BBC's Dan Roan reprimanded after claiming Leicester City boss 'died with his mistress'

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The BBC’s sports editor has been reprimanded by bosses after he was caught on camera claiming that Leicester City’s owner had a mistress who died alongside him.

Dan Roan is facing calls to resign over the unguarded comments made at a memorial service for Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and the four other victims of Saturday’s fatal helicopter crash.

Sources at the BBC said Roan’s gaffe came despite him being told to “strike the right tone” when covering the story. He is known for his forthright interviewing style, and bosses are said to have reminded him that he needed to take a sensitive approach when reporting a tragedy.

One of those killed was Mr Srivaddhanaprabha’s personal assistant, Nusara Suknamai. Roan was apparently referring to her when he was unwittingly recorded in the background of a Sky News feed, unaware that the cameras were still rolling and the footage was being streamed live online.

Roan appeared to laugh as he alleged that the club owner had a “mistress who died in the crash, otherwise known as a member of staff, ie. the mistress,” adding wryly that the business tycoon was a “family man”.

He went on: “But that’s what you do if you’re a billionaire - that’s expected, so we shouldn’t judge.”

Miss Suknamai was a former beauty queen and actress who had worked for Mr Srivaddhanaprabha for several years. Another employee, Kaveporn Punpare, pilot Eric Swaffer and passenger Izabela Roza Lechowicz also died in the crash.

The footage, taken at the King Power stadium shortly after Mr Srivaddhanaprabha’s widow laid a wreath, was watched by thousands of Leicester City fans and was soon circulated on social media.

Roan issued a short apology, tweeting: “Just want to say sorry for some comments made in private, off-air conversation earlier with a colleague. Absolutely no offence intended.”

Many fans replied calling for him to resign and accusing him of disrespecting Mr Srivaddhaprabha’s memory with his “disgraceful” and “offensive” comments.

Roan believing himself to be off-air was no defence, they said, pointing out that Andy Gray and Richard Keys lost their jobs as Sky Sports pundits in 2011 after they were overheard making derogatory comments about a woman.

The corporation refused to confirm that Roan would face disciplinary action, saying: “We deal with staff matters privately.”

A BBC spokesperson said: “This was an ill-judged comment made in a private off-air conversation for which Dan has apologised.”

But a source said: “The BBC have taken a dim view of this. They told him at the outset that the main thing he needed to do was to strike the right tone, and then this happens.”

A Cambridge graduate, Roan joined the BBC trainee scheme and worked for a spell at Sky and Setanta before returning to the corporation. He was made sports editor in 2014 and admitted that his appointment raised eyebrows.

“When I was made editor, the people who I’d worked with before could not believe this was possible,” he told Varsity magazine.

Roan was banned from the Etihad stadium in 2012 over his “leading and aggressive” questioning of Patrick Vieira. He also clashed with Sir Alex Ferguson, saying the former Manchester United manager was “not used to journalists standing up to him [but] it’s what makes the job fun”.

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https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/oct/30/chancellors-budget-boost-to-nhs-frontline-conceals-1bn-cut

Chancellor’s budget boost to NHS frontline conceals £1bn cut

Funding for training doctors and nurses, buying equipment and new hospitals due to fall

Denis Campbell Health policy editor

Public health services and the education and training of nurses and doctors will be cut by £1bn next year as part of the government’s plan to boost the NHS’s budget by £20bn by 2023, it has emerged.

A leading expert in NHS finances warned ministers that their strategy of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” is a false economy that risks worsening already serious understaffing in England’s health service.

Prof Anita Charlesworth, director of economics and research at the Health Foundation, identified the £1bn loss of funding that will affect those two areas in 2019-20, as well as NHS capital investment, which the health service uses to refurbish its estate, build new premises and buy equipment.

Ministers are continuing their policy of squeezing the amount of money they put into the elements of the Department of Health and Social Care’s budget that are not protected in order to help fund Theresa May’s £20bn birthday present to mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS’s creation in 1948.

However, that has prompted concern that the approach is short-termist, driven by the need to tackle the growing overload facing the NHS, and will only add to demand for care in the long term.

“The NHS was the clear winner in the chancellor’s budget, but there is a big risk that it won’t feel like that in hospitals and GP surgeries over the coming year. Extra funding starts next year and rises to £20.5bn in 2023/24,” said Charlesworth, a former head of public spending at the Treasury. “This money is for frontline NHS services. It excludes wider areas of vital health spending where funding is also desperately needed: public health, workforce training and capital investment.

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul is tempting for any government short of money and facing multiple competing demands. However, it is rarely a sustainable strategy. The government is storing up problems for the future by only focusing on frontline services while ignoring other areas of vital health spending,” she added.

