Monday 7 July 2008

Dear Gordon 7

It’s that nutta from Newton again. 60yrs of the NHS is a great achievement. You and your government should be proud of what you have done to restore the NHS back to health. My family have over the years benefitted from it immensely. As you know I have to undergo some intensive treatment at the moment at my local hospital. The treatment is so far excellent but the admin is, well, very worrying. At my first session they lost my notes, (took two hours to find them) then just as I was about to be piped up some administrator interpreted without apology to the patient because they were trying to save money on waste disposal. At that moment I felt like disposing of it up his ????. Work stopped on me whilst they dealt with him. Word on the ward was that the senior management board had rented a hotel in Birmingham for a lavish conference the week before but they were forcing staff to penny pinch on hazardous waste disposal. I’m sure this can’t be true can it?
My wife received two letters from a marketing person on behalf of the Chair and Chief Exec of the Trust inviting her to three celebratory events on 1st 2nd and 3rd of July the letter was dated 25th June and post dated 1st July she received it on the fourth (same letter duplicated). Guess what? I received the same letter on 5th. When she telephoned to complain because we both like to support our local hospital the person receiving the call was aware of what had happened but otherwise indifferent to the complaint. “We’ve had a lora calls about this” Did they really want to invite us?
I need to go for round two of my treatment later this week. The ward staff are wonderful and very caring so I still have a lot of confidence but it might be good if the minister had a word with the chief exec to get his house in order. I’d like to be reassured.
I said in my earlier letters I would offer some suggestions on ways to get out of this awful mess you seem to have gotten us into at the moment (apologies to Laurel & Hardy). Couple of little things that might be worth thinking about. With MPs costing us so much do we really need as many? Cut the commons by 10% and the Lords by 15% asap business will go on as usual they’ll just be very vocal about you but then you’ll never be in a better position to do it. Now for something really radical! Stop dithering about the 2p increase in fuel and cut fuel duty by 20p per litre. I can hear the cries of he’s off his trolley but what our economy needs right now is a kick start before we talk ourselves into recession or worse, if indeed we are not already there. The Tories came out with a good suggestion yesterday which should help to stabilise fuel costs. How about pinching it? Stability is all important these days. Lots of ideas. I always think in brain storming sessions start with the outrageous and work back.
Have a good week enjoy your conference and bye the way we don’t waste food its already far to expensive
Bob the Black Country Brummie

4 comments:

Bob Piper said...

A 5p per litre cut in fuel duty would leave a hole in our public spending of £3 billion. The 20p reduction you suggest would lead to a need to find an extra £12 billion pound in taxes.

Unless, that is, you make reductions elsewhere. The NHS? Education? Provision for our armed forces?

In any event, reducing fuel prices will lead to greater consumption. The current price boom is being caused by the increased consumption by the Chinese and Indians. The more we consume, the less fuel on the market, the more the oil companies will use price to regulate the flow... and that = greater fuel price rises. The only thing we achieve is to reduce the taxation and have to find more taxation elsewhere in the economy.

I am in favour of a reduction in fuel duty, or at least some form of fuel rebate system, for commercial and road haulage users, but for the rest of us, we will have to get used to life in the slow lane again.

The likes of you and me Bob can recall a time when we got to school without a car, and when people didn't trawl off to hypermarkets for a 'big weekly shop'. Instead of reducing fuel prices and encouraging even more unnecessary road journeys we need to start to adapt to the days when the oil runs out.

We need to learn all over again to shop local, increase sustainability by growing our own food, get more exercise by walking, improve public transport.

Back to the Future. Cameron's crew will make easy promises to win votes. Your mate Gordon has to make the really tough decisions.

Anonymous said...

i,m all for growing our own food, so why are our farmer not incouraged to grow food by being
payed a better return on months of hard work?
Why is there not a place to store our own oil instead of selling it of cheap and buying it back at a high price?
Gerry

Bob the Black Country Brummie said...

Quite so Bob but it is not good enough that Gordon and co sit back blame the world and do nothing. Some form of price stabilisation would start to put things right. Businesses could plan properly and subsequently deal with the crisis in an orderly way. It’s a great opportunity for business. I’m not going back to the good old days when I cycled half way across Brum every day to school and my grandkids are not going to either. This country needs real leadership at this time. Do I take it you like the idea of firing 10% of the commons and 15% of Lords that’s not going to win me any friends in high places is it? Better forget the gong for this year then.

Gerry you show me yours and I'll show you mine. you know what happened to my beans last year.

Bob Piper said...

Bob, I would fire 100%of the Lords, but I can not see much of an argument for making our MPs more remote. It would save hardly anything and just make it more difficult for people to contact their MP.

I'm not talking about cycling all the way across town. There is a junior and an infant school at the bottom of my road and the parents descend on it in their cars every morning, mostly from within the Ward.

Together with a small group of mothers I helped to set up a walking bus (see me, pictured on the right here: http://tiny.cc/cyyMA

With so many obese kids (and parents) it has beneficial health aspects too, and all it would do for most of them is take out half-an-hour of their day.