| Staff at the new
Edinburgh Royal Infirmary walked out this week, complaining of heat exhaustion - inside
the complex. The new ERI, built under a private finance initiative has been plagued with
running problems since opening. A state of the art accountancy system has been
suffering from apparent problems with vast scads of public cash disappearing from the
health budget, as an on-site accountant explains: "The hospital cost £150m to build
but the complex seems to be suffering from MRS - Mad Repayment Syndrome, which means that
we’ll end up paying the private contractors £1bn of other people’s money and we
won’t even own the bloody thing at the end up."
Site managers claim that although the
present staff sweltering is a problem, contingencies have been built into the system, as a
spokeshavingalaugh told The JT: "I don’t think |
staff realise how lucky
they are, those suffering from heat exhaustion have world class medical facilities
immediately to hand. But do they appreciate that? Oh no, it's just moan, moan, moan." Elsewhere
on planet (ahem) value for money, it was reported his week that the Skye Road Bridge has
already ker-chinged £34m in tolls, a figure somewhat in excess of the private
contractor’s building cost and expected margin.
A SE spokeshack told the JT: "Thankfully, this one isn’t down to us. The
bridge was built under the Tories and the continuing rip-off shows the economic bankruptcy
of financing large scale public projects with private cash. Er, hang on, I’ve just
started to think that line of argument through, just forget I said anything." |
