What is the NHS for?
Where's the justification for hospital charges?
Is the NHS being run for the benefit of the patients or to swell the bank accounts of fat-cat, private sector company owners?
For example, Dudley NHS Trust has just had a triple whammy by selling off Wordsley Hospital.
It now has a big fat lump of cash resting in the bank from the sale of our hospital to a developer. It now has only two hospitals to run instead of three, and some local authority will cop for extra millions in domestic rates from the new houses that have replaced our hospital.
With all this saving and extra cash generated from the sale of Wordsley you would expect the least they could do is drop the car park charges – or is the hospital being run to the benefit of the companies involved?
Another point is that if you pay for a full hour then leave after, say, 30 minutes, then the space you have left is filled by someone else. This means two people have paid for the same space at the same time, known as double-bubble in fat cat terms.
The only fair way to charge is exactly per minute. Let's see how the greedy fat cats like that idea.
G E Fanthom, Hinksford Gardens, Swindon.
