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I feel compelled to add my name and thoughts to the plans for a new hospital.
I'm no expert really, just a concerned resident. £804 million.. it just doesn't seem right. That is an astronomical amount of money, and it will undoubtedly keep increasing. The results of spending that much will be felt for many decades and there is now potential for Jerseys credit rating to be affected due to the colossal borrowing involved just to build a hospital.. that's not reasonable, building a hospital cannot surely cause this amount of financial ruin..? It doesn't anywhere else in the world. Something can't be right. We should not be borrowing those sums of money, predominantly because I cannot see any hospital on the planet serving a population of circa 100,000 people costing this much. I am not in favour of borrowing that much money.
I don't know nor have I met a single person who approves this level of spend, nor in fact have I met anyone who agrees that Overdale is a suitable site. Almost all their reasons seem to be valid. There are so many opposing voices out here but all seem to be ignored. It feels to me that this is another way of doing things.. just bully it through and pay no heed to the consequences, that are huge.
Politicians are riding roughshod over common sense and from my experience, public opinion. I fear the case is we have gone too far to turn back, so we are forcing ourselves down a path that is clearly flawed, not least of which the costs of the project.
I'm unsure if we have ever had the correct and properly qualified people involved in the management of this and that is now becoming obvious as it gets more and more out of control.
I think out of control is a very reasonable term, how you get this back on any form of sensible course I have no idea, but you have my support. As I said at the beginning I'm just not an expert, but this Hospital looks like it will be the piece de resistance of a very failing States assembly, and this failure will impact all of us and our families for many years to come.
Tony Forder