My local Hospital is turning into a bloody Bazaar.

My local Hospital is turning into a bloody Bazaar. Well when I say local, I mean the one I now have to travel to seeing as my real local hospital (Haslar) is being shut down. Recently I took my little boy (Freddie) to Queen Alexandra's hospital in Cosham (Portsmouth) to have an eye exam. He had to have eye drops in, so we were sent away for half an hour to allow his pupils to dilate. Thinking we would pass the time over a coffee, the wife and I headed over to the canteen, and there in the passageway outside the canteen was what could only be described as a market stall.

I know what you are thinking, a couple of old ladies selling second hand books and knitted dolls. Well unfortunately this was nothing like that. What this was, was a middle aged Asian looking guy selling cheap watches at £6 a pop. What the bloody hell is going on? Is my local hospital so skint that they have to rent out hospital corridors to market traders. Which idiot on the trust board thought this was a good way to raise revenue? Honestly it's like we're turning into some bloody third world country.

Lord Darzi - How to wind up Doctors - NHS Review.

The words both Doctors and Nurses dread to hear are, review, reform, overhaul, change, and shake-up. I've had similar experience of change during my service in the Royal Navy - and it was all bad. Poor managers refuse to accept responsibility if something is not working as well as it should be. It must be the system - the system needs changing - we must hold a review - blah, blah, blah... In the majority of cases the system in place works perfectly well when it is being run by a competent manager. Sadly, most government run organisations are lacking that vital ingredient.

I found (and I'm sure health staff are experiencing the same thing) that just when I got to grips with how the Engineering branch in the Navy worked, we would get a new Admiral and everything would change again. This change also tends to be driven by the Admirals need to be seen to be doing something, and I'm sure the same goes for Health Ministers. What people at the coal face want, is for those people on the surface who have no idea what is going on down below, to leave them the hell alone.

Doctors and Nurses must dream of the day when the instructions to change this or that stop coming down from the government. The NHS is a fantastic organisation lead by the wrong people. Doctors know where improvements need to be made (that's improvements - not changes) to the system and the government should leave them to get on with it for at least a couple of years. The fact that Doctors have already delivered a petition to Downing Street signed by a million patients rejecting the new polyclinics, shows how popular this review will be with those having to make yet more changes.

Gordon Brown is very pleased with the changes, he claims that they are a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" and will have "an even more profound effect" than previous shake-ups. I'm sure they will, and I'm sure that health staff are dreading them.

Gordon Brown - 11 years of high taxes and service cuts.

There are two things that all political parties see as their main campaigning priorities during a General Election: Health and Education. Labour claim to have a great record in both these areas. I beg to differ:

HEALTH:

Hospitals: The number of NHS hospital beds has fallen by 32,000 since Labour came to power. Last year saw a record cut in numbers, despite fears that this leads to overcrowding in the remaining wards and a higher risk of superbug infections. Daily Mail.

Maternity Wards: More than 2,000 maternity beds have been lost since 1997. Research by the Conservatives found that last year, 42 per cent of maternity units had refused to accept women in labour on at least one occasion. Telegraph.

GPs: The government's policy is to consolidate doctors' surgeries into a series of giant health centres, or polyclinics. Thousands of small practices will be closed and patients will be processed in buildings containing up to 50 GPs. The new clinics will also house some services at present provided by hospitals, which allows the government to claim that it is bringing healthcare "closer to home". The net effect will be a massive reduction in convenience. Guardian.

Dentists: Nearly 80 per cent of the population no longer has an NHS dental service. But rather than going private here, increasing numbers of people are heading abroad. It may be cheaper but, as Olga Craig discovers, the personal costs can be horrific. A survey, last week, of 5,000 patients and 750 dentists revealed that Britain is now so woefully short of state-funded dentists that one in 20 people say they have resorted to some style of DIY dentistry — a handful agonisingly pulling out their own teeth with pliers — because the soaring cost of private treatment is way beyond their means. Telegraph.

