The neonatal unit where Lucy Letby worked suffered an outbreak of bacteria lethal to babies in 2015-16, a leaked risk report shows. The Telegraph has the story.
In August 2023, Letby was convicted of the murders of seven newborns and the attempted murders of six other infants. A retrial in July also found her guilty of the attempted murder of another child.
Since the conviction, numerous scientists, statisticians and doctors have expressed their concern about the evidence presented to the jury regarding shift patterns, medical conclusions and the standard of care at the Countess of Chester.
It has now emerged that at the time when infant mortality rates spiked at the Countess of Chester hospital between 2015 and 2016 – the years in which Letby was convicted of killing the infants – the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa had colonised taps in the nurseries of the neonatal unit, including intensive care.
Pseudomonas is known to be lethal to vulnerable babies. In 2012, a premature baby died and 12 others needed treatment at Southmead Hospital in Bristol after an outbreak of a water-borne bacterium.
Three premature babies also died after contracting the bug at the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital in Belfast January 2012. In that case, sink taps were found to be the source of infection. A baby had died from the same infection six weeks earlier in Derry.
David Livermore, Professor of Medical Microbiology, at the University of East Anglia said: “Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an environmental organism that likes moisture.
“It can be lethal in newborns, especially premature ones, who lack a properly developed immune system.
“From mid-2015 to mid-2016 there were around 17 infant deaths at the Countess of Chester unit.
“We are asked to believe that this comprised two superimposed clusters, one of seven murders by Lucy Letby, and one where, to quote the crown prosecution expert, they died for the usual problems why small babies die: haemorrhage, infection, congenital problems.
“It is simpler to believe that we are looking at a single spike of fatal infections in a chaotic unit.”
The risk report leaked to the Telegraph, showed that the Countess of Chester hospital had been dealing with Pseudomonas since at least May 2015 when there were fears about transferring babies from nearby Arrowe Park Hospital.
The risk score was reduced in August 2015, when there had been no infections in neonates, but in December 2015, a tap in intensive care tested positive for the bug and had to be replaced.
In the same month a tap in another baby ward also tested positive but the report warned that there was no capacity to replace it, so filters were fitted instead. The report said the filters would remain in place “until we get the all clear”.
Notes show that by the middle of February 2016, staff had still not received this confirmation.
Worth reading in full.
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What Alasdair MacIntyre got right – and wrong
‘I largely agree that liberal modernity has produced a shallow, hollowed-out culture, in which individualism rules supreme and crass hedonism goes almost unopposed. Having pondered this dilemma for years, I now see the need to distinguish the liberal state, or political liberalism, from ‘liberalism’ in a wider sense – a vague secular ideology that enthrones the principle of individual choice.’
Overthinking.
The principle of individual choice is enshrined in democratic capitalism.
Individualism is constrained, in England, by English law based on precedent.
Precedent scrolls back into England’s Christian past.
We live in a Post Christian Ethical Christian country.
We also live in Blair’s Britain, a lawyers and bureaucrats paradise.
But, not before time, the winds of change are upon us as Post Christian Ethical Christianity within this (still, just vaguely) capitalist democracy, reasserts itself.
That can’t happen soon enough.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-ukraine-peace-wants-pledge-halt-nato-enlargement-sources-say-2025-05-28/
Today’s edition of the so fun game…
It’s Compare & Contrast!
Compare:
“Putin is ready to make peace but not at any price,” said a senior Russian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to the report, Putin seeks a written commitment from major Western powers not to expand NATO eastward — formally excluding Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other former Soviet republics from membership.
Russia also wants Ukraine to adopt a neutral status, for some Western sanctions to be lifted, for the issue of frozen Russian sovereign assets in the West to be resolved, and for Russian-speaking Ukrainians to receive “protection,” the source said.
