Petition UK government for a Military & Veterans Hospital
This looks way outside my usual topic range, but there is a connection. Gosport is where a lot of my sailing friends come from, and even where I spent time helping to build boats. It has strong associations with the Royal Navy.
Here is the content of an e-mail from Gosport Borough Council:
With the growing numbers of wounded personnel repatriated to the UK and with continued growth in medically discharged personnel since the Falklands war to current conflicts and operations, our service men & women and veterans of previous operational service are owed the best medical care possible. The existing facilities are falling short and the NHS are not meeting the needs of veterans who still need treatment for their service related conditions. A dedicated Military & Veterans Hospital will greatly help resolve this National scandal since the complete closure of our military hospitals that has proved to be total folly.
Submitted by Denzil Connick – Deadline to sign up by: 19 August 2008 – Signatures: 36,027Please support the petition for a dedicated military hospital.
Some background: ‘2 Para’ alone have on their current tour sent back over 50 casualties to the UK, and even this number cannot be accommodated at Selly Oak Hospital. So when all of the casualties from other battle groups are added to this figure, how is ONE ward in ONE NHS hospital going to cope? It cannot, and as a result the individual troops are sent home to recover relying on NHS visiting services which themselves are over committed.
We need a dedicated military hospital if servicemen and servicewomen, who have been committed to hostilities and injured, are to get the medical care they rightly deserve.
A lot more than 5000 names are needed for this petition to survive, and quite cynically, Downing Street has put a time limit of one month - during the summer holidays - for this to be achieved. Please support it - please copy the link below to confirm your signature on the petition. Please forward this email to as many people as you can. Thanks.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Wounded/
The petition was created by Denzil Connick and reads: ‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Create a dedicated Military & Veterans Hospital within the UK.’
At the above site, you will see this:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Create a dedicated Military & Veterans Hospital within the UK. More details
With the growing numbers of wounded personnel repatriated to the UK and with continued growth in medically discharged personnel since the Falklands war to current conflicts and operations, our service men & women and veterans of previous operational service are owed the best medical care possible. The existing facilities are falling short and the NHS are not meeting the needs of veterans who still need treatment for their service related conditions. A dedicated Military & Veterans Hospital will greatly help resolve this National scandal since the complete closure of our military hospitals that has proved to be total folly.
Submitted by Denzil Connick – Deadline to sign up by: 19 August 2008
And also this:
The e-petitions system launched in November 2006. It is currently in a public “beta test”. This means that users are welcome to sign and create petitions, but we will be making changes to the site, as we fix technical problems, improve usability and respond to feedback.
Makes Microsoft beta releases seem positively hectic.
Can I urge everyone, military, ex-military, military dependant or just know someone in the military to support this.
I’m ex-RAF, and know that all three Services have a tradition of ‘looking after their own’… after so many years of Wroughton, Catterick, Ely etc. it comes hard to hear about ‘our lads’ being handed over to the faceless form-fillers, jacks-in-office and quota-fillers of the National Health Service, who do much to undo the good work that most doctors, surgeons and nurses do.
Creative accounting isn’t limited to companies like Enron - governments do it all the time. The true cost of running the military services includes looking after wounded personnel. Industry has long subscribed to private healthcare insurance to make sure that their workers get back on the job as soon as possible, but try asking BUPA to insure a serviceman for war damage…
Also, civilian wards are unsuitable for people returning from the battlefield, who are likely to be traumatised as well as physically injured. Being among mates who have undergone similar experiences as well as being cared for by staff who are seen as part of the services is an important part of the treatment.
A military hospital is a different environment compared to a civilian one. (I’m ex-Army.) If it’s needed then it should be provided. I support this cause. Thanks for raising the issue.
Thank you, everyone who has linked from here to sign the petition. We have until 19 August to see how many signatures we can raise…