard-hitting media is the backbone of democracy. I am sure if we the public watched these so-called top managers at work, we would be truly outraged. While I do not condone the violence we see in Paris, the French always take to the streets or blockade ports to show that ordinary people can still cause necessary disruption in the pursuit of the truth.
Television producers, I do not want to watch another documentary on the stresses and strains on public service workers or privatised utilities I can witness that for myself every time I visit such places as hard-pressed A and E departments where I see frontline staff working hard.
I’d rather see what our friends with smart suits are doing for my money. Glyn Scott
Barry
Why are these people not challenged more and not allowed to move until major questions are answered?
Glyn Scott Barry