I SEE the staff at the Great Western Hospital face having 50 percent added to their on-site parking fees.

For the first time, charges will also be levied against night shift workers and those putting in the hours on weekends and Bank Holidays.

The reason given by their bosses is that the extra revenue is needed to expand the existing car parking facilities.

Nurses have reacted angrily to the changes. Other critics have wondered publicly about the likely effect on the perpetual recruitment crisis that has seen vast sums of money handed over to staffing agencies.

Perhaps the naysayers are being a bit premature.

After all, hospital bosses are clearly far more intelligent and astute than most of us; otherwise they wouldn’t be paid so handsomely and enjoy so many benefits.

Maybe they hit on the idea of raising the charges after many long nights poring over heavy duty psychology textbooks. Yes, that’ll be it. They’ve obviously concluded that it’s the best way of making the staff happier, even though it might seem counter-intuitive – not to say completely mad – to we, the unschooled masses.

Maybe it’s a bit like in that old film about the scientists trying to break the sound barrier, specifically the bit where they discovered that tilting the joystick to the left made the aircraft turn right, and so on.

We can only assume that once word gets around that nurses have to pay more than they do already for parking their cars at their place of work, and that people on nights have to cough up even though public transport isn’t an option, qualified nurses and other staff will be queuing around the block to come and work in Swindon.

This could be the start of something big. If merely making staff pay more for parking is a great way of making the place a more appealing proposition, why stop there? Why not institute a new policy of making them walk over five yards of hot coals in order to enter the building?

Why not have a mandatory sprinkling of itching powder in their uniforms, or force them to hop on one leg along the wards instead of walking?

Come to think of it, why not oblige them to work overly long hours in horrifically stressful conditions for the sort of salary plenty of private sector employees wouldn’t get out of bed for?

Oh, hang on, my mistake.

The entire NHS already does that, which only goes to show how forward thinking its leaders are.