Dear Gordon

Dear Gordon,

Still a few little niggles.  Since writing to you about the stinking, filthy state of many of our hospitals, the Tunbridge Wells revelations have been made. Any thing more easy to understnad than that the magers, whoever is resposible are not doing their jobs? Melanie Phillips on BBC1's 'Question Time' pinpointed something else which is not much talked about now: that the nurses don't do appear to do any dirty work now. That she explained was partyly due to the nurses training, which decades ago turned into a kind of nursing degree which was designed to give nurses higher status and better pay.


Please also let us have a referendum on Europe. A lot of British people are not happy having an unaccountable 'bureaucratic' state over and above our own, especially since we don't seem to be able to vote on important EU issues from time to time.

 

Dear Gordon,

 

I expect you had the Live Earth concert on in the background while you were working on your papers, just in case someone later asked you which was your favourite band.

 

Did you notice how vague most of the celebrities were about global warming ?  Honesty, let's face it, they hadn't a clue. Apart from the professionals brought on to spread the word about this and that, and they had obiviously been told to keep it simple. 

 

Came across this article in Red Orbit a few weeks ago,  White is the New Green, which I am sure will interest you. You could have a one metre square painted on the top of your official car. 

 

 

 

Dear Gordon,

I guess this extract from the latest  J M Coetzee novel, Diary of a Bad Year, might amuse you.  

 

Dear Gordon,

 

I recently learnt that the NHS spent nearly £3 billion on management consultants between 2003-2007.

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Gordon,

I don't mean the nuts and bolts of being Prime Minister, but the hospitals. Glad to see (Dirty Hospitals Must Clean Up, says Brown) you get it. That is: no matter what is done to bring waiting lists down, it is the experience of dirty hospitals and the fear whipped up by the media about superbugs (MRSA and Clostridium difficile) you have to deal with first and quick.

 

There is no need to spend years fiddling and faddling over this. The Dutch {2} seem to have it sorted. Just do what they do. That means things like testing all staff (even if it does mean upsetting the unions because it will mean sending people, including doctors and nurses, home on gardening leave or even sacking them). Probably underlying the state the places have got into is considerations like this. Once a committee or three starts to look into the details of why the hospitals are not cleaner we will be left there forever dirty while they have a think.

 

I would recommend an immediate and unfussy return to in-house cleaning. That means cleaners would work all day cleaning wards, corridors (door-handles especially). A clinical microbiologist team for each hospital to monitor procedures hour by hour, with powers to kick staff out if they do not obey the hygiene rules. This would of course mean starting with the doctors dismal hygiene standards. When consultants wash hands between patients then everyone else will. A biro on every patients notes. Using bleach instead of fancy cleaners against difficile. Its not rocket science.

 

Most people know hospitals are filthy (and often smelly when they need not be with soiled laundry lying around instead of instantly removed) but seeing what MRSA Support suggest for your stay in hospital brings it home.

 

The real reason the hospitals are so filthy is because the work is being done by outside companies with limited budgets. For hospital management starved of money it has been a Godsend. Cut the cleaning budget to pay for other things.

 

Let us not have more discussion. They'll have the prefect excuse to do nothing by saying the monitoring systems are not in place. And in any case there is absolutely no neeed to throw money at it for IT. All you need is a wordprocessor to write the rules (and a few tweaks to the website) distribute them to every member of staff on paper, and someone to walk up and down the hospital to ensure compliance.

 

The programme on TV where the members of the public went in to clean hospital corridors shows clearly that no one bothers to check. check Gerry Robinson on his experience at Rotherham Gneral Hospital if you want to see the real way things work in this over-bureaucratised system.

 

It might not be a bad idea to increase CCTV in hospitals so that the he or she in charge of cleanliness can watch what is going on from the comfort of the office. Bugger the unions. Its for the patients not the staff the hospitals are there for. If they don't like surveillance then let them find other work. Its too important to leave the amateurish system we now have in place - which means everyday work practices go unchecked as management pour over spreadsheets behind swipe card security doors in their executive suites.

 

 

 

Dear Gordon,

It's time to knock at the door of New New Listening Labour.

I had an idea to write to you at No 10 before you even went through the door. The website had not been reconfigured when I wrote asking you to make sure the BBC stopped - permanently - the odd business of giving everyone bonuses. £17 million in 2006 aparently, though this year the top executives have decided to forego their bonuses, much to the annoyance of the thousands of other lesser minions who might get the odd £1000 or so a year, rather than the £112,000 the former DG of the BBC Greg Dyke got on top of his £375,000 salary.