EDUCATION:

Schools: Figures published in February show that schools are being shut at a rate of nearly one a day, mainly in rural areas. Since 2002, some 1,704 schools - primary and secondary - have been shut in England. Those on sites which have now been sold will never re-open. Daily Mail.

League Tables: Britain’s young workers are among the lowest achievers at GCSE or equivalent in a league table of countries published today. The results show that Britain has plummeted to 22nd of 29 countries, from 14th place 40 years ago, despite its pupils attaining ever-higher grades. They raise fears that an underclass is emerging, increasingly unsuited to the job market as manual work declines and competition grows from abroad. Times.

Truancy: Truancy rates among pupils in England rose last year to their highest level since records began in 1997, new government figures showed yesterday. Nearly 230,000 pupils were classified as persistent absentees, meaning they missed more than 20% of school. Overall the number of missed lessons - including those lost to illness - decreased, but unauthorised absences rose to 1% of all school hours, indicating that 63,000 pupils were skipping class on an average day. Guardian.

What I want to know is where has all the money gone? According to Brown we have had "record spending" on health and education, if so, then it looks like a massive chunk of that money has been wasted. You know, I really do think that Labour know nothing about money handling or the economy. When we were doing well financially Brown spent more and more and he even borrowed money to continue spending beyond our means.

Now we are heading for a very sticky patch, Brown has nothing in the cupboard but a pile of loan agreement forms. For God's sake, Gordon Brown is now depending on the Unions to stop his party from going bankrupt. They can't even manage their party finances - what hope have we got that they can run the country's?

UPDATE: As if by magic from SKY: The Prime Minister has reacted to the Labour party's poor performance in the Henley by-election saying: "by-elections come and by-elections go".Responding to the news that Labour came in fifth place, behind the BNP, Gordon Brown added: "Of course we have to listen to what people say. "But my main job is to improve our public services, to get the economy moving forward, to make sure that in the health service and education people have the best services that they want and I am going to continue to do that." Yeah..... right.

Hospital parking fees - The English lose out again.

Why are we English always the poor relations when it comes to public services? Today the BBC are telling us that Hospitals in Wales will be bringing in free parking from the 1st of April. This follows an announcement by the Scottish health secretary that a maximum of £3 will be charged in their hospital car parks. Will this happen in England? will it hell, not as long as Gordon Brown is in charge.

This is a chart showing the parking fees at my local hospital in Portsmouth. This is nothing more than a sickness tax. What really disgusts me is the fact that Doctors and Nurses have to pay for the privilege of parking at work.

Why do we so readily accept the unacceptable? Ambulances.

Patients are left waiting in ambulances for hours. I'm sure that in years gone bye, the shocking news that patients are being left waiting in ambulances so that NHS Trusts can hit government targets would have caused an outcry. However, we have become so accustomed to this kind of pathetic mismanagement of our services that this story will be forgotten by tomorrow.

An estimated 60,000 patients have had to wait at least an hour before being allowed through hospital doors. Of course the main cause of this is the fact that more people are going to A&E because thanks to another government cock-up: getting a GP to see you at home is almost impossible.

The government have replied to these claims in their usual fashion: spin and lies. They say that these figures are incorrect and that 60,000 aren’t all that many anyway. So who's lying? The doctors, ambulance crews and the ambulance union, or the government?

I know who my money would be on.

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Hospital Parking: Scotland takes another dig at Gordon Brown.

Do you think they are doing on purpose? It seems that every one of those annoyances we have to put up with in England is being dealt with in Scotland. This time it's Hospital parking fees. Scotland's Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon has announced that anyone visiting any hospital in will pay a maximum of £3 for the day. Is Alex Salmond doing it to wind up Gordon Brown? Is he intentionally making Gordon look bad? If he is, he's doing a good job of it. The list of wind-ups is growing longer: Tuition fees, Police pay, nurses pay, School meals, life saving drugs, toll roads and many many more.

