Victoria Hospital

I visited here today, Fife's new hospital. No car parking space, joking choking smoking Fifers outside in their track suits, faces wrinkled by the stress of confusion, tobacco and benefits. Buses crush past, full of the freeloading pensioners hoping for a bun and cuppa and a visit, a day out to health care excellence. Inside the lifts work smoothly but there's no furniture, no TVs, no shaver sockets in the wards, no towels or extra bed linen. The staff are pleasant and smiling. The staff try hard to cope with a system that doesn't know quite how to communicate, left hands fail to meet up with right hands, people are confused, jaws drop open. The staff are working hard, working their asses off to keep things right but somewhere in the project a failure has occurred, oh and there's no more money to put things right either. Local MP Gordon Brown planned this, the Tories implemented it. Now the NHS reforms and the clumsy NHS 24 will morph into uncontrolled monsters and finish it, any day, any year now.