Scotland is abolishing car parking charges at 14 hospitals on Wednesday, leaving just three private finance-owned establishments to extract stupendous charges from cancer patients and the like.
Wales has announced that it is to end such charges in 2011, leaving only dear old England to continue to extract money from sick (and often poor) people.
Free parking “would not be a sensible use of NHS resources” quoth a pompous spokesman for the NHS in England, making it sound as though free parking was something you had to build.
There are two issues here; one is that the NHS still can’t seem to manage on its budget despite the endless billions chucked at it by Gordon Brown (hardly surprising when it’s just given consultants a 40 per cent pay rise), the other being the better deal taxpayers get in Scotland and Wales.
Oh, and the ridiculous anomaly of private finance-owned hospitals (and schools) which can do as they damn well like.
Some issues for Gordon Brown to deal with in the New Year, a bot closer to home than saving the world.