I'm pro- English Parliament, but I don't hold what Alex Salmond is doing for his people against him, or Scotland. It's not Alex's fault that he is able to provide the Scottish with services we are denied in England.

That's down to Gordon Brown.

Update: It's funny, when I wrote this post this morning it was with this kind of response from Gordon Brown in mind: Click HERE

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Labour - Tough on manipulating the figures relating to Hospital infections.

If you wanted to hit your target for reducing the number of Hospital infections, you would use the figures gathered directly after a £50m deep clean. And that is exactly what Labour's health Secretary Alan Johnson intends to do. Not exactly honest is it, but what do expect from a minister already in the spotlight for dodgy donations to his deputy leadership campaign? Both the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are attacking this brazen manipulation of the figures. However Alan Johnson is defending his government's position:

"First the Tories say our deep clean is a gimmick and now they say it will help us achieve our target for cutting MRSA rates.
"Rather than trying to score political points they should back our tough action and extra investment to tackle infections and improve cleanliness."

There's a damn good reason that the Conservatives are calling the deep clean a gimmick. Andrew Large, the director general of the Cleaning and Support Services Association said:

"What we have seen over the last few years is hospitals squeezing the cleaning budgets. "When they are up for renegotiation we are being offered less and being told to clean things less frequently. "For example, where we would perhaps have cleaned the tiles every week, it may be every two weeks from then on. "It sounds like only a little thing, but when it is applied to everything it makes a difference. If this had not happened I think infection rates would be lower. "So it now seems strange to us that we are being given contracts to carry out these deep cleans. "You have to wonder, if the cleaning budgets had not been cut would this be necessary? There is disruption to patients as wards have to be emptied. "In my view, it would be a better use of money - and I think our members would prefer it - if the day-to-day cleaning was funded properly."

As Andrew points out, this £50m deep clean gimmick will only reduce MRSA and C difficile in the short term - just about long enough for Labour to hit their target. It seems quite clear that we can expect the infection rate to climb again, once the short term results of the deep clean are over and we are back into an under funded cleaning routine.

Labour - Tough on Hospital infections - Even tougher on manipulating the figures relating to Hospital infections.

Vote: Should the £50m put aside for "deep cleaning" of Hospitals be used to improve day to day cleaning instead?

Gordon Brown's plan to "deep clean" our Hospitals has come under attack from both NHS managers and cleaning companies. £50m has been set aside to deep clean 1,500 hospitals in England, and they have until the end of March to complete the programme.

Andrew Large, the director general of the Cleaning and Support Services Association said:

"What we have seen over the last few years is hospitals squeezing the cleaning budgets. "When they are up for renegotiation we are being offered less and being told to clean things less frequently. "For example, where we would perhaps have cleaned the tiles every week, it may be every two weeks from then on. "It sounds like only a little thing, but when it is applied to everything it makes a difference. If this had not happened I think infection rates would be lower. "So it now seems strange to us that we are being given contracts to carry out these deep cleans. "You have to wonder, if the cleaning budgets had not been cut would this be necessary? There is disruption to patients as wards have to be emptied. "In my view, it would be a better use of money - and I think our members would prefer it - if the day-to-day cleaning was funded properly."

Nigel Edwards, director of policy at the NHS Confederation, said:

"We would like policy to be based on evidence and we have picked up a degree of scepticism from a number of our members about this. "We would not want to see relatively new hospitals being deep cleaned; it would be a waste of money."

Q. Should the £50m put aside for "deep cleaning" of Hospitals be used to improve day to day cleaning instead?

This vote has closed Click: HERE to view the results.

(The results are archived by the British Library)

Ed Balls - "It is still our party that has been setting the policy agenda" (Don't laugh).

I cannot believe the complete and utter codswallop I've just read on the BBC. Ed Balls spoke today to Labour supporters, and came out with a real work of fiction.

Ed said: The Labour government has "made some mistakes".

Ed has been paying attention then.

Ed said: "It is still our party that has been setting the policy agenda,"

No Ed, your party has stolen the Conservative policy agenda and come up with nothing else but even longer plans than the plans that have taken years to fail.

