What will happen to all those shiny new buildings?

All those new hospitals and schools buildings coming on line between now and -20??. All the PFI builds that have to be paid for out of a dwindling budget.

Will they be staffed? Will they be opened at all? If the budgets are cut isn't it easier and cheaper to just not open a building than to lay off existing staff elsewhere. Just a thought as I walked past my new local hospital, scheduled to open in 2011.

Or maybe, as in the Yes Minister episode The compassionate society, the hospital will open and is fully staffed. It meets all of the governments targets. Lowest infection rates, fewest complaints, shortest waiting lists, cleanest wards, lowest absenteeism. Its just that there are no patients. The place is left with scaffolding up and cement mixers on the lawn to disguise that it is open.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.

Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Gordymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.