Was leaking sewage at the Hospital identified before millions were spent on offices?

That is not because I never read anything now which a few years ago might have made me either gasp or raise an eyebrow, but because I’m probably all but immune to being shocked or even mildly surprised by anything in the vast range of activities for which that lot in the Big House have responsibility.

However, I freely admit that when I read the catalogue of inadequacies highlighted about the General Hospital, my sharp intake of breath – actually, it was more like a gasp of total disbelief – made Herself think that perhaps I was about to choke on a mouthful of calvados.

Looking back on it, I think the bit which really astonished me was the revelation that in a hospital, of all places, there is a problem with raw sewage leaking from a drainage system in a wing about 50 years old (I have a feeling Princess Margaret laid the foundation stone when she visited in 1959).

Worse still, the wing (it’s the one on the corner of the Parade and Gloucester Street) houses Robin Ward, where children are treated, and the intensive care unit. These are two parts of any hospital which, apart from operating theatres, one would expect to be as far removed from leaking raw sewage as it is possible to get.

I’m not going to repeat the list of areas needing attention – it’s too depressing, anyway – but given that some of them have existed for upwards of 20 years (the re-use of plastic bedpans was stopped in the UK’s National Health Service two decades ago), can I ask one very simple question?

I have referred in recent months to the part of the Hospital at the other end of the complex – the corner of Gloucester Street and Newgate Street, which used to be the nurses’ home and was then handed over to provide office accommodation for the army of administrators without whose input successive Health committees and ministers have been persuaded an ingrowing toenail can’t be properly treated.

The question I have is this: was the problem of poor drainage and leaking raw sewage identified before millions of pounds of public money was spent on what used to be the nurses’ home? And if so, who made the decision not to address the problem of raw sewage before providing offices for civil servants?

As I said, it’s a simple question, but in common with most of the simple questions I and others like me ask, I’m not holding my breath for an answer.

WHEN first I read that Deputy Trevor Pitman was proposing that a referendum be held on planned new tax rules for wealthy immigrants, my initial reaction was to question what on earth he was doing pulling down the better part of a grand in his pay packet every Friday lunchtime when he wanted me and the many thousands of others who pay his wages to do his job for him.

Even now, ages after having first read of his proposal, I feel just as angry.

Coming up with the referendum idea every time something populist or difficult raises its head isn’t really clever, and Deputy Pitman and the others among our elected representatives who support this idiotic idea ought to realise that.

The fact that he has chosen this particular subject tells me more about who promotes the politics of envy than anything else.

Whether we like them or like them not, wealthy immigrants are now so much an integral part of our economy – and have been since Deputy Pitman was in short pants, if not in nappies – that they are here to stay.

Furthermore, in terms of their personal profit and loss accounts in relation to the economy, they are probably the least likely to cost the rest of us money; the likelihood is that they themselves pay for what they need from education and health services, and are unlikely to need income support.

My second reason for disliking what Deputy Pitman has come up with is that I have an inherent fear of referendums which has nothing to do with lazy politicians not wanting to make their own decisions, nor has it anything to do with me wanting to deprive people of involvement in the political process.

The reason is simple. At present the British government seems to be encouraging its electorate to stick their names on petitions with the vague promise of allowing time in parliament for those which a) get a given number of signatures and b) have subject matter which meets with the approval of a committee of MPs.

One such is for the restoration of the death penalty – a frightening thought to those, like me, who believe in the fallibility of everyone in the judicial process from eye-witnesses to the highest court in the land.

A referendum on the death penalty after particular gruesome child murders, for example, will bring only one result: a massive vote in favour of its restoration. Posthumous pardons did precious little for Derek Bentley and Timothy Evans – both of whom met their deaths on the end of a rope and both of whom were subsequently pardoned.

I am old enough to remember those cases, and they have convinced me that the possibility of error far outweighs anything else on this issue.

Politicians, we fervently hope, are better able to consider issues dispassionately than are the public. And besides, that’s what they’re paid to do, for heaven’s sake.

AND finally . . . Having driven past the marquee opposite St Martin’s Public Hall and seen volunteers hard at work, I hope the sun shines for them and everyone else at Thursday’s Battle.