“If Putin realizes he is unable to reach a peace deal on his own terms, he will seek to show the Ukrainians and the Europeans by military victories that ‘peace tomorrow will be even more painful,’
And Contrast:
‘The High Representatives of the participating States (including Russia as successor state to the USSR) have solemnly adopted the following: Within the framework of international law, all the participating States have equal rights and duties. They will respect each other’s right to define and conduct as it wishes its relations with other States in accordance with international law and in the spirit of the present Declaration. They consider that their frontiers can be changed, in accordance with international law, by peaceful means and by agreement. They also have the right to belong or not to belong to international organizations, to be or not to be a party to bilateral or multilateral treaties including the right to be or not to be a party to treaties of alliance; they also have the right to neutrality.’
CONFERENCE ON SECURITY AND CO-OPERATION IN EUROPE FINAL ACT HELSINKI 1975
So, plain as a pikestaff, a clear, overt attempt by Russia to dominate and determine the foreign policies of European sovereign states.
What begins as an attempt to dominate the foreign policies of weaker states then moves on to domestic policies.
That is the stark choice that Europe now faces, impossible to misconstrue…..
So, plain as a pikestaff, a clear, overt attempt by Russia to counter the bullying tactics and hegemonic aggressions of (USA and) European sovereign states attempting to influence, demoralize and subjugate the Russian people, particularly with the aim of removing their current President from office because he is a far too intelligent, principled and driven by honourable concerns for his own citizens to be considered one of their own corruptible type, subservient to diverse ruling masters.
Our pathetic, war-mongering European leaders simply hope to break up the (also sovereign) Russian state to gain control over its enormous resources, primarily driven by their US masters with their hate-filled, Cold War attitude towards Russia, which they still confuse with USSR.
USA almost managed to dominate Russia during the Yeltsin era but then along came that pesky Putin who, although initially offering to closely cooperate with USA, eventually realized that would involve reducing Russia to become just another US state.
You wrote that Putin “is far too intelligent, principled and driven by honourable concerns for his own citizens…” What a horrible joke!
Tell that to all the Russians arrested for laying even a single flower to commemorate their beloved True Russian Leader Alexei Navalny.
Tell that to Navalny’s wife and children, parents and friends, and the MILLIONS OF RUSSIANS who wanted him to be their National Leader.
Stop admiring Putin the Tatar, in cahoots with his secret pal Zelensky the Weasel, whose only aim in the Meatgrinder War is to kill Slavs.
Alexei Navalny was, firstly, not wanted by MILLIONS to be a True Russian Leader and, secondly, he was a traitor. If a Russian works with the CIA to overthrow Putin then he is automatically a traitor to Russia. It is simple.
If you want detailed information – none of which you will get from Western mainstream media – try watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv49PYBeds from around 17m00s.
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2024/11/russias-economy-is-doomed
“Russia is no longer a normal economy”. Putin is aggressively subsidising the lifestyles of Russian citizens with very high public spending, but because the country is disconnected from capital flows – there is almost no foreign investment in Russia, nor are Russians investing abroad – the demand for imported goods keeps growing, the rouble keeps getting weaker, and this compounds the effect of inflation.
Russia has also been artificially inflating its housing market by subsidising mortgages, creating a dangerous housing bubble. Property prices in Russian cities have more than doubled since the Ukraine war began, but when this subsidy was withdrawn for most homebuyers in July, demand halved, leaving an unstable bubble that Vatansever says “could lead, at some point, to a financial crash in Russia, if that bubble bursts”.
Russian prosperity ultimately depends on Western consumers.
The reason for this is that Russia runs on oil. With most of its gas exports to Europe stopped by pipeline closures and sanctions, it has become an economy dependent on a single commodity, and while oil prices are high, money flows into the Russian current account.
What scares the Russian central bank is the risk of a global financial slowdown that reduces consumer demand around the world, and therefore the price of the oil that is intrinsic to manufacturing and trade.
Russian businesses, too, are fully exposed to the risks of their own economy, because they have been borrowing at home rather than abroad. It is hard to imagine how any business in a country with a severe labour shortage and a base rate of 21 per cent could make the case for investment, job creation and growth.
In the long term, what has long been evident is that Putin’s presidency has been little different from the Soviet era, in that he has made Russia a military giant but an economic dwarf. His gangster state has never been able to diversify; while the world buys Chinese cars and American software, the only thing we buy from Russia is oil, and the gradual turning away from hydrocarbons will eventually expose this as an appalling waste of a country’s potential.
