Late, late show to a request for information simply proves too many NHS boards are bad for our health

THIS may be a record slow response to a Freedom of Information request in a horizon-stretching gamut of tardy ones. On June 21, I sent a request to NHS Dumfries and Galloway asking how many operations and treatments had been contracted out to other hospitals and health boards in the past year and at what cost.

On November 21 – five months later when the response limit is meant to be 30 days – it came back with a sincere apology for the delay, as well as the figures. The health board spends more than £20 million sending patients to other hospitals, as well as to the Golden Jubilee in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire (£3,226,952m), right.

A portion of that, although not a large one, will have been spent on relatives or friends accompanying patients for the procedures. Obviously we do need specialised centres like the Jubilee, but what we don’t need – NB Jeane Freeman – is 14 separate health boards with their costly administrations and their inability not just to manage budgets but the simplest of tasks.

Read him like a book

YOU heard it here first. Hickenlooper is to run for US President (and you thought he was already in the

White

House). The

Democrat, Christian name John, presently the governor of Colorado, is taking on staff for a bid expected to be announced in the new year. HE’S an extremely liberal candidate for gun control, the licensing of medical marijuana and against the death penalty (so he probably has no chance), but he may be the only presidential candidate ever to feature in a novel, alongside Kilgore Trout in Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake.

The book is semi-autobiographical, as all Vonnegut’s are, and Hickenlooper pops up as owner of the Wynkoop Brewing Company, which he then was.

Vonnegut even passed on a family recipe for a beer, which included coffee.

It was bottled by Hickenlooper and christened Kurt’s Mile High Malt, although that probably didn’t have the connotations it does today.

No. 1 helpers

YOU have to admire Kilmarnock Football Club. Not only did they go to the top of the Premiership