10:38am Thursday 11th March 2010
I REFER to the Dorset County Hospital employee car parking issue – where some staff are being pursued by an over-zealous debt-chasing agency attempting to recoup unpaid parking fines.
I can’t quite make my mind up as to what is most important here.
It is either the imposition of having to pay a car parking charge, which steadily rises – probably at the whim of some bean-counter, who no doubt, cannot think of any other imaginative way to raise revenue for a county hospital that is in dire financial straits.
Or instead, feel hugely sympathetic for all the staff that work at our county hospital because some bright spark, in his or her infinite wisdom decides instead to punish and harass them.
Putting to one side for a moment, the issue of the general public being forced to pay a monetary charge to visit a relative or attend for a medical appointment, the whole idea of asking staff to pay a fee simply to turn up for a day’s work, is absolutely ludicrous. No, it is worse than that, it’s obscene.
Ever since this whole sorry saga began – a cash demand from anyone visiting an NHS hospital via their own vehicle for whatever reason, was not resisted nearly enough from its initial inception.
But it was obviously evident – even though few hardy souls were prepared to put their heads above the parapet to protest about it at the time.
The politicians and the NHS financial whizkids back then were determined to impose what was nothing more than a stealth tax in the form of car parking charges for most NHS hospitals.
On the face of it, it was, to be honest, a brilliant concept – simply purchase (or lease?) a raft of car park meters site them in almost every NHS hospital in the land and wait for the cash to come rolling in.
It did – millions and millions of pounds, year after year. And guess what, most NHS hospitals are still stony broke.
Perhaps it was not such a brilliant concept after all?
But of course, what is really galling is the fact that the NHS is supposedly free at the point of contact. Not if you arrive for an appointment or wish to visit a sick relative or friend in your own car, it isn’t.
Before you set foot inside the hospital money has to change hands – your money becomes the property of the hospital.
And if you’re unfortunately enough to want to visit a sick relative several times a week, well, lots of cash will change hands.
From your hand to their grasping hands!
We all know or believe that the NHS is between a rock and a hard place. It is blindingly obvious that the imposition of car parking charges, virtually nationwide, has done nothing to alleviate what is basically a health service ignoring the inevitable.
This is the ultimate decline into what will become a totally unsustainable service, as we all know it today. No amount of cash will save the NHS – no, not even car park charges. Radical surgery is the only answer.
DAVID E HARRIS, Abbotsbury Road, Weymouth
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