ON 25 May 1961, President John F Kennedy announced plans to send man to the moon before the end of the decade. On 20 July 1969, just over eight years later, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon’s surface as part of the Apollo 11 mission.
That’s ambition to reality in 2,978 days.
On 8 October 2013, the then Health Minister Deputy Anne Pryke announced plans for a new hospital for Jersey. If you fancy marking 2,978 days after that in your diary, it’s Friday 3 December 2021.
Now, there’s lots we don’t know about Jersey’s new hospital. But one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that it won’t be built by that date.
Yes, safely putting man on the moon was done faster than building a hospital.
It’s not rocket science. But looking at the drawn out decision-making (or indecision-making) it’s clearly even more difficult than that. We’re in the perverse position that the faffing to reach the final vote could actually span three parliaments.
I come back to my old bugbear of communication on this one. Time and time again, the government and health service seem to be trying to convince us of the need for a new hospital.
This last few weeks a new raft of fancy graphics and drawings has been published showing why we need it. To what end? There’s near universal consensus on the need for a new hospital.
It’s a different set of questions, and ones that should have long since been settled, that are causing the problem: where will it be built, what will be in it, and what will it look like? Yet it feels like the wheels are falling off.
A few politicians are now claiming that they didn’t know the new hospital would be so big – despite pictures and models being readily available for months and months. There have been questions galore over the finances after underhand work to scupper the Treasury Minister’s original funding plan, which was first unveiled a year ago – a year ago!
In my last column I wrote about the benefits of a hit squad working its way through the public sector to ditch the dead wood and find the inefficiencies. Well, that hit squad also needs to fire a rocket up the backside of all those involved in the hospital project, inject some confidence into them and get them countering some of the tosh being said about the plans, as well as answering honestly any outstanding questions.
That a nation can master the technology to send mankind to the moon in less time than it takes this island’s brightest minds to build a relatively small hospital is almost farcical. ‘Jersey, we have a problem…’
IN other news, same-sex couples have been getting married for years in England with no problems at all. They’ve been doing the same in Guernsey since last September without life as we know it in the Bailiwick coming to an end.
But now Jersey’s efforts to update the marriage law to allow people like me to tie the knot are at risk of being derailed.
The Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel has called in the marriage legislation for review. The panel has also chosen to review discrimination legislation, arguing that the introduction of same-sex marriage – or marriage as I like to call it – would leave bakers at risk of being legally forced to bake me a wedding cake if I asked them to.
Laws should not be changed to solve problems that don’t exist.
If a baker doesn’t want to bake me a wedding cake because I’m gay, then do you really think I’d want to spend my money with them anyway?
Thankfully, every business provider I’ve met to talk about my wedding plans has been brilliant. They’ve not run a mile in fear of earning good money from even more couples who love one another and want to formalise that union.
That a very small band of dinosaur politicians and religious zealots are using this kind of fear-mongering and prejudice to try to delay or stop the equal-marriage legislation is shameful.
Thankfully, most politicians, most people of faith and, I suspect, most
bakers, just want people who love each other to be happy.
