Darzhole centres costing more, delivering less, we mean nothing.

We have been waiting for this story to break and had even toyed with the idea of suggesting it to the medical press but it seems our friends at Pulse have worked it out for themselves. Now what is interesting is the lack of detail as to whether payments have been made for early closure and more importantly how much. These details are “confidential”.

Now given that this is public money that is being spent why should these figures be confidential?

There are one or two reasons for this. The first is the tax paying public would not like to know how much money has been squandered on flights of fancy by those with whom they went to school especially when they realize that these “world-class” commissioners of expensive white elephants were those who were close to the top of their remedial classes at school.

These “world-class” commissioners who negotiated the contracts probably thought they was wicked because they had big numbers involved (more than all their fingers and toes combined at once) and had words printed in a big book with many pages that someone would read to them and they would have put their X at the bottom with their best crayons and thought they were well hard.

The problem was that the commercial sector did an even better job and provided very poor value for money and rubbed their hands with joy at how easy it was to get their hands on taxpayers' money for doing sweet FA but then they knew they were dealing with the “world-class” remedials who were, and still currently are, NHS Commissioners/managers.

We heard rumour, after one of the team’s recent trip South of Watford Gap in July, that the pay-offs are of around twice the annual cost of running a Darzhole practice which was estimated at around £ 1.1 million a year.

If this is the case then not only did “world-class” commissioners get suckered into paying an absolute fortune for contracts that when the targets agreed were met the providers just stopped working but still got paid and do remember 2 patients a day is a lot of fingers to count up and write down in a contract at the same time but best of all is the fact that taxpayers' money is being used to pay off contracts that will be delivering bugger all healthcare for their buck.

This is a scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money paying private firms or PCT stooges to deliver nothing. Of course the real losers apart from the taxpayers will be the local GPs. Now in areas like the Isle of Wight with its one registered patient there probably won’t be much of a capacity issue but look at our post from 2009 and read about spearhead PCTs which are those that cannot provide enough GPs for their population.

Look at those in the top twenty or so of the “world-class” commissioning league table and look at the names at the end of this week's Pulse article. We count 7 out of the 9 on Pulse articles list are in the “top” of the league table but have a look at this list of the spearhead PCTs and see how many of the list of 9 in Pulse are spearhead PCTs we counted 5.

Now spearhead sounds like an elite military unit until you realize that spearhead is actually pronounced as sink in front of the word PCT in a similar way that the word sink is applied before the word estate to describe areas where most politicians would choose to live if they were that lucky to earn so little in order to be able to do so.

So in areas that are under-doctored “world-class” commissioners are paying private firms public money to shut down white elephants that these “world-class” commissioners (morons) agreed contracts for and best of all are paying people NOT to deliver any healthcare to under-doctored PCTs. So much for "equitable access" comrade commissars. The comparison between certain Southern African dictatorships and Za Nu Labour cannot be more relevant (with thanks to Guido Fawkes blog for this little gem).

Will anybody be looking into the true costs involved and investigating the “commissioning” activities of those "world-class" commissioning managers involved?

Somehow we doubt it but we know who will pick up their failures and that will be whatever remains of the local NHS but it won’t involve any extra work for the “world-class” commissioners will it comrades?

More vodka and caviar to celebrate another successful private/public sector misadventure? No doubt many more will follow.

Praise be to the “world-class” commissioners who could not organize the proverbial in a brewery when they were flush with money and were given instructions on how to do so. No doubt their expertise will be available to the newly formed GP commissioning groups who will have to make do with less and will be welcomed like a handful of molten metal.

The future is truly bright for when the private sector fails and "scores", the public sector and the taxpayer will have to pick up the pieces. Time and time again but no doubt efficiency savings will make good all of these “world-class” commissioned losses of hard earned taxpayers' money.

Won't you comrade workers?