In alternate reality 45823....

It's b-day, plus 10 years, and the uk is now the 51st state of the usa. 

The nhs has being bled to death by a billion cuts and the tasty filleted remains sold off to the fastest swooping vulture funds.

The  first term rees-mcvey government has discovered a very large hole in their plans. After promising the electorate the sky, they have discovered that is the only thing in the country left for them to privatise.

"Ah, prime minister. Would you like to comment on the rumours that we are the new puerto rico?"

"Oh really, what a nonsensical question! Listen mush, once we've sold off the sky, we shall all be fantastically wealthy. There will also be some stale crumbs for the poor. Although, they'll have to fight marzebub for those!"

Sugar no spice!

Glorious day

Yesterday was such a glorious moment: blue sky, a light breeze, smiling people. I even managed to take the camera out for a little spin; after the flatmate's inner ear required the attention of a doctor.

Living in one of the noisiest parts of town, you get used to inserting earplugs on a nightly basis. But on this occasion, it would seem the plug insertion was carried out a little bit too forcefully. Personally I put it down to a simple case of the flatmate overstressing the body the week before. 

The options were:

1. going to the local gp as emergency and waiting nearly four hours to get seen, or
2. trying out the nhs walk-in clinic tucked away just off the main road in victoria. 

Luckily there's a direct bus (which on this occasion looked as if it hadn't been cleaned since it was introduced) route.  Twenty minutes later we walked in to a practically deserted, modern, clean, fresh smelling reception, with (and this caused a little stumble) an actual smiling receptionist; who took down the details and said the flatmate should be seen in about 15 minutes. It took ten. Ten minutes on the NHS to walk-in and be seen. People came, people left and the doctors and nurses quietly, efficiently, went about their duties.

Even heard one person upon leaving, congratulating the receptionist, "I didn't know you were here, but I'll be using you in future."

And there's the rub.

It's currently good, efficient, with a relaxing - almost healing - atmosphere because it's not stretched to capacity. Once that happens, it will end up like any other gp's surgery. Everyone bad tempered, cursing the day they set foot in, and with a two week plus waiting list.

But the pictures. Not of the surgery but of a couple of other lines that caught my eye...

         

Which ended in a glorious moon...

Lowest of the low

So a Doctor who rushes to the aid an elderly person injured in an accident -and forgets to remove her keys - has her car stolen, obviously from an opportunistic parasite at the scene. 

There will be those who say it's her own fault for not removing the keys, after all it only takes a second. But those few seconds could be all it takes, for that person she's rushed to help, to die in.

I just hope the person who's nicked it doesn't need to be cut out of an upturned car, waiting for the emergency services to cut her/him (more likely to be a him) out.  Only to have it burst into flames and him (or her) burnt to a crisp; all because the services have to go through those extra few seconds of procedural diligence, due to the lowest of the low!

Instead of village stocks, we should have tasering posts.  Were the victim of criminal activity can, if they wish, go along to off-load a well aimed taser.

Dickens would be so proud of our brave new world - a rambling missive

Forcing people back to work, if they are unable to find work or are incapacitated, sounds like a return to Charles Dicken's country.  You could see the great man himself flicking through the pages of today's papers with depressed resignation at the direction the current government, opposition party and general populace are seemingly headed. 

With the ban on smoking, kill joys are now working on drinking, no doubt after that we'll all have to wear the correct type of clothing otherwise we'll be sent to the gallows.

Soon to, no doubt, as too many people will be perceived to be enjoying themselves, the holiday periods will be rolled back and working hours increased under the guise of research showing that if people didn't have so much free time they wouldn't:

1. get drunk so often,
2. have enough time to be obese eating all that balanced food

Whilst those who had too much free time on their hands would be made to work a 50 hour week for the benefit of the community, ensuring they are no longer:

1. idly unemployed and going around robbing people,
2. have time to smoke and so become less of a drain on the health service - eventually,
3. need to live in deprived areas and having offspring turn into feral beasts - through boredom and nothing else better to do.

Yes, it's mainly those who are poor, whom the political chatterers and right of Stalin editors seem to have it in for.  If you're rich and wealthy then you can ensure your offspring are suitably taken care of by the chauffeur and bodyguards, even if they would rather be rogering the missus.

It's could, perhaps, be also true that there are shirkers out there who find the problem of moving to pick up a remote control, to much effort.  But the vast majority do want to work. Meaningful work.  Work, that at the end of the day makes them feel like they have made a difference. Work that is more than the means to a basic existence. 

