JUST PLAIN WRONG..

After a short period of relative calm, I`m afraid I have come across something that has made me angry. My Mother died a few years ago, aged 90, and she spent her last few days and weeks in the North Hampshire Hospital at Basingstoke. She was well looked after by a committed and dedicated team who ensured that her last days were as comfortable as they could make them.

I visited as often as I could - every other day from here in Kent and each time I had to fork out for parking my car in their large car park (if I could find a space.) I didn`t mind too much and at times like that you don`t even think about the cost involved. But outside of the hospital environment, things appear a little different.

It appears that hospital parking is free in Scotland (like so many other things that we south of the border are helping to fund,) in most of Wales and in certain areas of Northern Ireland. The bit of the UK where parking charges apply pretty much universally is....England. Now, if we were anything like a truly United Kingdom (or Queendom?) you would imagine that something as sensitive as hospital car parking would have a common policy throughout the land. Well, it obviously hasn`t and the situation has not been helped by the ConDemNation`s coalition Government announcing that it will not be implementing Labour`s pre-election promise to scrap charges in England too.

The reason given is purely economic, since the parking charges bring in something like £110million each year. All of which misses the point entirely which is that, for patients, out patients and concerned visitors, all of whom can find themselves in stressful and desperate circumstances, to have to worry about finding the cash to park their cars - or else - is just plain wrong. There are certain circumstances in life (and death, sadly) when it is simply insensitive to apply the kind of policies that can be accepted as part of `normal` life elsewhere....and this is one of them.

I always thought the measure of any society was the way in which it treated the elderly, the poor and particularly the sick. Says a lot about our `society` when the most important consideration is finance rather than compassion.