An excellent hospital, but medics upset by surgery plan

THIS week’s column will be short and mainly sweet.

Why short? Because I can only type with my left hand. And I’m right-handed.

Why sweet? Because it takes the form of a thank you-to all the lovely staff I encountered at Salisbury District Hospital last week.

Why only mainly sweet? Because I subsequently – and quite separately -  learned of an issue at the hospital that deserves a wider public airing.

I went in on Friday for day surgery to remove a large lump from my finger. Not a pleasant prospect, but lots of people have far worse things to contend with.

The nurses on C Ward, though extremely busy, were kind and jolly, and consultant plastic surgeon Kerstin Oestreich and her team were the perfect combination of efficiency and sensitivity.

Being a bit squeamish I couldn’t watch what they were up to, though I wanted to be told.

They put on some music – a bizarre selection ranging from Nessun Dorma to one of those silly but very catchy Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep tunes that haunt people on package holidays - and kept me chatting (not difficult, my husband would say) to distract me.

The lump turned out to be one of those that’s definitely better out than in, and with luck that will be the end of it. It certainly wasn’t a ganglion, which I’d been told previously.

So I’m glad I persevered in getting it looked at again. Pestering overworked doctors can make us feel guilty and apologetic, but we have to trust our instincts.

On the day, 10 out of 10, SDH. And thank you.

Thanks also from my husband, who went to casualty straight after dropping me off, having injured a finger playing volleyball the night before.

It’s now in a splint for eight weeks, leaving us with one undamaged left hand and one right hand between us!

Of course things sometimes go wrong, but overall we are lucky to have such a good hospital, offering such a wide range of expertise, on our doorstep.

I hope that the service received by vascular patients who will have to travel to Bournemouth for major procedures in future will be just as good.

I understand that some medical staff are deeply unhappy about the change, but don’t expect any hint of that to emerge in official statements.    

Wiltshire Council leaders' pay rockets as a fortnight of fireworks distract us

FIREWORKS were ruined for me the day we adopted our first dog.

November 5 and  New Year’s Eve reduced him to a shivering, dribbling wreck, hiding under one of the dresses hanging in my wardrobe.

Thirty-four years later we’re onto our third border collie, and things are even worse.

The poor little fellow is so terrified of the random explosions that plague our parks for a fortnight either side of November 5 that I don’t really like to go out at night and leave him. Fellow pet-owners tell me they have the same problem.

The inability of our police force to actually police our public open spaces during the hours of darkness is disappointing.

And the fact that this yobfest occurs at the same time of year as a great deal of shooting on the estates surrounding the city compounds the problem.

The pops and bangs echoing across the hillsides some days make me reluctant to walk Glen off the lead in case he bolts for home.

Unfortunately we’re in for another dose of (officially sanctioned) pyrotechnics tonight, to mark the switching on of the Christmas lights.

This is a pity, since as an avid Strictly fan I’d rather like to watch Craig Revel Horwood - what a coup for the city council - perform the ceremony.

I hope it launches a super whizz-bang festive season for our traders.

And I hope the investment of their own hard-earned cash in the Business Improvement District (BID) project, starting in the spring, will help to counter the deterrent effect of our parking charges.

Actually, I can think of somewhere I’d like to set off a rocket or two tonight, and that’s up the backsides of the Wiltshire Council leaders who are responsible for those charges and who have just awarded themselves whacking great increases in their own allowances, weeks after voting to make 252 staff redundant.

This selfless devotion to the public interest even raised eyebrows on the Conservative Home website - hardly a hotbed of revolutionary sentiment.

Its blogger Harry Phibbs quoted the Taxpayers' Alliance as saying: "Wiltshire residents have every right to feel badly let down."

If you agree, you might like to know that there's a petition calling on the Trowbridge elite to resign at www.38degrees.org.uk.

Time for a shoppers' revolt in the bagging area

PITY the poor shop assistants who have to man the tills next to those automated checkouts.

Imagine being forced to listen to the phrase “Unauthorised item in bagging area”, delivered in a robotic tone, a hundred times a day. It would drive you demented.

It can only be a matter of time before some hapless employee sues a supermarket, claiming it’s a new form of repetitive strain injury.

These maddening machines are all about the stores saving money by employing fewer people.

