WAS there ever an organisation more inappropriately named than NICE?

What’s NICE about letting thousands of elderly people go blind for the sake of a few quid then saying “oops, sorry about that”?

What’s NICE about condemning kidney-cancer patients to death when there are drugs available that can save them?

What’s NICE about telling people with Alzheimer’s that £2.50 a day to keep their faculties just a little while longer is too high a price to pay?

And what’s NICE about a bunch of fat-cat chief executives who sit in their plush offices playing God?

Just how often do these executives from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence actually meet the people they regularly condemn to death? How many of them have the guts to look those people in the eyes (those that can still see, that is) and say: “Yes, it was me who said you can’t have that drug”?

What kind of people can sleep at night knowing it’s in their power to authorise drugs that will save people’s lives—but they don’t because their little committees had a meeting over a coffee and a digestive and decided that if a patient’s treatment costs more than thirty grand a year they die.

Andrew Dillon, NICE’s chief executive, gets paid £190,000 a year (how many lives would that save?) to play Dr Death.

But of course he’s not a REAL doctor. He’s not even one of the “pretend” ones NICE has—those executives who have PHDs and whose only “medical” experience is working for pharmaceutical companies.

Dillon—who deigned to briefly meet a posse of kidney cancer patients demonstrating outside his offices last week begging him to authorise a drug that could prolong their lives— is a manager, a “suit”. He’s not a doctor or a scientist. He has no idea about patient care or the terror people experience when they’re diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Yet this man literally has the power to tell those people to “eff off and die”. And what is he? A mere bean- counter in a posh suit.

How comforting that must be to the millions of patients who at this very minute are being denied life-saving drugs that are freely available in other countries.

And how easy for Dillon to put a red pen through a request for drugs that are freely available in Scotland (whose health service WE subsidise) and throughout the rest of Europe but are deemed “too expensive” for English people.

How does he justify that?

We even hear this week that thousands of doctors are now too terrified to tell cancer patients about new drugs that could extend their lives, just in case NICE refuses to fund treatments. So isn’t it time we knew more about these people who play God? And should those people whose prime motivation seems to be saving money really be the ones making decisions on who lives and who dies?

Is that how a caring health service work? Just this week Dillon had the brass neck to suggest media campaigns calling for NICE to authorise certain drugs had actually held up the process.

What an outrageous lie—because he knows that without the bad publicity that has heaped shame on this organisation, certain drugs might NEVER have been authorised.

Just recently (after a much publicised media campaign) Dillon was forced into making a public apology about delaying approval for a drug that stops elderly people going blind.

It’s taken two years for NICE to make a decision—years in which 50 elderly people a day have gone blind, condemned to live out their final years in darkness, without dignity or independence.

How dare he suggest the media did that? He and his indecisive little committees did that. And what so-called health body can say to an elderly person (which NICE does), “You can’t have these drugs until you’ve gone blind in one eye”?

“I don’t get told by anybody in government what to do,” Dillon said in a recent interview. In which case, what’s his excuse for not vociferously berating the government—forcing them to give more money to help keep people alive?

And why isn’t he more critical of a government that has access to drugs which can save people’s lives— but won’t allow them to be used?

Dillon insists media criticism doesn’t bother him. “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” he said recently.”

Of course it is—playing God is a pretty heady ride, and it means Mr Dillon can go about his lovely, privileged life while the people whose blood he has on his hands quietly die.

Ghaf by top cop

TARIQUE Ghaffur says he’s the victim of racial discrimination.

Yes, I’m talking about the Tarique Ghaffur who’s the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner on £180,000 a year, who’ll cop for a £522,000 lump sum when he retires, plus £85,000-a-year for life. (Feeling sorry for him yet?)

Yes, this is the same AC Ghaffur who is THE most senior Asian police officer in the land, a man who has made history as the biggest ever success story for a refugee who came to this country from Uganda in 1972.

In fact, his rise through the police ranks has been so meteoric it prompted his first wife to speak out recently, claiming that Ghaffur had not only benefited from positive discrimination but is the type of man who the minute things don’t go his way flings around accusations of discrimination.

“It’s a dreadful allegation,” she said. “ It’s cowardly and it’s lazy.”

Yes, this high-ranking success story has been treated so badly by the Met (an organisation which, to an outsider, looks like it couldn’t have treated him better), he’s now suing it to the tune of £1 million. although we hear he wanted £2million. Ghaffur’s latest whinge (he’s forever complaining about being subjugated and humiliated) is that he’s been sidelined from a job in charge of security for the 2012 Olympics. This is a claim that has been rubbished by former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who says security for the Olympics was always going to be masterminded by the government, NOT the police.

And frankly I’d sideline a high-ranking officer if he kept calling press conferences to slate his bosses and to air personal grievances. I’d sideline a bloke who spends so much time whingeing about how awful his lot is that he’s forgotten his job is to fight crime.

And I’d certainly sideline a bloke whose loyalty and commitment to the Met now looks questionable, to say the least.

Maybe the Met doesn’t want to extend Ghaffur’s contract (he wants to stay till 2012) because he’s simply come to the end of his usefulness.

That’s not discriminatory, it’s a situation that eventually affects us all—black or white.

If ever there was a man who is living proof of Britain’s continuing commitment to integration, equality, fairness and helping people who come here as refugees, it’s Tarique Ghaffur.

But instead of being grateful to a country and to the organisation that helped him on the road to his wonderful life, what does he do? He slates them all as racists! There’s gratitude!

Gerraway, Kate

GMTV’s Kate Garraway allowed herself to be photographed in a stunted-up picture of a calf suckling her breast.

She says it’s because she believes if women can’t breastfeed their own babies maybe other women should be allowed to do it for them. And she says she posed for this picture not because she was advocating animals suckling women–but because she wanted to provoke a debate.

I rather think she wanted to promote a documentary she’s starring in, and I think she wanted a bit of personal publicity–in short supply since Strictly Come Dancing. That photo smacked of desperation.

It was revolting, not thought-provoking and Miss Garraway ought to have known better.

Macho? Smacko!

ACCORDING to new research, most women want to be housewives.

This research published by that font of all knowledge on 21st century feminism—the Yorkshire Building Society —says men now want traditional wives who stay at home to cook and clean, and that, increasingly, women want the same.

It also says women want a macho hunter-gatherer male.

Let me first say that women, no matter how liberated or independent, have always wanted their man to earn more than them. It’s a genetic thing.

However they’re happy to settle for a man who earns as much, a bit less or even anything at all.

More importantly, they want a man who takes his fair share of responsibility at home.

What they’re sick of is holding down a full-time job as well as looking after the house, the kids, the social life and the doctor’s appointments.

I can only assume the men who took part in this research were indulging in fantasies about the days when women stayed at home to bake pies, run their baths, pour them drinks and say “yes dear” to everything.

They need to be woken up and smacked around the head until they see sense.