Russia’s formidable levels of education and scientific prowess have been wasted, because under the Putin regime a lack of property rights and the rule of law drive its innovators and entrepreneurs abroad. Under another government, Vatansever says, Russia “could have easily emerged as one of the top five or six economies in the world”. Instead, the world’s largest country has dropped off the list of its ten largest economies.
“We are likely to witness the gradual decline of Russia’s economic significance on the world stage”, he concluded.’
“Release suspects’ ethnicities early, Met chief says”
Embolden racists.? Perhaps we are emboldened because we expect policing that is honest and even handed. Why is it the Chief Constables job to decide who should hear the full story and who should have it sanitised and covered over.
Rudakubana’s crime was racist, as are the crimes of the Muslim rape gangs. NOT releasing suspects’ ethnicity in those case has encouraged similar racists to believe, not implausibly, that they can act with impunity, even if they end up in jail (as Tommy Robinson’s post-release interview demonstrates starkly).
Rowley is equating noticing crime rates vary by race, consistently across countries, with “racism”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BHMSFSeCJx0&pp=4gcKEghzdWJzdGFjaw%3D%3D
Quite interesting. Oliver Stone gives his views on the world and especially the USA to a Russian audience with Q&A after.
“DEI is a con: five hallmarks of a hustle”
Follow an embedded link for the “Nap Ministry” and the “Nap Bishop…”
https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/about/
“…Rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.”
Another DIE grifter conning academia.
Thanks for that link to “The Nap Bishop”— Unbelievable excuse for SHEER LAZINESS!!!
In Smithsonian Race Guidelines, Rational Thinking and Hard Work Are White Values – Newsweek
Billionaire tech founder Guillaume Pousaz has abandoned Britain for Monaco in the wake of Rachel Reeves’s tax crackdown, reports City A.M. says DS. A crackdown implies dealing with wrongful activities whereas there has been no suggestion non-doms are more prone to false tax returns than anyone else.
Crackdown “a series of severe measures to restrict undesirable or illegal people or behaviour.”
Why does DS and others perpetuate the spin of the left.
I agree.
But then the moment anyone proposes cuts to benefits, all hell brakes loose. E.g. winter fuel allowance.
And what I find is that many of those who talk about the UK’s debt and deficit problems are the same people who then denounce the inhumanity of winter fuel allowance cuts.
Most people like the idea of balanced budgets, fiscal responsibility and generally not going bankrupt but are then too soft (in the head, mostly) to understand that it can’t be accomplished without it affecting many people.
“Kemi Badenoch’s only hope of reviving the Conservative Party” is to RESIGN.
This short, Channel 4 video shows a young girl walking through flames after her school was hit by an Israeli airstrike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYVNhFfbdug. The girl survived but her two brothers and three sisters did not.
This second, BBC video shows an interview with a paediatrician reporting on her experiences in a Gaza hospital, particularly concerning a colleague working in the emergency unit who was informed that seven of her nine children had been killed by an Israeli targeted attack on her house, and who tried to identify the charred remains of her children: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5yFJ1CjZYE.
Any claims that BBC is principally anti-Israel are dispelled by the critical responses of the interviewer.
Poor little orphan child! I wonder if her fate in later life will be, with or without her family, because I remember a news report from many years back about a young Palestinian Muslim man who SHOT & KILLED HIS OWN MOTHER because she refused to ASK HIS PERMISSION TO GO OUT SHOPPING.
See also:
Inside Saudi Arabia’s ‘hellish’ secret prisons for ‘disobedient’ women and girls where inmates are sent by families to be flogged and abused until they become docile… or jump off the roof to end it all | Daily Mail Online
“Women have shared harrowing testimonies of being sent to the facilities as punishment for not ‘obeying’ sexual abuse at home, and then flogged or locked away in isolation until they ‘reconcile’ with their abusers.”
“She was held in the institution until her father agreed she could be released, despite his being her alleged abuser, the outlet reports.
Girls and women can only be released from Dar al-Re’aya into the custody of a male relative.”