As is their kind offer of allowing you to pay at the pump after filling up the car, thereby saving you the huge exertion of walking a dozen steps to the kiosk where you might help keep an attendant in work.

While it might boost the big chains’ profits, this culling of cashiers is bad news for society.

With fewer jobs for unskilled workers, more people on zero-hours or rolling short-term contracts, wages frozen except for the bigwigs (Wiltshire Council, leading by example as usual), and public services such as our hospital laundry flogged off to firms that the unions say will drive down pay and conditions, who do we imagine will be earning enough money to keep our businesses in business in the future?

I try to avoid being bossed about by a machine if there’s an alternative of dealing with a human being.

But I’m aware of subtle ways in which this is being made more awkward.

For instance, the spaces allotted to ‘baskets only’ in our superstores are now so narrow that you can only just fit the basket in lengthways.

And there’s only room for one carrier bag by the till. You have to dump any others on the floor while you rummage for your purse.

Not forgetting your loyalty card, of course. So you feel you’re getting some reward for your trouble, even though you know they’re not really giving anything away, it’s all factored in to their prices.

Most of us put up with being treated like this, but one of the joys of writing this column is that I can grumble if I want to. And increasingly, I do. It must be my age.

I’d like to place an unauthorised item right in the centre of every bagging area in the land. A sledgehammer, wielded by a champion weightlifter.

anneriddle36@gmail.com

Another old-fashioned pub gets an unwanted revamp

MY husband and I rarely go out for a drink.

Without doubt, we consume more wine than is good for us, but mostly at home.

As a result, recycling day is always something of an embarrassment, listening to the clinking and smashing of bottles being tipped into the dustcart. I remember a binman asking me once: “Been having a party?” Sadly, we hadn’t.

Yet I can’t remember the last time the pair of us walked in to a pub without the primary intention of ordering a meal.

When we were younger we often popped in to our local to socialise over a glass or two, and maybe play darts. Not any more.

I think it was having a family that scuppered it. Paying a babysitter made no sense when you could stick the kids in bed and collapse on the sofa with a cheap supermarket plonk. And we didn’t have to argue about whose turn it was to drive.

Nowadays, being middle-aged and boring, we’re more likely to head out to a restaurant, and maybe take a taxi home.

The occasional girls’ night out is a different matter. We do still like to find a civilised pub where we can set up a tab and natter nonstop until they chuck us out.

Sounds like the Anchor and Hope in Winchester Street would have suited us perfectly, had we discovered it in time.

It was touching to read about how much the place meant to its regulars, and how sad they are to lose the landlord and landlady who made it the heart of their little community.

What they are mourning is one of the vanishing breed of no-frills drinkers’ pubs that didn’t mess about with hideously misspelt ‘Pub Fayre’ straight out of the cash-and-carry, but simply offered a genuine, personal welcome.

The owners, Enterprise Inns, say it will be revamped and reopened. They are looking for someone to take on the “business opportunity”.

That’s the trouble, say the regulars. The bean-counters regard it as “just another asset”, and it will lose its soul.

In our increasingly corporate world things seem to go that way, whether it’s ‘cloned’ High Streets, Tesco buying up corner shops, or the plethora of chain restaurants.

Sometimes, I confess, I’m as guilty as the next man of failing to value what we’ve got till it’s gone.

Why we need to listen to the Hillcote families

MOST people would agree that one of the measures of a civilised society is how well it cares for its weakest members.

Nevertheless there are many minority groups in need of our squeezed public funds, and we have to accept that they can’t all have everything they want.

Some things may look, on paper, like easy targets for cuts.

One such is Hillcote, the respite centre in Salisbury for the families of young people with severe disabilities.

Severing this lifeline for a handful of vulnerable citizens won’t make a jot of difference to the vast majority of voters. Many won’t even know it’s happened.

Wiltshire Council and Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group justify its proposed closure by saying that the number of people using Hillcote is in decline.

But if you don’t direct people to the help that’s available they won’t be able to make use of it, and there is evidence that this is what has happened here, presumably because the closure plan was in the offing.

I haven’t visited the centre, in Manor Road, but years ago I spent time at a similar one elsewhere. I left filled with admiration for the people who work with such optimism in these circumstances and for the families who cope with challenges unimaginable to the rest of us.