Ed said: "And I believe that as a party and a government we have shown the strength to deal with difficult times and keep setting the agenda and responding to the concerns of the British people."

The strength to back out of an election when the polls hinted that you may have lost your majority. You may have set one agenda, but you went and cancelled it. And as for responding to the concerns of the British people, the response we wanted on the EU Treaty Referendum was not the "sod off" we received.

Ed said: "In the Queen's Speech next week we will set out our programme: to respond to the rising aspirations of the British people; to ensure security for all; to entrust more power to Parliament and the people; and to build a Britain where everybody can rise as far as their talents will take them."

That, I can agree with Ed - if you remove the word Parliament. Parliament already has all the power it needs to ride roughshod over the citizens of this country.

Ed said: "And we will put the concerns of families in every part of our country first."

Sorry Ed, when did your party start talking about family? I thought the notion of family was one of those ridiculous Tory values that should be rubbished.

Ed said: Conservative policies "hold people back. Whether it's on families, health or education, the Tories' vision is a vision of a two-tier Britain. David Cameron stands for a two-tier Britain, two tiers of opportunity - not just holding young people back from reaching their full potential, but holding the whole country back from what we can achieve together."

Lets get this straight Edward, the Tories are the ones who have been calling for the support of the family unit. On health, the Tories are the ones calling for A&E and Maternity wards (that you are trying to close) to remain open. On education it's the Tories that want to bring back streaming and competitive sporting events in our Schools. It's the Labour government that has held people back by refusing to acknowledge that some kids are smarter than others. You have been responsible for the dumbing down our education system so that we have gone from a nation known for its academic excellence, to a nation known for its underachievement.

Ed, you may talk out of your backside, but you've got some balls.

Doctors say no to Alan Johnson's NHS Constitution.

Alan Johnson has asked Sir Ara Darzi to carry out a review of the NHS which may lead to an NHS Constitution. The Doctors, who are in my opinion the best placed to understand where the NHS is failing, say the review is not needed as the problems are clear to see. But hey, why listen to the Doctors when you can just throw the taxpayers money at the problem in the hope that it will just go away.

When I read articles about MRSA and C difficile outbreaks, the same thing crops up time and again: the Nurses are always under staffed and do not have the time to keep the wards as clean as they would like. So what does Alan Johnson propose to do about this? Provide more Nurses? No, what Johno proposes is to spend our money by doubling the number of Hospital inspection teams. Just great.

When are Labour going to realise that if we had enough Nurses and cleaning staff, we would not need the inspection teams?

For God's sake, give control of the NHS back to the Doctors.

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We could have been waking up to a Conservative Government tomorrow.

Well today could have been the day we ended Labour's ten years of government. If the election had gone ahead there is a good chance that the Conservatives could have won, probably with a slim majority, but a win is a win. I believe that with the swing in the polls we have seen, and a good election campaign, we would have been waking up tomorrow to a new era in British politics. We'd have a government that was willing to let us have our say on the EU Treaty, we'd have a government that sees that the current arrangement of non-English MPs voting on English matters as just plain wrong. We'd also have a government that does not want to close down our local A&E and Maternity wards. We'd have a government that wants to keep track of who is coming and going from this country and will not lose track of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers.

With a small majority we would have a government that would be more accountable to us. Such a government would have to make policy decisions based on our wishes and not just on what is good for the party. History has proven time and again that big government does not work. The money just keeps getting poured into deeper and deeper holes. It really is time for a change, unfortunately we are going to have to wait. I just hope that Gordon Brown does not get us into a position of no return before we see the back of him. It is more than obvious that Brown is making personal decisions that go against the majority of the voting population. There is a word for that: Dictatorship.

With a bit of luck Gordon Brown's own party will get rid of him. There are some very serious rumblings amongst the Labour support, and if he does not pull his socks up he will be out on his ear. There is a post on Labourhome entitled, Show us your vision Gordon. Please go over to Labourhome and read this article, and the comments left by other Labour supporters, it's a real eye opener.

