Brits do love their dogs. He was 18 but still, he had a great send off



Re the hospital parking, we had to pay a load of money annually to park in the car park when attending to our patients And they wonder why we don't want to cover our hospital patients..

We also had to pay another load of money to maintain our " hospital privileges " to let us get paid bugger all to look after our patients in hospital - thankfully they have moved into the second half of the 20th century and have hospital doctors looking after patients now rather than their own doc who could well be on the ski hills or on the lake depending on the season.

Regarding the hospital parking, in Hamilton the staff have to pay a monthly fee to use the parking facilities. Yes, you pay to go to work!

I agree completely. And that's the attitude I would adopt in the UK.

But this is Canada where prescriptions are not included in healthcare even where the hospital gives you a prescription. You need to get your own crutches sorted, waiting lists for wheelchairs, hospital beds at home and so many things.

The mind boggles at what you might need to pay for if there were no parking charges...you'll have that operation but you have to pay for your own stitches?

Well lets talk about car parks and if people should pay or not.

Hospitals are normally built with taxpayer funded dollars so when a hospital is built within your municipality or whatever you want to call it you are paying for that hospital and if a car park is built you are paying for that.

IKEA build a store and a car park. They want you to visit that store so in most cases the parking is free much like Walmart and other stores.

Sports stadiums can be a mixture of tax payer dollars and private investment dollars. They also have car parks. Very few if any stadiums provide free parking.

Now one should start looking at the companies who run paying car parks like Impark etc etc and ask if their fees are reasonable? Who pays for maintenance of these parking lots?

There are other options if not happy with parking rates.

I've often commented on how motorists in Bristol shunned the bus service considering their car took them door to door when in reality few employers in the city had parking (or enough parking) for their employees and that cars either had to park at least a 20 minute walk away from the work place or pay at least a tenner a day to park.

The main hospital in Bristol (10 minutes walk from shops and offices) is near an NCP that charges £21 for 6+ hours A council car park in the other direction is £10 a day.

Our hospital car park here is well placed to be treated as a park and ride with two buses covering about 80% of the city.

On weekends when the parking meters around the car park are free, they're all full. During the week the hospital parking is generally full. The sign says so at most times during the day.

I only ever worked in one place with parking. That was the big regional office. One place had zero parking and visiting officers had spaces paid for as they'd have nowhere available to park when returning to the office in the day and another place had about 20 spots so the office took an appropriate number from the local NCP (say another 20) and divided the cost of those 20 by 40 so 40 people at least had half NCP price parking.

I agree parking can be policed easily without charging. 2 hour limit for visitors, tow the offenders. Patients and others who need longer then 2 hours, get a pass to place in their car.


Parking can be cost prohibitive for some people, I have on occasion when at the hospital getting a test done not been able to pay because we happened to not have any money available.


Same around here, and you see lots of hospital staff walking blocks as they have parked in residential areas around the hospital to avoid paying, I live a couple blocks from the hospital and every day cars parked along the street and hospital staff walking to/from the hospital.

Lots of people have to pay for parking at work though, downtown workers in major city's, airport workers at times do if their company doesn't pay for it. When I worked for one company at an airport, the company didn't cover the parking, and I paid $75/month for the ability.

would have taken transit if offered, but my shift started at 5am, first bus didn't arrive until 7:45am.

When I worked in Whistler I was lucky as I worked for a parking company so free parking, but most who work in the area pay and some lots are upwards of $100 or more per month, some as low as $50, really depended how far you wanted to walk.

Pretty much all the local GPs have resigned their admitting privileges and the hospital are employing internists, or whatever they are called.

I don't have to shell out for working at the hospital, I ditched that archaic practice long ago. Nurses however don't sometimes have safe alternatives, they finish an evening shift at 9-9.30pm, then "have the option" of walking half a mile in the dark possibly down poorly lit streets to their car- or be safer and shell out a load of cash monthly to be safe and park within the grounds. I bet administrators/ managers will find some way of avoiding these fees. In the UK, there are a lot of PFI hospitals and they use cowboy car park companies who are just out to clamp you. They have charged in hospital car parks since I've worked in them which is a few years now.

Hospitalists. And about bloody time too! The hospitals liked it as we were paid so badly that we were way cheaper than hospitalists. As you know bats, having doctors looking after patients who are off site for all but about an hour first thing isn't exactly in th best interests of the patients.

The prescriptions comment may be the rule in NB but it doesn't apply in Ontario. I was medicated free of charge in hospital for three months and post operation left with a two month supply, worth some $10,000 if I'd had to pay for them.

You would probably end up paying an arm and a leg

Get a ticket/chit and have it validated inside the hospital, same as in stores. My 'orthoscoper' has an office in the kinesiology center at the university phys-ed building and parkade tickets get stamped in the clinic. When I go to Sask Polytechnic I have to pay $2/hr because there are no other options, but when visiting or going to appts in hospital I park on side streets and walk.

That certainly doesn't work in the hospitals around here, or indeed clinics

Oh I didn't mean to suggest it couldn't be done. It's just that a towing company would need to be paid; admin staff need to be employed to validate the chits and/or confirm the eligibility for the hundreds of people parking there during the day/ additional security staff need to be hired for potential confrontation.

So the hospitals will not only lose the revenue, they have to fork out additional funding for the extra costs. Where's that coming from if not services?

Absolutely. But that's just one of the many things missing from Canada's social systems with far too many people always complaining about their tax dollars and handouts to the lazy and feckless - as they see it.


Well of course. In hospital means as an in-patient getting treatment. Of course that's included. I was talking about the hospital giving a prescription (not the drug itself) - one that has to be filled at an outside pharmacy after discharge.

I very much doubt giving a patient three months worth of medication upon discharge is the norm. It might be a better alternative than occupying a hospital bed and getting three months worth of treatment that can be done at home.

Well, Kelowna is still a resort and Regina is a capital city, someday. As I said, the hospital lots charge, (I think the standard $2/hr, maybe more) so I park nearby. Nobody pays to park in Oliver, not anywhere. I like the welcoming message free or cheap downtown parking sends to shoppers, and used to like visiting downtown Penticton's main street, but now I see they even want to charge a $15 permit fee for some homeowners to park on the street in front of their houses. Usually I can still do all my business there without plugging a meter but when I do I'm pretty careful about not overstaying and getting a ticket..

No. Towing charges the tow-ee, the receptionist validates the chits when you register and security marks the bad cars on their rounds.