The NHS will not be able to modernise the way it cares for patients, improve quality of care or reduce waste unless it makes a priority of training new staff and investing in its infrastructure, she added.

Duncan Stephenson, director of external affairs at the Royal Society for Public Health, claimed key services aimed at reducing illness would be hit. “We have already seen significant cuts to public health budgets with the knock-on effect that this has on a whole host of vital services, from sexual health and smoking cessation, right through to drug and alcohol treatment. We will forever be having these debates unless we finally accept that investment in prevention will give us payback in the long term and ultimately save the NHS money,” he said.

Charlesworth also pointed out that the fine print of the budget shows that NHS England’s budget will go up by 3.3% next year, which is less than the 3.6% that the prime minister promised in the summer.

The government’s NHS boost involves such large sums that by 2023-24 it will be running a £20bn deficit, rather than the £3.5bn surplus it had planned, the Office for Budget Responsibility said. It went on: “The new multi-year settlement for the NHS raises the deficit substantially every year [until 2023-14]. Further measures announced in the budget raise borrowing in the near term but reduce it slightly in the medium term. Taken together, they turn the £3.5bn surplus in our pre-measures forecast for 2023-24 into a £19.8bn deficit.”

Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said taxes would have to rise at some point to fund the NHS. Health spending has grown as a proportion of all public spending from 23% in 2000 to 29% in 2010, when the coalition replaced Labour, and will continue to grow to a predicted 38% by 2023-24.

“At some point we will need to raise taxes to pay for health. There can’t be much further we can squeeze other public services to pay for it,” he tweeted.

German Nurse admits to killing 100s of patients

German nurse admits to killing 100 patients as trial opens

Niels Hoegel, already serving 15 years, has been accused of deliberately overdosing victims

Agence France-Presse in Oldenburg

A former nurse has admitted to killing 100 patients in his care, on the first day of his trial in the biggest serial killing case in Germany’s post-war history.

Niels Hoegel, 41, has already spent nearly a decade in prison on a life term for other patient deaths. He is accused of intentionally administering medical overdoses to victims so he could bring them back to life at the last moment.

As the proceedings opened in the northern city of Oldenburg, the presiding judge, Sebastian Buehrmann, asked whether the charges against him were accurate. Hoegel replied “yes”.

“What I have admitted took place,” he told the courtroom crowded with dozens of grieving relatives.

As the proceedings began Buehrmann said the main aim of the trial was to establish the full scope of the murder spree that was allowed to go unchecked for years at two German hospitals.

“We will do our utmost to learn the truth,” he said. “It is like a house with dark rooms – we want to bring light into the darkness.”

After a minute of silence for the victims, the bearded, heavyset Hoegel listened impassively, his head lowered, as public prosecutor Daniela Schiereck-Bohlmann read out the name of each dead patient and the charges against the defendant.

Prosecutors say at least 36 were killed at a hospital in Oldenburg where he worked, and about 64 more at a clinic in nearby Delmenhorst, between 2000 and 2005.

More than 130 bodies of patients who died on Hoegel’s watch have been exhumed. Investigators have said the case is “unprecedented in Germanyto our knowledge”.

One of the more than 100 co-plaintiffs in the trial, Christian Marbach, said it was a scandal that Hoegel had been allowed to kill with impunity for so long without hospital authorities or law enforcement intervening.

“They had everything they needed [to stop him] – you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes,” said Marbach, the grandson of one of the patients.

“I didn’t expect it to happen today,” he said. “We now have a chance to make some real progress.”

Hoegel was caught in 2005 while injecting a patient in Delmenhorst with an unprescribed medication. He was sentenced in 2008 to seven years in prison for attempted murder.

A second trial followed in 2014-15 under pressure from families of his alleged victims, who accused prosecutors of dragging their feet.

He was found guilty of murder and attempted murder of five other victims and given the maximum sentence of 15 years.

It was then that Hoegel confessed to his psychiatrist of at least 30 more murders that he committed in Delmenhorst. That prompted investigators to take a closer look at suspicious deaths in Oldenburg.

Investigators say the final toll could be more than 200 but fear they might never know for sure because the bodies of many potential victims were cremated.U

Hoegel appears to have followed a similar procedure each time, first injecting a medication that triggered cardiac arrest, followed by an often futile attempt at resuscitation.

Prosecutors say he was motivated by vanity, to show off his skills at saving lives, and by simple “boredom”.

The choice of victim appears to have been entirely random, with their ages ranging from 34 to 96.

Killing in itself was never his aim, according to one psychologist who evaluated him. When he managed to revive a patient, he was sated, but only for a few days, the expert said, adding: “For him, it was like a drug.”

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Tuesday, 30 October 2018