SCHOOL RUN

Enforcement bods from the council have been in front of the district’s schools warning drivers about parking on yellows or over kerbs. It’s particularly bad outside my old primary, St Stephen’s. And it’s clear that if you seek answers as to why Canterbury’s streets become congested nightmares in September then look no further than kids being driven to school.

September is also the month we bid farewell to the cricket season at our hallowed St Lawrence Ground, which has always been one of my favourite places in the world. It’s changed a lot since I was first taken there to watch the touring Australians in 1985, but that marked the start of my love affair with the sport. In November, Joe Root leads his first England tour Down Under for the Ashes. I wish I could forecast an England win, but I suspect bowlers Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, James Pattinson and Josh Hazlewood will have something to say about that.

Matthew Kershaw came, he saw, he fiddled about a bit – and then he quit as chief executive of the east Kent hospitals trust on Friday.

Quit is not a positive word. It has overtones of failure and resignation and a task beyond one’s capabilities.

Whether Mr Kershaw was pushed out of the door in the wake of the scandal over A&E waiting times or whether he walked out of his own volition we may never know.

Each scenario is equally plausible.

We do know, however, that Mr Kershaw is stepping into a job with the King’s Fund health think tank, which will carry none of the stresses and pressures of running a beleaguered section of the NHS.

If the money was the same, I know where I’d rather be.

Mr Kershaw’s departure is already talked about by some as the departure of the villain of the piece. People who don’t know him and have never met him have in their mind’s eye a kind of Blofeld sitting in a highbacked chair stroking a fluffy white cat cackling maniacally at his handiwork as he does everything in his power to ruin hospital services in east Kent.

The complete opposite is true of Mr Kershaw. When I met him I found him a thoroughly likeable and knowledgeable bloke.

Trouble is, his job was never going to be anything other than making very difficult decisions.

If you follow the machinations of healthcare in east Kent, you’ll know there is a plan likely to be adopted next year to reconfigure the hospitals at Ashford, Margate and Canterbury.

A health Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) proposes one site hosting all main services, an A&E department and a maternity unit. This will be Ashford. Margate will have A&E and maternity departments, while the Kent and Canterbury will be reduced to a facility offering elective surgery and rehabilitation services.

While Mr Kershaw was involved in drawing up these proposals, the threat to the K&C is hardly new. People were marching through the streets against its downgrading two decades ago.

They did so again just before the general election.

No one is blind to the fact that the health service is in trouble. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that all you have to do is hand power to Jeremy Corbyn’s politburo and

‘Trouble is, his job was never going to be anything other than making very difficult decisions’

whichever ex-stalinist happens to have the word “health” in their job title and all will be sweetness and light in the health service.

Politics is the enemy of a decent functioning health service – not its friend.

Health is a weapon of attack for the opposition of the day while for the party of government it’s a way of flaunting its caring compassionate side in an attempt to harvest votes. After all, no matter how badly money is wasted or misused, those spending it still emerge with a figure to demonstrate their “commitment to investment in health”.

I’ve argued before that a system of taxpayer-funded rationing is no longer capable of meeting the needs of a growing and ageing population and that it’s time for the marketplace to do what the state patently cannot.

The departure of Matthew Kershaw, therefore, doesn’t actually do anyone any good except perhaps those who want to see him punished.

He leaves the project he was overseeing incomplete and the trust run by an interim chief executive.

No doubt a permanent replacement will soon be announced. How long he or she may stay or what they might be able to achieve is anyone’s guess.

Mr Kershaw does not leave east Kent hospitals in a good place – but at the end of the day, that’s not his fault.

Enforcement officers have been warning drivers