The last thing the Hillcote families want is to travel across the Plain to Devizes to the only other respite home on offer. If their children, some of whom suffer from fits, are taken ill they’ll be bundled off to hospital in Swindon, making it hugely difficult to visit them.

They are also unconvinced by talk of foster care as an alternative, given the need for adapted housing and specialist equipment.

I know our MP John Glen sympathises, and has voiced “grave concerns” about how fairly they are being treated.

Over the years well-wishers have raised at least £30,000 to equip Hillcote. Their efforts ought not to be dismissed.

The families recognise that it’s an expensive place to run for a small number of users. But within Wiltshire’s fiefdom, Salisbury is the biggest centre of population. At the very least can’t somewhere cheaper be found locally?

On Wednesday at 10.30am the families present their case to the authorities at a public meeting in the Guildhall. They need your support.

Kerr-ching! Money's no object when you've got it

I’M suffering from Wandering Mind Syndrome, I suspect. This week my mind has been wandering in all directions.

Firstly, the University Technical College, that wondrous redevelopment of our police station that will fill in the gaps in Salisbury’s educational ‘offer’ without having Any Adverse Effect on our existing schools - honest.

On Tuesday Wiltshire Council’s rulers committed £2million to this monument to political vanity – sorry, that should have read “much-needed educational facility” and “sub-regional centre of excellence”.

I love the phrase “custody suite”. It sounds like somewhere you might spend a kinky honeymoon. A night in the cells is what it means. And they still haven’t worked out where it will be once the police are relocated, although we’re assured it will be “modern and sustainable”. Thank goodness for that.

Incidentally, wasn’t it delightful to read that Wiltshire’s former £183,000-a-year chief exec Andrew Kerr was confirmed this week as Cornwall Council’s top man on a salary somewhere between £158,000 and £176,000?

I actually felt quite sorry for him when he was ousted from Planet Trowbridge two years ago because a) he came across as a pleasant chap even though he had to ‘reorganise’ so many underlings out of their jobs and b) he so clearly didn’t have a clue that his political overlords had been plotting his own demise.

A £144,000 redundancy package must have eased the blow, but it was still gratifying to see that shortly afterwards he found a new role as £140,000 chief operating officer at Cardiff Council, where he was reportedly “looking forward to driving improvement” until the lure of the laid-back surf dude paradise proved irresistible.

Surely that’s as far as he can go. Any further west and he’ll fall into the Atlantic.

I don’t blame him, by the way. Or anyone who tries to do better for themselves.

It’s just interesting how teachers and firemen who protest about the decimation of their pension plans are portrayed as not caring about the inconvenience they cause while, among the upper  echelons, the gravy train hurtles on.

What a shambolic way to run essential services in Salisbury

IF you might be about to lose your job, and the first you heard about it was via your local newspaper’s Facebook page, how would you feel?

That’s the unpleasant situation that people caring for the disabled residents of Salisbury's Douglas Arter Centre found themselves in this week.

The charity Scope announced a proposal to close it, apparently without first informing all of those most closely involved.

Staff were quick to express their dismay online, as were relatives of the residents, who have no idea what will become of their loved ones.

“My sister lives there,” said one. “What next for her?”

The charity asserts that such homes are outdated and that disabled people would rather have help to live independently.

Yet its website is currently lambasting the government for failing to provide any support for 69,000 disabled people who need it to live independent lives. So how’s that going to work, then?

The care of individual residents there is funded by Wiltshire Council and the NHS. 

Two months ago Wiltshire declared its intention of shutting down Hillcote, the city’s only respite home for the families of children with severe disabilities.

The council claimed the number of people using the centre was falling. The families said that was because the council had stopped telling people it was available.

This, of course, is the council that last week rejected requests for an independent investigation into staff morale after nodding through huge pay rises for its top brass while their subordinates face a freeze.

The same council that has for years ignored requests to plan for a transport interchange in the city and is now reduced to hurriedly digging up our streets to create new bus stops, for which it admits there is “no public support”, before the bus station closes.

Now we learn that Balfour Beatty Living Places has lost more than £1million in the first three months of its contract to carry out highway maintenance, grass cutting and litter picking for Wiltshire.

So some of the firm’s staff will be made redundant while others will be moved from roadworks to lower-paid duties.

That’ll sort out those potholes, won’t it? 

Just as well Wiltshire don’t run a brewery. Because we all know what they couldn’t organise there.