As an ex-Labour man, I know how the writer of the article feels.

Royal Hospital Haslar - The Great Betrayal.

The following is from one of my local Gosport Borough Councillors (Hardway Ward) Peter Langdon:

While assurances have been given by the Government that armed forces casualties receive first class treatment, media reports to the contrary and infections from superbugs c difficile and MRSA paint a different picture. It is no surprise therefore, that many thousands of people have signed the Downing Street petition seeking the re-instatement of a dedicated military hospital.

Birmingham’s Selly Oak Hospital and its military ward will close when the planned new Birmingham hospital opens in 2010. Therefore, the move from Haslar to Selley Oak has been a scandalous waste of tax payers money. In addition, the irrational £200m plan to move the Centre of Defence Medicine from Gosport to an airfield in Lichfield, some 18 miles from both Selly Oak and Birmingham Hospitals, has been abandoned for lack of funds. As a consequence Defence Medical Staff are scattered between South Hampshire and Birmingham and in this latter place have no proper home, accommodation, training or sports and other service facilities whatsoever.

Recently, a question in Parliament revealed a 2,065 shortfall in Defence Medical Services (DMS) manpower. With the organisational shambles now prevailing, it is no wonder they are voting with their feet!

A military organisation is dependant upon sound leadership, team spirit, morale, comradeship and teamwork. There must also be a proper home to provide identity and satisfy basic needs such as family life. None of these exist in Birmingham. The plan to move there has been a disaster.

Haslar, together with the field hospital and medical training at Fort Blockhouse, service accommodation, married quarters and recreational facilities, provides a proper home.

Queen Alexandra Hospital will have one less operating theatre and one less ward when its rebuild, currently in hand, is complete. Today, it is not unusual to find ambulances with sick patients queuing at A&E. It seems there will be no spare capacity at QA to take on the some 40 NHS operations undertaken daily in Haslar’s ten operating theatres, if this hospital’s planned closure in 2009 occurs.

80,000 and possibly 120,000 new homes are planned for South Hampshire in the next 20 years. That's a population increase equivalent to double that of present day Portsmouth. No hospital provision has been made for this population growth. The threatened closure of St. Richard's Hospital in West Sussex will, if this takes place, put further strain on Queen Alexandra Hospital. (Some 84,000 cases per year.)

For the reasons before, both the NHS and DMS clearly need Haslar. There is no reason why Haslar, Queen Alexandra and Southampton Teaching Hospital cannot work in partnership with the DMS. Doing so will save the Government the hundreds of millions of pounds needed to move Gosport’s facilities to Birmingham and also obviate the need to move the NHS minor injuries unit at Haslar to the Gosport War Memorial Hospital.

Training and proper care have made our armed forces pre-eminent in warfare for hundreds of years. Confidence in the operational capability of Defence Medical Services is a key plank in the overall framework.

The Military Covenant calls for personal sacrifice - including the ultimate sacrifice - in the service of the nation. In return, the armed forces must always be able to expect fair treatment. With wounded troops reduced to mere figures on a balance sheet, the present attitude to our forces is a disgrace.

Haslar must be re-instated as a Military hospital working in partnership with the NHS. That is what the all party Haslar Task force, chaired by Gosport’s MP Peter Viggers, seeks to achieve.

One in four Hospitals fail hygiene standards.

There is a country that provides free health care to all its citizens. To achieve this, the service is paid for with tax payers money. In fact the service is actually funded well above the rate of inflation. Now considering that kind of investment, you would expect the service to be excellent, wouldn't you?

Well the country in question is not so lucky. Against all the odds, one in four of these highly funded Hospitals are failing to meet hygiene standards. How could this happen? Well it looks like the country's government spent too much money on management and achieving targets, and not enough on nurses, beds and equipment. That's bad news for any country. The real bad news is that this story is about our country, and it is not fiction.

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Should the 24 week Abortion limit be reduced to 20 weeks?

