Mark Woods: Burning rage at profiting from sick
After dousing and wafting duties were carried out, we surveyed the scene and a chance comment about small boys making ideal chimney sweeps created the kind of indignation which only a six-year-old is capable of whipping up.
“They used to send children up chimneys? Did their mummy and daddies know? Did the police know?”
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Hide AdI explained, in our ancestors’ defence, that things which were once seen as normal and accepted have a habit of looking very strange and often downright wrong from a distance and my son inevitably asked what it is we do today that people in the future will think was awful? A conversation about recycling, landfill and the ozone layer followed which underlined that he knew more about all three than I did. It wasn’t until 24 hours later though that a call from my Dad helped me identify the worst day-to-day practice of them all that will undoubtably contort the faces of generations to come.
I am, of course, talking about hospital car park charges. A certain North Yorkshire hospital – let’s call it Scarborough General – had not only provided insufficient parking spaces for its visitors, it had fined this 84-year-old man £60 for being forced to park on the grass to go and visit his poorly 83-year-old wife!
While the doctors and nurses inside provided absolutely exemplary medical and emotional care under difficult circumstances – being forced to cash in on the parking really does seem beyond the pale.
I can just hear the six-year-olds of the future now – “they used to make people pay to visit their sick relatives! Did the police know!”
Twitter: @mark_r_woods