trousers

@jordansibley: Saints Vs Notts Forest: Davis. Cork, Fonte, Hooiveld, Fox. Guly, Hammond©, Schneiderlin, Lallana. Connolly, Lambert #saintsfc

Yes, the food budget should be higher in principle, but the programme proved that you can produce a quality product WITHIN this tight budget by (a) cutting out all the waste and bureaucracy and (b) increasing the profitability of the commercial side (the staff and visitor restaurant) and plough that back into the budget.

Why didn't the hospital's executive management monitor and review the standards of the external company? Surely they didn't leave them to their own devices unchecked by the people that engaged them?

Does a Daily Mail subscription count?

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/health/3786965/Could-sticky-toffee-pudding-rescue-the-NHS.html TELLY chef James Martin wants to do for hospital grub what Jamie Oliver did for school dinners. But his battle to improve NHS meals has not been an easy one. The Saturday Kitchen Live star was left in tears after trying to transform food at Scarborough Hospital for a new BBC1 show. He was stunned to learn more money is spent on prison grub than food for the sick. Here he tells The Sun how his quest was sparked by seeing his late gran struggling to eat hospital food. HOSPITAL patients deserve some decent grub. It's important they eat good, healthy food. But after spending five months learning how the hospital meals system works, I was shocked. I had a personal reason to want to improve food for patients. I watched the woman who taught me to cook, my grandmother, suffer in hospital like I've never seen anyone suffer before. She spent four months in York Hospital before passing away there 12 years ago. I think I owe it to her to do something. It's been proven that people die every year of malnutrition in UK hospitals. Why the hell is that? A nice bowl of warm soup will make you feel better, but if you give patients a bowl of what looks like dishwater, it's appalling. That's why I said yes when the BBC approached me a year ago about filming a series focused on improving hospital meals. Four hospitals refused to even have us through the door because they were worried about negative press. But Scarborough Hospital agreed to the idea. Fundamentally food should be looked at as a medicine. When I walked through the hospital door it wasn't. There were loads of foods in packets including potatoes, rice, desserts and vegetables. Then you have to work in the cost - more is spent on prison food than on hospital food. The NHS has £3.49 per patient per day to cover breakfast, lunch, dinner and all drinks and snacks. What shocked me was the lack of communication. Because of NHS guidelines kitchen staff had not been allowed into the wards to see the patients in 27 years. And the staff had no idea what happened to the food when it was wheeled out on trollies. It was kept in a hot cabinet for 90 minutes then super-heated and served to patients and 40-50 per cent of it was then put in the swill bin. There were also big issues around the menus. They wanted a menu revolving around 21 days. My argument is we're not living in the 1960s when people used to spend three weeks in hospital. In 2011 most people are in hospital for two days max. In my view it's better to give them good quality food, daily. Their existing menu cycle had three starters, main courses and desserts for each meal - that was more than 150 dishes they had to make. But because they had been doing that for several years it was the norm. However, the price of everything has gone up, so to compensate, everything was out of packets or frozen. By reducing the choice of a three-week menu cycle down to one week, you can order in bulk and buy local produce which helps to stop local suppliers going out of business. Then you can afford to serve fresh fruit and veg, which is beneficial to patients. To compensate for spending more money you have to make the hospital work as a business. The restaurant at London's Royal Brompton hospital makes £1.5million a year, which gets put back into the catering budget to spend on better food for the patients. Everybody should be doing that. I knew I was never going to change things overnight but it's far better to change one hospital and then change another, and maybe the ripple will expand. At Scarborough it's like everyone has been covered in a flour bomb of angel dust. Patients love their new food - they have eaten more and as a result have felt better.

I've been watching 'Operation Hospital Food' this week and thought it worth sharing here. (It's been on morning TV so probably gone under a lot of people's radars). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014hmnt I'm often at the front of the queue when it comes to criticising the inertia in large organisations to embrace change, but this 5 episode series has restored some faith in the NHS's ability to shake off years of dogma, in this case in the much neglected area of hospital food provision. Mrs Trousers and her sister both work in the NHS so I have a small insight into how bureaucratic and wasteful hospital catering is and this programme shows what has happened at Scarborough Hospital to provide better quality food whilst keeping within the existing budget. Indeed, it looks like they'll start to make a profit through the onsite cafe/restaurant which they'll then plough back into the department to improve the quality even more. Ok, I accept that these fly-on-the-wall documentaries can often be somewhat contrived but, with this one, I felt a sense of genuineness when watching it. Anyway, it's not often I feel uplifted by what I see and hear about NHS management so thought I'd break the mould with this one! Normal Daily Mail grumpiness will be resumed in due course.... ;-)