Unlike, investment bankers, whose idea of making a difference is knowing they've pushed a few million more people further into poverty or destroyed the meager savings of another bunch of pensioners.  For this group, the government should barrel down with increased legislation.  Raise taxes so many of them actually pay proper taxes.  But will they? No. As the government is in fear they will up sticks and leave for easier climes.  Not realising that in reality, easier climes could only be had at the beach house.

A spineless government that believes this group will simply up sticks and leave, creating chaos and plunging the country into ruin. Perhaps.  but with the bloodsuckers gone, ramping up inflation (especially housing), then the vast majority will be able to manage on the average meager wage, and anyhow they will have to learn how to, once China and India truly begin their inexorable climb to burgeoning middle-class hood and their respective Bourses surpass the london stock exchange.  Then the redistribution of traders will begin as the lse fades into the distant horizon, overtaken by the far east and a new european financial exchange, the last dreams of empire finally fading into the mists.

Been at work is bad for your health, especially in this day age; unless you work for google or apple and perhaps - at a push - ibm. 

In london on any working day just - if you can bear it - travel on london underground and look at your fellow travellers.  Rarely will you see anyone smiling or laughing. If they are, it's a firm bet they are tourists, or passing through, or have only lived in the capital for 6 months and not yet had the happiness and love for life beaten out of them.  But just look at the people going to work. It's a chore, the majority don't enjoy it, but they keep doing it.  For they know if they don't, that they could be that grubby beggar pestering everyone for 10 pence or is it now £50, to help buy a cup of tea.  Heaven forbid they end up like that, so away they beaver and work. 

To be fair there are people who have lived in the capital for 10 or more years and are still happy. But then they have homes overseas, holiday 20 times a year, worked hard and don't have to endure more than they need to.

But for those stuck within the boundaries of the M25 and its lofty green fields, the constant grind has the subtleness of your own personal pneumatic drill.

GP Patient Survey...

When the above popped through the letter box, I thought I'd died and gone heaven.

Perhaps it is me and I have been labouring under a misconception that booking an appointment to see ones GP had been, or is in the process of been, reduced to a week! Perhaps even, at a push two!

So I bite my tongue when I am told the earliest appointment is four weeks away. And bite it even harder when that four weeks have been and gone and I go to find I shall be seeing a locum and not my own regular GP! A Locum in today's parlance, is a professional temp!

They (the government - perhaps more under the previous than current incumbent) have been happy bleating on about the number of billions been pumped into the NHS (National Health Service). But all those billions appear to have been soaked up by the heightened upper echelons remuneration, way before reaching the bottom, in the form of meager scraps.

Would this be a time to mention Consultants, Area Managers, Managers, Secretaries, whose increasing use of days off 'due to stress', must make opening a travel agency within hospital grounds an accountants financial dream. Doctors (not the private - full or partial), Receptionists, Nurses, Security, are more or less front line targets and deserve way more money than they're getting. And of course the humble Cleaners for whom English may be a 2nd or 3rd tongue, a course in English along with a 'how not skimp on the cleaning solution' and report your bosses if forced to' one, would be in order.

On the bottom line - apologises - front-line, it is a shame all those billions spent on the service have proved incapable of ensuring that when your four week wait is over, and you have made it over the threshold (so proving, however tenuous, your claim to be in the land of the living); that the look of disappointment palpably rippling outwards from the front desk - like some bodily emanation as another body hasn't pegged it and manages to stumble through - increases in tedium each dreaded passing visit.

Then the wait to finally see your GP begins. Book an appointment for 10am and if you are lucky, you will be seen two hours later by about 12pm. If anything, you are far better pretending that your body is about to gasp its last and you will be zipped in under an emergency booking. At least then you are guaranteed to walk out in a couple of hours with a printed prescription pre-laden for the next round of pills; praying to which ever god you believe in that you don't have to pay the place a visit, ever again!

If you miss your appointment by 10 minutes or more, you are politely told that you can't be seen. As the Doctor is now busy. And you will have to re-book, for another time! Which is, naturally, another 4 weeks down the line.

How can it be improved? Hard to say. The current economic downturn negates the ability to increase funding. But even then just throwing money at it isn't the right idea; despite the strain it is experiencing, people living longer and having more ailments with increasing age and new forms of expensive treatment coming on-stream.

But what is needed is a root and branch structural review with no sacred cows or white elephants in the closed wing. A review that every citizen is involved with and not just once in a blue moon at election time. The NHS used to work! We just have to find a way of making it work and work effectively (for us all in the UK), over the next few decades!

Are we been well served by the NHS? Only if you're an estate agent, travel company and, with increasing cases of MRSA, MRSi and other yet to be championed unknown bugs around the corner, I have to vouch a no!

One possible view of MRSA infection.