Money

Sometimes, I think I take for granted, many facts that I read about government expenditure in the papers. Like the few million paid out as bonuses to staff within the immigration control offices. Like the millions of our money being poured into Northern Rock to repair the damage done by cavalier managers who once thought they were pretty clever. Now it is the billions to be overspent on the dubious privilege of holding the Olympics in this country. Let's not even drag up the millions spent on a pointless bomb dropping exercise in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just figures after a while. Lots of zeros after a pound sign. And then I think about ordinary things that really affect our lives. Like our local cottage hospital that was recently closed as being unviable and uneconomic to maintain. It cost something like £750,000 a year to run. The Scottish parliament building ran way over budget and ended up costing £460,000,000. Perfectly good existing buildings were discarded in favour of this modern monstrocity, that now houses puffed up political amateurs in a huge fleet of chauffeur driven cars, who are spending money at an alarming rate.

Look at it like this. That figure would have run our cottage hospital for 533 years. Or give us another four of these wee hospitals and run them all for 106 years. Or provide 440 MRI scanner suites throughout the UK. Or pay the salaries of 20 new cancer consultants for 50 odd years.

All wrong to me. Makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall but that's not a good idea if I hurt it and needed the treatment room. It ain't there anymore.