The ever intriguing Witch Doctor has been exercising her formidable intellect lately on matters which, it appears, are more tangled than a witch’s spell.
Month: September 2009
Stabbed in the Back
The General Medical Council – which is now an unaccountable government appointed quango – has today told doctors that in future they must report most if not all knife injuries they treat to the police, whether the patient wishes them to or not.
No good, and much harm, will come of this.
Dragons’ Den does the NHS
Panel (left to right):
Sir Richard Blagsome: handsome, ruthless, bearded entrepreneur. Has plans to airbus patients to third word countries for major operations on the cheap.
Sex and Stats
What two things do sex and statistics have in common – apart, that is, from both starting with the letter S? The answer, of course, is firstly that in both, bigger is usually butt (sic) not always better, and secondly that both can be massaged to make things, err, stand out more.
The Survival of the Conformist
"When the government is powerful, the people become weak."
—Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
The Shit Hits the Farm
Lady Bracknell would have known exactly what to say. “To lose one case, Mr McCracken, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.”
The Instant Obscurity Panel
“Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.”
—Franz Kafka, The Trial
We Are All Villains Now
The routinely apoplectic Mr John “you can not be serious” Humphrys – may God preserve his blood pressure, for it must surely be too high – this morning reached new heights of indignation on Radio Four’s Today programme.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
“Who shall guard the guards?” —Juvenal, Satires
The Witch Doctor, in her excellent blog, often refers to the concept of “creep” – a form of social engineering by stealth.
The Eichmann Cometh
The German SS called it the Final Solution. The UK medical version of the SS, the General Medical Council, calls it Revalidation. Despite their very different contexts, the processes are remarkably similar.