The House of Commons science and technology committee are to look into reducing the 24 week Abortion limit to 20 weeks. Speaking on Radio 4's Today Programme, Professor Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at King’s College London said:

"It (the Abortion limit) should be reduced to 20 weeks. Foetuses can survive; even at 23 weeks a large American study shows over 60 per cent of babies survive. And even at 22 weeks there is a reasonable survival rate; admittedly many of these babies are handicapped. But the simple fact is that with medical advances babies between 20 and 24 weeks can survive."

I would also support this change. In my opinion it is ridiculous that you can have one Doctor trying to save premature babies at 20 weeks, while another Doctor is aborting them at 24 weeks in the next room. If life is now viable at 20 weeks, then that should be the limit.

C.difficile at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

The investigation into the deaths caused by an outbreak of C.difficile at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, ties in with my earlier post.

Heather Wood, lead author of the Healthcare Commission's report said that: "For many of these patients there may well have been a good chance that they would have recovered if all steps had been taken. I would think the lessons, not just about cleanliness, hygiene and infection control, but the care provided to patients who contract C.difficile is something that has wider lessons for the NHS."

Nigel Ellis, the head of the Commission's investigation said: "The hospital trust didn't even pick up the first of the two outbreaks; wasn't aware that it was an outbreak at the time. And when the second outbreak came about, they were still not quick enough to act to take the steps that we would consider to be reasonable. presumably their priorities were elsewhere."

What this boils down to is the fact that C.difficile was definitely or probably the main cause of death for 90 patients at the trust. The trust's chief executive, Rose Gibb has resigned, but the commission said that a full review of the trust's leadership was needed.

Not surprisingly Health Secretary Alan Johnson denied the problems were caused by staff being put under pressures to meet government A and E targets. He said that the report's findings were "a scandal" and that "There is no excuse for what happened at this particular trust."

Alan Johnson can waffle all he likes, but the commission said that there was a shortage of nurses. If we are (as Alistair Darling tells us) putting so much money into the NHS, why are Hospitals short of nurses? So short in fact, that the commission reported that nurses were so rushed off their feet, they did not have time to wash their hands or take patients to the toilet. Patients were told to go in their beds and were left to lie in their own excrement.

Where is the money going?

Gordon Brown - Health matters to the people (but not to him it seems).

Gordon Brown told the House during PMQ's yesterday that what matters to the people is health, and that he will govern to make health better in this country. Well that seems to be at odds with every report I've seen in the media over the last year. Maternity wards closing (Hazel Blears was campaigning to keep the one in her own constituency open for God's sake) A&E wards closing and local Hospitals closing. My local Hospital is to be shut down. That would be bad news in itself, but it gets worse, my local Hospital is Haslar, the last Military Hospital in the country. And to add insult to injury, the bus service to the next nearest Hospital has been cancelled. You could not make it up could you?

A&E

This morning the BBC are reporting on two damning reports to be carried out on the health service. The first is the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD). They looked at 1,800 of the most seriously ill patients admitted to A&E departments in 2005. What the report found does not look good if should you find yourself in A&E anytime soon:

40% of patients are not seen by specialist within 12 hours
16% of patients are waiting 'unacceptable' length of time
15% of units are without 24 hour CT scans.

The report said that one elderly patient waited 17 hours to see a specialist, by which time his condition had deteriorated so much that despite aggressive treatment with antibiotics he died 24 hours later.

And what did the Department of Health spokesperson have to say about this? "Overall, patients tell us that their experience in A&E has improved - eight out of 10 people say that they had a good experience in the latest Healthcare Commission survey."

Eight out of ten, does that mean that 20% did not have a good experience in A&E? Is this spokesperson saying that for every five people that are admitted to A&E, one of them is not going to have a good experience? I do not fancy those odds.

