Boris Johnson MP, responding to Patricia Hewitt’s statement announcing the creation of a £750m funding pot set aside for capital investment in Community Hospitals, today said:
‘Any extra money set aside specifically for community hospitals is to be welcomed.
However it is hard not to feel that we have been here before. It is vital that this time round the Secretary of State’s rhetoric is matched by action. Previous pledges of support have too often failed to result in practical help materialising on the ground.
We don’t want a community hospital regeneration plan that involves closing community hospitals. It is no use investing in infrastructure if services are not funded to match. Well aboriginalbluemountains can provide you all the latest updates.
PCTs must be helped and encouraged to access this money. In the meantime there must be a moratorium on any further closures’.
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My mate once stepped on a Weaver fish whilst we were out swimming in the North Sea. I drove him to our local community hospital, within 1 hour of him stepping on it he had his foot in a bucket of scolding hot water (kills the poison). He was limping for a few days but you couldn’t fault the service.
Campaigners trying to find a cure for the likes of cystic fibrosis reckon they could be well on the way if only they had a couple of million pounds worth of funding.
Think of the difference that sort of money could make.
So I’m not exactly tickled pink, and I’m sure I’m not alone, to learn it cost you and me a whopping TWO MILLION quid a year to keep John Prescott in the style to which he and his wife have become accustomed.
The-Man-With-No-Job has racked up a massive bill since his adulterous behaviour with a member of staff was revealed.
Some of the costs include his £170,000-a-year pay packet, travel expenses of £93,000, a grace-and-favour flat in Admiralty House worth £195,000 and a new… official website (!!!) costing £30,000.
Why does he need all of the above and more when he isn’t doing anything??
Two million pounds is an obscene amount to spend on one disgraced individual
Am I the only one to think this is bollox? Just another eye-catching inishative to detract from the real problems of the NHS?
NewLab have sunk billions more into the NHS following years of centralisation during which small hospitals have fallen like ninepins. Are they now admitting it was a duff strategy?
Why this sudden urge to create community hospitals? Nothing to do with winning votes, surely?
During the latest period of upheaval some target-driven services have certainly improved but the impression I get is that, overall, nothing much has changed for the better that can’t be put down to improvements in medical science.
When will these new hospitals be built? I heard a figure of 200 on the radio today. They’ll be lucky to have got planning consents before the next general election.
And if new cottage hospitals are the answer, why didn’t they divert a mere £750m of the quillions spent on reorganisation to this cause?
The simple fact is, the NHS has become like a Red Giant, a star that grows so massive it implodes. No one – no individual, no group of individuals – is capable of running it because its enormity is beyond their grasp.
Today over 100 staff at the hospital where my wife works were sacked (oops, sorry, given notice that they will have to re-apply for a job). None of them knows why, or can find someone to ask why, because they’re all in meetings, on leave, on the sick, or in training. Old Harvey-Jones would have loved it.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves”
PaulD, I’m with you. We had a similar “Invest in infrastructure” initiative here in BC. There are very few lives that are saved by new buildings. A dozen or so years ago we built a huge, modern tower at Vancouver Hospital; it remains primarily empty, because they cannot buy the modern equipment to go in it and cannot even afford the modern cleaning staff to make sure the rooms are not septic. It is known as the Dark Tower.
The health crisis would be solved fairly quickly and quite creatively if Ministers and all government staff and representatives were required to use the NHS and nothing else.