It's a good job he doesn't run the Britty Shiles

Maurice O'Brien • Published 24 Sep 2010 09:30 0 Comments

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CHARLES Waddicor is someone I’ve never met. As far as I know he’s a decent egg who, like the rest of us, is trying to earn a crust the best way he knows how.

Mr Waddicor is chief executive of NHS Berkshire West, an outfit that changes its name every few years. Each time, presumably, with new headed notepaper, new business cards, lots of new signs, new livery on the vehicles, a new look for the website and other trappings.

That’s not Mr W’s fault. He has a history degree from Cambridge University but he couldn’t run one outfit with another outfit’s name on the board at the gate, could he? That was down to the last Government, which couldn’t resist tinkering with the NHS at our expense.

One duff idea after another and long suffering folk like

Mr W were expected to oversee the changes, and then brace themselves for the next lot. Having said that, guess what? Mr W’s got a new job. He’s been appointed regional director of commissioning at South Central Strategic Health Authority.

So he’s no longer chief executive of NHS Berkshire West then, I hear you say. Well, yes and no. You see Mr W’s on an 18-month secondment, spending four days a week at his new South Central desk. You’re dying of curiosity now aren’t you? What does he do the other day of the week, I hear you ask? You’ll never guess. Go on then. Nah, wrong, he’s chief executive of NHS Berkshire West again on the fifth day.

So who is chief executive of NHS Berkshire West when Mr W’s otherwise engaged four days a week? Why, none other than Helen MacKenzie, who is currently deputy chief executive but assumes the title interim chief executive in his absence. Confused? You ought to be. If you start juggling days, jobs and chief executives, they just don’t add up. Whatever the permutation, there’s too much of one or too little of the other and something or someone is surplus to requirements. Probably not that odd in a service which spends more on business consultants than it does on the medical variety.

It does, however, make the Coalition decision to ringfence NHS spending seem odder still.

- AMID the mumbling, garbled travesty of the English language as perpetrated by certain BBC weather persons it’s always fun to try and identify the location of exotic-sounding places like Scollund and Norn Eyeland. But a new one on me last week was somewhere called the Britty Shiles.

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