Babies

The next report was taken from a survey carried out by the charity Bliss. The survey of 195 neonatal units found that the majority who replied were operating at or below half their minimum staffing levels. Unbelievably, on average, every unit was forced to "close its doors" to new patients for a fortnight over a six month period. Bliss's report found the situation had not improved since similar surveys in 2006 and 2005 - and its chief executive, Andy Cole, said the service was "on the brink of collapse".

Bliss recommends an estimated 2,600 extra trained neonatal nurses would be required across the UK - an increase of 37%. It predicts that, on current trends, with an increase in premature births, the situation would worsen.

And this is Baby care! Gordon Brown, stop wasting our sodding money setting targets, and spend it on putting the equipment and staff in place. Do that, and there will be no need to set your targets.

Gordon Brown announces a Naval Victory!

Iain Dale has posted on Gordon Brown's regurgitation of old news to improve his image. The latest being the opening of an Hospital that had been already opened months before! With that in mind I was very tickled to find this over at The Spine:

Permission to post this picture was very kindly given by David the Author of The Spine. Please pop over to see what else he is doing, there are many more like this.

Andrew Marr on Sunday AM with Gordon Brown.

Uncle Joe Brown is getting quite a lot of space on my blog at the moment. This time I want to point you towards his interview with Andrew Marr on the Sunday Am programme this morning. What I noticed and what I think you will find obvious after watching for yourself, is that Gordon fails to answer a single question.

To watch the interview and Judge for yourself click HERE.

The interview starts 25m 30s into the show.

The injustice of Gordon Brown's Citizens Juries.

I found this posted on Iain Dale's Blog. It is this kind of cynical manipulation by Gordon Brown that we need to make the public aware of:

From Dr Ray's Focal Spot blog:

Yesterday evening I had an insight into the workings of Nulabours "consultation" process on the planned closure of NHS District General Hospitals and replacementwith dumbed down polyclinics.A few weeks ago invitations to attend a public consultation were sent to consultants at our Trust. We were only given one dayto reply for the meeting in the near future even though we have to give 6 weeksnotice of leave because of "choose and book".Obviously this meant that most of us could not attend but one consultant did take up the invitation.The location of the meeting was kept secret until three days before the event and when this consultant was eventually told the location and turned up in Birmingham for the "Citizens Jury" it turned out that medical staff were outnumbered 2:1 by laypeople specifically chosen by an agency to attend the event. The media were present and had obviously been invited to publicise the event.

The delegates were split up into groups and each allocated an electronic voting device. A "minder" was allocated to each group.Then the stars of the show arrived: Gordon Brown, Alan Johnson and Ara Darzi.There followed a rapid succession of questions from the podium on which the delegates were asked to vote. The minder was available to suggest the best answer if there was any doubt.Strangely, almost all the votes were 2:1 in favour of Nulabour's policy. Even the question: "Would you prefer gynaecological surgery to be carried out in your GP practice even if it meant the closure of your DGH facility?" was answered with 2:1 in favour.Following the "consultation"the medical delegates were told to leave but the other 2/3 of the audience were kept back and each given an envelope.

My colleague was intrigued by this and managed to catch one of the "chosen ones" and ask about the contents. Each envelope contained £75 in cash! So now the consultation is over and the results indicate there is overwhelming public and doctor support for closing down the DGHs. I can only say that the way the voting was done makes the "Blue Peter" voting fraud seem like, well, "Blue Peter". According to the Downing Street website there are nine more of these "consultations" due around the county. Thats an awful lot of people to bribe with taxpayers money, but once they're done the business of closing the DGHs can start in earnest.

I hope Brown calls an early election. The sooner we get rid of him, the better it will be for all of us.

Expect English Hospital Car parking fees to go up.

Expect English Hospital Car parking fees to go up:

Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon is to hold review of NHS hospitals charging for car parking. She feels visitors and staff should be protected from unnecessary or excessive charges. I totally agree with Nicola, it's a disgrace to have to pay for parking in hospital car parks, especially for the staff. One thing is for sure - English hospitals will continue charge for parking. In fact we will probably see the price in England rise as it goes down in Scotland - just like our prescription charges going up as they became free in Wales.