Local protester Julie Bailey talks to The Slog about the full-time job that is staying close to the goings-on at Stafford Hospital.

Julie Bailey is a one-woman tornado with none of the hysteria or paranoia one comes to associate with the more extreme opponents of the caring State.

“Most of the people involved in this on every side are barking” she laughs, “but massive injustices have been done in this county, and at the hospital. Somebody has to do something,and at the moment it’s yours truly.”

She has a proper job, running a highly popular ‘caff’ which, for the last few weeks, has been home to Fleet Street’s finest. Ring her up and she is certain to be serving and cooking at the same time as giving an interview. She simply doesn’t stop.

“Today it’s an inquest on a 41 year-old man” she tells me, “He fell off a trolley in the hospital, and of course the management would love to tell everyone it was suicide. They think we’re all idiots.”

The inquest was to be heard before Coroner Haigh.

“I don’t trust him” she admits with her usual candour, “He always has too many reasons why the obvious cause of death is wrong. Most of the so-called Inquiries at our hospital end quietly, with nobody being to blame. You get used to the lies.”

She may well have been referring obliquely to an internal Inquiry into the alleged complicity of a senior legal person at Stafford hospital in falsification of a death certificate.

“We got the result yesterday” confirms Julie, “No case to answer, as usual. It makes you sick. The doctor told the Inquiry this person begged him to change the cause of death. But there’s nothing you can do. If Burnham doesn’t care, then they do what they want”.

Last year – after repeated pleas for an audience with Andy Burnham were ignored – Julie and her helpers doorstepped the Minister at his home in Wigan until he finally agreed to meet them.

“It’s the only way” she said, her voice taut with barely suppressed anger, “All politicians are the same. They want your vote, but not your opinion. None of them are welcome in my caff”.

This also applies to local MP David Kidney, and particularly to his assistant Diane Smith. Ms Smith told The Slog at the weekend that Bailey’s view of things is “over-simplistic and over-angry”, but it’s hard to see how any anger about the Stafford Hospital tragedy could be an overreaction. The junior Minister who signed the hospital off as fit for elevation to Trust status is now the Cabinet Minister in charge of the NHS. The Strategic Director who encouraged him to sign it off is CEO of the NHS. This might be seen by many as the greatest injustice of all, but Julie doesn’t see it that way.

“The real crime is the lack of accountability” she asserts, “We don’t see copies of internal judgements. They put off every request for information. Even Haigh denies what is obviously the truth. The corruption is depressing”.

Julie Bailey couldn’t hang around. She was waiting for a lift to the inquest. We should all hope she doesn’t have to wait too long for ultimate justice. Gobby or not, Britain needs people like her.