As the Nightingale hospital stands empty, we imagine what the project would have looked like had the NHS, and not the Army, built it.
NHS England announce, to big fanfare, they are to build a dedicated hospital for Coronavirus patients and have appointed former Gynaecologist Sir Seymour Growler to head up the project. Sir Growler is scheduled to work on the project 3 days a week, as he likes to keep his hand in with his normal job. And has, unfortunately, just paid a years membership of a Golf club near where he lives, so Friday’s are out for a start.
His first task is to appoint the board of directors who will be working with him to really balls things up. Cunningly he’s picked from his cronies who have done such sterling work squandering taxpayers money on numerous vanity projects with him in the past. They include, Finance Director Herbert Void who previously spearheaded an NHS cost-saving project by suggesting printing on both-sides of A4 paper, saving the Trust a full £11.41 over that financial year; Director of HR - Hilary Battleaxe, who, contrary to popular belief, is not a “dried up old hag" and the entry on her Wikipedia page saying that she is is now in the hands of her lawyers; Head of Nursing - Karen Chubster, who hasn’t actually done any nursing in 30 years, and whose only contribution to the discipline is staff having to label their own lunch in the kitchen of any hospital she works at; Director of Diversity and Inclusion - Mustafa Quota who will ensure that any equipment used meets the stringent Diversity rules the NHS have created, and will be giving weekly updates on preparations for next months all important Pride March; Head of Communication - Sue Smugly, who brings with her a wealth of experience as well as a list of excuses and people to blame when the project goes tits-up.
Once the board has been appointed there needs to be urgent consideration given to the name. Finally, after many conferences, catered meetings and one rather unfortunate Zoom call from an unknown Carsey in Soho, it was decided the hospital name should be the ‘Mary Seacole’ after the brilliant Black nurse who kept the officer's mess drinks cabinet stocked under incredibly difficult circumstances during the Crimean War. It was felt the ‘Nightingale hospital' was a sign of white supremacy and would be torn down by Antifa anyway.
With the name there must be a catchy slogan and it was immediately decided that a steering group should be set up to investigate what this should be. Imams from the local Mosque, representatives from BLM and LGBTQ communities were consulted and, after much deliberation over the course of five months it was decided the slogan should be “World Class Diversity, we’re all taking the knee now”. A press-release was subsequently issued by the communications Director who asserted that treating patients before getting the anti-racist message across was itself Racist, which the BBC repeated on the 6 o’clock News before reporting on the death toll whilst playing sinister music to a video of Boris Johnson like something from Scooby Doo.
Though the project is going exceptionally well, what with all the steering groups and Marxist slogans being produced and all, the next stage will need to be tackled by some absolute experts who are at the very top of their game and so 50 Consultants have been drafted in to ensure that the cock-up stage can be reached much quicker. Standard Consultant fee of £1500 a day means that the Board can concentrate on handicaps, suing Wiki-authors, steeling lunches and the odd hand-shandy whilst ‘working from home’.
Next on the agenda is a ‘state-of-the-art’ computer system. The Mary Seacole NHS Diversity Trust board have decided not to go with an established company like Google or Apple to procure their IT system, preferring to build one themselves instead. Andrew Felchin, head of IT for the Trust, was confident that his team could do better, stating “We’ve downloaded the latest version of Comic Sans so we’re good to go” adding “I know the NHS has had a 100% failure rate on IT systems but our investigations proved that it wasn’t our fault all those times, it was the Government’s”. Further adding “I’m a rabid Marxist you know, follow me on Twitter..”
It's around this time that questions begin to be asked about when the Seacole will actually start seeing patients. The Telegraph suggest that the hospital is a huge white elephant, the Daily Mail finds Seymour Growler's secret love-child, whilst The Guardian finds new evidence that Mary Seacole discovered Penicillin, was actually an officer in the British army who led the Charge of the Light Brigade and probably invented the question-mark too.
Another committee is set up to investigate what the delay is, and where the money has gone, Headed by Sir Seymour Growler, who will be asking himself some pretty searching questions in the course of his investigations, with the review expected to be completed some time in 2025. In the meantime, as a reflection of all the hard work the board, committees and steering groups have selflessly performed during this unprecedented time, all staff members above an 8A have received promotions. Gay Pride Month was also a roaring success with a double feature in Pink News, and that was worth the £700million on its own.
Sadly, no patients were treated at Mary Seacole Diversity Hospital, but then with the government only giving the hospital a measly £700million what do you expect?