Putting up blacks

I did not much care yesterday for either Russell Brand or Ed Balls, with both, in their different ways, being far too full of themselves. Then this morning, the former puts up a further black by airing childish obscenities about the latter on Channel 4, at least according to the Guardian. Channel 4 also earns a black for putting such stuff out on the public airways. Ballscore unchanged. Not sure about the Guardian; it could plead public interest, but that line of defence is weakened by it being the same that used by the News of the World when it paraded the less salubrious doings of celebrities and parsons.

I then, prompted by the fuss about A&E (which I expect has been puffed up if not engineered for political purposes), moved onto to the question of car parks in our hospitals, with the few that I know about charging. I dare say the practice is widespread.

So I turn up at the hospital, probably not at my best or I would not be there, and I or my carer then has to find an appropriate parking place, work out the parking protocol for this particular hospital, find the appropriate change and then do the business, all this before moving onto the main business of the day. And there might well be exit as well as entry protocols. All of which detracts from the experience.

The hospital will no doubt plead that without charges, people will abuse the car park, certainly true if the hospital is near anywhere else of interest to the car borne public. They may, probably in private, value the revenue brought in by car parking charges.

If we suppose that the hospital is in some green field site where the land is cheap and there is nothing else in sight, apart perhaps from a few bus stops, and I have no idea how many large hospitals might fall into this category, we could argue that there should be no car parking charges.

But I guess that there will be plenty of hospitals where this is not true and that the car park is not big enough for all the people with legitimate business there, never mind all those that do not. Those who just want to park while they commute to London or while they use the handy shops at the bottom of the hospital. We need some arrangement which will exclude the latter and deter the former, to push the walking wounded onto the public transport system, but without making life too difficult for the rest. The arrangements need also to be simple enough for the rest to understand and not to be disproportionately expensive. We don't want to have to deploy rocket science to drive the car park.

And, speaking personally, I don't care for using such car parks as revenue opportunities. I would rather pay for hospitals out of general taxation.

Part of the answer might be passes for staff and regular visitors.

Another part might be special bar codes on letters of appointment which can be presented to the parking machine on entry.

And then have fairly heavy charges for the remainder. A bit hard on the A&E cases without letters of appointment, but perhaps, if they are an emergency, they are not going to care too much about the odd fiver for parking. They just want their leg put back together again. And it may be that we do need something to discourage people from using A&E who ought to be buying their own sticking plaster or using their GP. Stiffer car parking charges might be as effective as charging a fiver a visit.

A rather different kind of answer would involve a car park company building a mult-storey next to the hospital, with the company allowing some concessions, but, in the round, charging what the market would bear and perhaps paying the hospital a proportion of the profits. Or something. I am not very keen on privatisation in general, but this one does at least get car parking more or less out of the hair of the hospital authorities.

Next steps: get the bit of the NHS which does for hospital parking what NICE does for medicine to commission a study and to publish a best practice document of not less than 33 pages exclusive of wrapping.