Sunshine and shade

Back from a week in the sunshine. Have to eat my (sun) hat on this one. Rich sourced the holiday through Teletext. Yep. Teletext. As clunky as in their television heyday but, if you can grit your teeth, ignore the blue website, and the need to pick up the phone to book howl, there are cracking holiday bargains to be had.

While we were away, news broke about the closure of the Slade House site. Not news to us. Not because Sloven keep us informed of developments relating to LB. Tsk. Don’t be silly. We only get that ‘right’ if we meet with the CEO face to face. But ‘news’ all the same. Coated with classic Sloven nonsense about ‘definitely closing it but we will be consulting with, er, patients, families, etc…’ (If nothing else, this whole miserable and beyond sad story is putting the spotlight on how meaningless so much talk is, in overly bureaucratic, jargon laden, and ultimately fake and shallow, profit driven (dominated?) organisations).

On the subject of dosh/profit (or whatever it is), it’s probably timely to include an image of the ‘buildings’ that are being closed and apparently leased or sold on the Slade House site. Because we ain’t really talking about a building or two here. We’re talking about a tasty old prime chunk of land (just) within the Oxford ring road.  Sandwiched between an Oxford Brookes hall of residence and a housing estate. Just across the road from Currys, where I went and bought LB a mobile DVD player to watch his beloved films/boxsets the day after he went into the unit.

The closure (subject to ‘consultation’) of the Slade House site raises some fairly weighty questions about ‘good care’, responsibility, provision, support, loss (life and aspiration), profit and what happens when a ‘too big to fail’ NHS Foundation Trust, takes over, pretty much ignores, and then closes a failing service in a different county.

And who cares?