“Women who reach the age of 30 while still in Dar al-Re’aya [prison] are also transferred to a ‘guest’ facility, or Dar al-Theyafa.
“Women fleeing abuse can essentially be left to spend their lives inside the camps, or face returning to abusive households. They may never leave.”
Imagine what life is like for married women in Islam, who not only have to endure their husband’s Three Other Wives & Children, but also their husband and their sons raping their daughters, and throwing their daughters into prison if they refuse incestuous rape!
And even when they give birth, all of their husband’s creepy male relatives have the “Islamic right” to suck milk from the nursing mother’s breasts! It’s just disgusting. Females from birth to death are regarded as nothing more than domestic animals owned by men. Such horrors are all religiously sanctioned, and they intend to force them upon the West!!!
As I have written before, I support Christopher Hitchens’ view that “Religion poisons everything” – whichever religion you choose.
There are apparently 2 billion Muslims in the world and I am sure the perverse fates you describe are absolute exceptions, otherwise there would be no Muslims whatsoever.
But what are you suggesting? Should 2 billion people be murdered or starved to death? How can you mock orphans, of which there are now 46,000 in Gaza (according to the second video above)?
How about you also stating that genocide is never acceptable anywhere in the world, no matter for what reason, no matter whatever religion is involved, no matter who the victims are?
I don’t believe that genocide is occurring in Gaza. That is my personal view. As for Muslims, my view is that they should stay in their own Muslim lands, instead of swarming into the West with the openly stated aim of imposing their Savage, Barbaric, Murderous, Demonic Cult upon the World.
THEY ATTACKED ISRAEL while Israeli young people were dancing at a festival, and THEY DRAGGED HOSTAGES away last autumn, and are still holding many captive even as summer now approaches.
Like many people, all you seem to care about is the Muslims of Gaza, who have persecuted the Christians of Gaza for 1400 years, and you have little interest in our Christian European brothers being tortured and murdered in South Africa, while just trying to farm the land and produce food to feed the people.
You do not believe that genocide is occurring in Gaza or you do not want to believe it?
Here is another video, recorded yesterday during a UN Security Council meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5B1MO1PW3M. Yet another doctor reporting on children shot in the head, massive numbers of bomb victims that no hospital can cope with, people dying in incredible numbers. ALL KILLED BY THE CHRISTIANS YOU CLAIM ARE SUPERIOR TO MUSLIMS!
Do not try to convince me that one religion is better than another! They are all the same: I am your God and you may only believe me and no other God.
And you ramble on about what happened 1400 years ago? Do you have no idea how many countries had their borders changed, how many populations were massacred, how many countries appeared and disappeared in that time?
We are living in today’s world – 2025, not some past age when violence and disease were rampant. In today’s world we are supposed to be civilized! And here I am arguing whether it is right to murder children or not.
“Has King Charles gone doolally on his Canada trip?”
I think a few words should be added to all these “acknowledgments” to the natives of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the USA, South America, etc.:
“We Europeans also acknowledge the gratitude of the natives to us, for building this land into a Great Nation, which has lifted the standard of living for all of us onto a higher level than you could ever have imagined.”
“Dear Natives, you’re welcome!”
“Love,
Europeans”
Dear DS Editors, please include this in tomorrow’s News Round-Up, if possible, because it’s important for people to know about yet more attacks on prison officers this week. Thank you!
Prisoner attacks officer with boiling water at high-security jail
“One officer suffered a FRACTURED JAW and BLEEDING ON THE BRAIN after he was assaulted by a prisoner in a workshop, while another was SCALDED when an inmate threw a kettle of boiling water at him when he entered a cell.”
“Some 10,605 ASSAULTS ON STAFF in male and female jails were recorded in 2024, a record high up from 9,204 in 2023 and nearly three times the 3,640 in 2014.”
One commenter pointed out that it’s useless for Mahmood to order a “review” about whether prison officers need stab vests, when they’re giving the prisoners kettles, cutlery, cooking oil, and cells like hotel rooms instead of prison cells. Sack Mahmood and replace her with someone with actual working experience.