A mate of mine had to take her sick child to Alder Hey Hospital today.

It's never easy doing that.

At best, you're in low-level panic mode anyway (a sliding scale depending on the severity of your kid's condition) cos the GP reckons he/she can't handle it after all; you've no idea where to go when you get there, and then, NOW, on top of it all you've got to scrat around for change to feed the hospital car-parking meters that sting you for £1.50 for each hour you're there.

Yeah, it's a minor consideration set against the more pressing, obvious and immediate danger.

But to me, it is taking advantage of people and profiteering in the most despicable manner.

If you fail to "Pay and Display" your ticket, you get hit with a £30 fine rising to £60 if you don't pay up in time. What happens after that, I really dread to think. Perhaps they take ownership of your car? Maybe not - but a summonse to a magistrate's court is a definite possibility.

Two things spring to my brooding, pissed off mind.

1) It's a sick joke to charge parents to park at the children's hospital. What? You think they're there for the fucking fun of it?

2) Car parking charges at all hospitals have been scrapped - in Scotland.

This isn't going to be another rant at Gordon Brown. God knows he and his wife must have suffered and grieved at the death of their first-born child. And they must have spent hours and hours and hours in hospitals. I'm not taking the piss, they know how things can rapidily go from calm to catastrophic when you're dealing with sick kids.

So surely it's an easy win, a voting certainty, even...THE RIGHT THING TO DO...to just remove that totally unnecessary hassle, that stupid pointless problem, that horrid sweaty Business Manager (hospital car parks) diktat and scrap the charges for the rest of the country?

Well I think so, anyway.