Chesney Hawkes

I bet they thought BoxIng Day was also on the 26th every year. Ha. What a plum... ;-)

Nigel Adkins praised the messages of goodwill from everyone associated with Saints in support of Dan Seaborne. The central defender has been recovering in hospital this week following the serious head injury he sustained over seven days ago, and the manager says the club has been overwhelmed with the volume of support. He said: "I think it has been fantastic, and it underlines that we have a Southampton family here where everyone wants to look after each other. It has been overwhelming really how good the support has been for Dan. "Dan is one of ours, and it is very sad that the situation has arisen that Dan has ended up seriously injured. I went to see him on the Friday morning myself, so it was reassuring that I was able to speak to him. He just needs a lot of quiet time now, and the doctors are pleased with his progress which is important." Seaborne continues to make progress, and the gaffer says there's no hurry to put a time frame on a return to action. "You can look at days or weeks or whatever you want to do, but I think the important thing is that he gets that quiet time because he has a head injury and we need to make sure that his body is allowed to recover. He is in the right place in the hospital and he is being well looked after, and the doctors are pleased at how he is progressing. "I went to see him again on Tuesday with the Chairman after our development game and he was sat up with his parents, talking away. He was able to remember a lot of things that had been going on, so there were a lot of positive signs that he is on the road to recovery." Adkins acknowledged that the late night incident is the second inside a year involving a player out in Southampton, but he dismissed any ideas of ill-discipline within the squad. "Lee Barnard's situation arose a week or so after I joined the football club, and we had a good meeting after that and the players know that the one rule I have is 'don't do anything detrimental to yourself or the team or face the consequences if you do.' "The good thing is that the players have a good reputation around the city of behaving themselves. I was speaking to the Chief Constable at the hospital on the Friday and he reiterated to me that our lads have got a great reputation of behaving themselves and avoiding difficult or compromising situations. "It was an unfortunate thing for Dan, but the lads have had the weekend off with the international break so it was a bit of downtime for them, and it wasn't as if he was doing anything wrong. "It's obviously an unfortunate situation, so it was good to have it underlined how good and how disciplined and professional our lads at this football club are." http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2445107,00.html

Shame....

Indeed. I see on their weather forecast page they're predicting rain for sometime in September. I'm off to Ladbrokes. Back in 10.

Apologies for wishing to know the name of a key supplier to one of my services providers... ;-)

I believe there is a feature to switch off signatures, from the viewer's perspective, regardless of whether they are allowed globally?

I'll leave MLG the honour of posting the exact stats, but the Daily Fibber, sorry, Mirror, printed c.20 definitive articles over c.12 months saying that Chamberlain was on his way "imminently". They were right once in 20 attempts... To coin a phrase...my broken kitchen clock was right more often than them during the "Chamberlain's off" saga...

At last. We all agree. Phew. Thread closed? :-)

Isn't it more cost effective to give your money more directly to those who need it (aka charity donations) rather than funnel it through a series of beaurocratic government departments (aka tax)?

Source?

I'm still mildly astounded that people think that politicians and civil servants are the best people to spend as much of our money as possible. I'm renting out barge poles at a reasonable rate.

I don't buy it....I loot it...it's all the rage...innit

But I thought the 'footballing authorities' insist upon a legally binding CVA as part of their criteria of seeing one of their clubs go through the administration process. I seem to recall reams on here about this when we went into admin. In other words....points deducted for going into admin AND further points deducted for not having a serviceable and binding CVA? No? As I say, I've probably list the plot by now!

This has got 0-0 written all over it

Don't the 'footballing authorities' have more point penalties at its disposal if one of their clubs doesn't meet the obligations ("promises"?!) of a CVA? If Pompey's argument against this is that they are now a wholly new company and/or football club, why didn't they have to reapply to join the English football system at a lower tier. Either they are the same club as before or they're not? (sorry for probably going over very old ground here, but not been keeping up with developments of late)

And not raising it to 60% has the same effect... I know "tax cut" is more emotive terminology for those who oppose the move to remove the 'temporary' 50% tax rate but "normalising" or "levelling" are less inflamatory and realistic descriptions. I'm amazed at the number of people who trust politicians (of all colours) and civil servants to spend our money more wisely and efficiently than we can do ourselves.