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The Daily Mail carries today's disgusting NHS story. Annette Townend has terminal bowel cancer. She spent £1,000 hiring private carers to go undercover and look after her dying elderly mother in Bradford Royal Infirmary because nurses were not giving her the attention she needed.

Because of her own condition she wasn't allowed into her mother's ward herself, but she

acted out of desperation after a doctor warned family members that 82-year-old Sheila Smith would be dead within days ‘if something wasn’t done’.

The great-grandmother’s liver and kidneys were failing because she had not been eating or drinking, and overworked nurses at Bradford Royal Infirmary did not have time to spend with her.

The paper has the disgusting details. The central point is that there were 28 elderly patients on the ward, with about half suffering from dementia and unable to do anything for themselves. And there were usually about six nurses.

With the best will in the world, they could never have looked after their patients properly.

A spokesman for Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust steps forward with the nauseatingly feigned concern that these public sector weasels trot out on these all too frequent occasions:

We are sorry to learn of Mrs Townend’s concerns about her mother’s care.

We set high standards for ourselves and aim to get every patient’s treatment and care right, and in most cases we do.

No, you don't set high standards. Those twenty eight elderly patients could not be looked after properly by six nurses. It was impossible.

Who was the most senior person who knew this inevitable neglect was happening? Whose job was it in the structure to know?

Frankly, a mere sacking would be too mild a penalty for what these patients were put through. But in fortress NHS, you can bet no one in management will suffer.

Just the patients near the end of their days who have paid in to the NHS for most of their lives.