Saturday 6 March 2010

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”.



11 comments:

Budgie said...

Like roads that go nowhere or buildings with no purpose in the wilds of Africa, all built with aid money. When state planners get going you know they will waste taxpayers' money.

Marchamont Needham said...

We could use some of them as hangers for all those aircraft that the RAF have on order but will never use.

Anonymous said...

FWIW, I think PFI should have been almost completely avoided. Instead the government should have funded NHS upgrades and other capital projects from a mixture of taxation and transparent borrowing.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Personally I think the NHS is the disaster.

Best to get the Government out of healthcare.

Bill Quango MP said...

Just saw this...

Hundreds of NHS wards to be shut in secret plans

Nick Drew said...

Gordymandias ?!

there is parody and there is parody, Heaven knows I've despoiled a few in my time

- but that, Sir, is sacrilege !

Bill Quango MP said...

ND: You should have seen what they did to it over on Fawkes.
Rearrange the words and you'll get the idea..

Mandy Gordy Arse

James Higham said...

That's certainly a jolly bit of doggerel towards the end there.

Anonymous said...

I once dated a doctor in GB's NHS and she found this episode hysterically funny because it was so true...

Danny

Demetrius said...

To be closed? It is happening already. The frequency of ward closures for "special" work, cleaning etc, allegedly,in hour local hospital is now considerable. The management now close a ward at the slightest excuse.

hovis said...

Gordymandias - a nice touch but IMHO I don't think you even needed to change the poem - its works without the added satire ...