Apparently the District Council have set aside £1 million in their capital fund for spending in South Molton. It appears that some Town Councillors would like this spent on the central car park area, some would like it spent on Pathfields. One brave soul even suggested that it might be spent on both.
I wonder what the South Molton electorate think it should be spent on?
Suggestions by email please to smtc@northdevon.gov.uk.
People might wonder why the CCG meeting was reported as having unanimously voted in favour of closing the beds at Torrington Community Hospital when the BBC video appeared to show only seven hands up during the voting process. It’s quite simple really – although not well explained by the CCG Board.
Although there are fifteen Board members, only seven of them can vote. Six of the seven voting members are local (to North Devon) GPs. The seventh voting member is the Managing Director of the local CCG.
So six local GPs can vote and only one manager can.
My own feeling is that a lay member (i.e. ‘ordinary’ member of the public who sits on the Board) should also have a vote.
Why do manufacturers and retailers insist on using product labels that are almost impossible to remove without the application of large amounts of elbow grease and copious quantities of acetone or lighter fluid?
Why not use labels that simply peel off?
Something for South Molton Town Council to note is that at Wednesday’s CCG meeting in the Assembly Rooms one of the STITCH members was recording the proceedings in audio and another was videoing the whole thing on what looked to be a professional camera. Towards the end the BBC news crew also arrived.
Two video cameras and one audio recorder – and not a word of protest from any of the CCG Board members!
I expect a lot of people will have seen the piece about the closure of the beds at Torrington Hospital on BBC Southwest. There’s also a piece about it on the BBC web site.
I’m at the bottom left of the picture of the meeting. My head can’t be seen, but that is me with the laptop – one of the very few times it’s actually been on my lap!
STITCH (Save The Irreplaceable Torrington Cottage Hospital) campaigners were out in force. They’re the people you can see on the BBC web site occupying the whole of the second row and part of the front row.
Unfortunately the STITCH campaigners are very strong on emotion but very week on facts. Their spokeswoman on the BBC Southwest news item said quite clearly that the CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) had totally ignored what STITCH had to say. They didn’t ignore it at all. Quite the reverse, they spent a great deal of time looking at the STITCH evidence and investigating it (the CCG documents can be found here).
Of course people feel passionately about their community hospital, but time has moved on and standalone ten-bedded units are exceedingly difficult to justify in today’s environment.
They’re difficult to justify on grounds of cost, and, far more importantly, they’re difficult to justify on health grounds.
When most community hospitals were founded (the Torrington hospital in 1908, South Molton even earlier, in 1897) there was no NHS and health care was very, very different. Community hospitals (or cottage hospitals as they used to be called) were very necessary indeed and acted like smaller, local equivalents of the current North Devon District Hospital.
There was far less technology involved, and far fewer different medical, nursing and ancillary specialisms. Treatments were also far simpler. For example, X-Rays were first discovered in 1895, blood transfusion techniques were properly started during the First World War in 1917, hip replacement first started in the 1950’s and 60’s (in the UK!).
In addition life expectancy has risen dramatically: in 1900 it was about 47 for a man and about 50 for a woman, in the 1930s it was about 60 for a man and by 1950 had risen to 65. It now stands at about 77 for men and 81 for women. This has bought about a change in the types of medical issues that people face, and the number of issues that individuals, particularly the elderly, face.
A lot of treatment, whether medical or surgical, has thus become more complex. Whereas some has become simpler and easier to administer – surgery that once would have entailed a lengthy hospital stay can now be safely performed quickly and easily as a day case.
The days of the District Nurse on a bicycle are also long gone. With cars, mobile phones, laptop computers and inexpensive equipment for measuring things like blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, blood sugar levels etc. the range of medical issues that can be treated in the home has expanded considerably.
Of course it would be fantastic if everybody could have hospital treatment a short distance from home or if there were an A&E department in every small town. But the money just isn’t there, neither is the requisite number of skilled staff, and people do prefer to be treated at home.
CCG votes to close Torrington Community Hospital beds. This does NOT mean that the hospital will close. It will just lose its inpatient beds.
I received an e-mail today from the YMCA which read as follows:
“Update on Former DCC South Molton Youth Centre
I promised you I would keep you up to date with new developments around YMCA Exeter’s plan to take on the DCC Youth Centre in South Molton which has now been shut. Perhaps predictably, it has been quite a tricky process, with many legal and financial issues to address on top of the actual mechanics of how to make the centre financially viable. I am not in a position yet to give you any definite news, but there has been significant progress, so I thought I ought to update you.
South Molton has been by far the most straightforward of the three centres YMCA is looking at, and I am particularly grateful to Andrew Coates of the Town Council, as well as the town councillors themselves, for their unstinting support and practical assistance. County Councillor Jeremy Yabsley and the Town Council have also been generous with financial support to enable us to do all that is needed to change the centre into one that can be used by the wider community as well as young people.
This morning I submitted a bid to DCC for funding to enable us to “bridge the gap” between taking on the centre and building up enough rental bookings to make it financially viable, and provided that bid is granted, we can move rapidly with the legal processes.
Thanks to the pragmatic attitude of all parties, we seem to have dealt with the major legal issues that could have made our plans and hopes impossible, and the survey has not reported any major issues with the building (as you would hope, given that it is only a few years old).
All being well, we can proceed rapidly. The YMCA Exeter Board of trustees met last night and have given our plans their full backing.”
So well done Andrew Coates (deputy Town Clerk), South Molton Town Council and Jeremy Yabsley (our County Councillor) – and of course the YMCA for being prepared to run a facility which Devon County Council decided to close!
Why is it that, despite being so enormous, superstores actually seem to stock a very small range of items?
All I wanted was something to clean the black mould off the sealant in a shower room. I would have thought that my mother’s local B&Q (larger than Mole Valley Farmers) would have had several varieties of products for sale. Not a chance – they just had one and that was sold out! Why is it that so many chain stores don’t seem to be able to implement a proper stock control and reordering system. With modern IT and logistics systems there should be no excuse for running out of anything.
Similarly I went into the mega Asda just opposite the B&Q to buy some shoe polish. I expected to see racks and racks of the stuff in different colours and from different suppliers.
Again not a chance! The (somewhat fuzzy) picture above shows the entire stock of shoe related items in a store the size of the central car park in South Molton. If you want shoe polish, the second shelf down is it! Kiwi in either black or neutral.
Am I the only person who hates self-service checkouts?
As far as I can tell they’re only there to cut the retailers’ costs.
Quite apart from the iconic ‘unexpected item in the bagging area’ they frequently:
In short they don’t work as well as they should and are one of the many reasons I don’t like supermarkets.
It appears that even without opening a store in South Molton, Tesco are intent on taking business away from our local shops.
Mind you, as far as I can tell, it only runs once a week on Monday’s – it leaves South Molton at 10:40 and returns at 13:30.