Today's post is nothing to do with feminism or women per se. It's a general rant but concerns something that affects both sexes equally. If that disappoints you, tough.
Why are the powers-that-be in this country so completely incapable of joined-up thinking? When one department has a round hole and another has a round post, it never occurs to either of them to say to the other "shouldn't we work together on this one?"
Point in case: The Royal Hospital Haslar in Gosport was closed 4 years ago. It was Britain's last Naval hospital and therefore owned by the MOD who decided that instead of having it's own hospital it should rely on the expertise of the NHS to treat it's personnel. After all, the NHS are the medical experts, the Navy do boats & stuff. Fair enough, sounds sensible at face value. However, the hospital was sold (to whom? I don't know) for just £3million and has lain abandoned ever since. Inside, the state-of-the-art medical equipment lies dormant, falling into obsolescence as the months and years pass by.
Two hundred miles (give or take) to the north of Gosport, lies Southport & Formby District General Hospital. Until my recent laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gall-bladder removal to you & me) I suffered from biliary colic caused by gall-stones and had the misfortune to visit the hospital's A&E department on three occasions due to the intense pain caused by the condition. What the A&E doctor really needed to do was an ultrasound scan of my upper digestive tract to see what my gall-bladder was up to and specifically, whether a stone had passed down the bile duct to the liver. In order to do that, he would have to admit me to the hospital where I would bed-block for 3 days waiting for an appointment with the sonographer as the hospital has only one ultrasound machine.
Three days. One machine.
Southport and Formby DGH serves an area bounded by Crosby in the South, the Irish Sea in the West, the M6 in the East and the Ribble estuary in the North. It has the only A&E department serving adults in this area (childrens' A&E is located in Orrmskirk, a half-hour drive from Southport or Formby, but don't get me going on that one - actually, that IS a feminist issue and a blog for another day). The idea that a hospital in the 21st century serving a large suburban area should only have one ultrasound machine is frankly disgraceful.
I'm certain that hospitals across the land can tell similar tales of a lack of equipment and resources - we see stories in the newspapers all the time about the postcode lottery of treatments and people being sent hundreds of miles by ambulance to access the equipment or expertise required to treat their particular condition.
So why, when there is an empty hospital stuffed full of useable medical equipment, equipment badly needed by NHS Trusts around the country, hasn't someone from the MOD picked up the phone, called someone high-up in the NHS & said "I say old chap, could you use a state-of-the-art MRI scanner in any of your hospitals? How about a few x-ray machines? Half a dozen ultrasound machines? Operating theatre equipment? Only it's just sitting here doing nothing and you can have it free of charge."
Knowing the way this country works (or doesn't) it would take a further 2 years for the wheels to grind, the right person to obtain the information and act upon it, by which time the equipment would be obsolete and anyway, using equipment that has been mothballed for so long would contravene Health & Safety guidelines. It makes you want to weep.
Why is the hierarchy in the UK incapable of joined-up thinking? Why can they never think of asking if anyone has a round post for their round hole? Why is everything so fragmented that one department only deals with holes and another only with posts? Why are the people running those departments so blinkered that they never consider co-operating with the other?
As the example I'm steamingly angry about today is hospitals, I can tell you what the biggest part of the problem is.
Southport & Formby DGH is run by the Sefton Primary Care Trust. Southport and Formby are in two different parliamentary constituencies, and Ormskirk (where childrens' A&E is, remember), whose hospital is also in the Sefton PCT is in yet a third. Three constituencies, three MPs - one LibDem, two Labour. Furthermore, the hospital lies within the Sefton MBC local authority. That covers an area from Southport to the Mersey. The Council is currently Labour controlled. Ormskirk is in the West Lancashire local authority which is currently Conservative controlled.
The parliamentary constituencies don't talk to each other, the local councils don't talk to each other, the PCT doesn't talk to any of them. They are all so busy fighting among themselves for who is in charge, feathering their own nests, protecting vested interests and ring-fencing their own budgets that the needs of the patients never even cross their minds. They run the hospital like a business, not as a service.
You can repeat this for schools, cleansing, housing, highways, libraries, care for the elderly, vulnerable & mentally ill, planning, policing & emergency services - every aspect of society. Those who 'serve' do anything but. The wrong people are in charge. And until we find the right people - people who care about serving their communities' needs not about serving their own greedy agendas - then things will never improve.
Feminnist Misogynist -v- Stupid Governance
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