Browsing the web about the latest round of Health and Social Care Bill backed pile-em-high, sell-em-higher NHS services currently out to private sector tender, Dr No chanced upon a success statement (SS) so hilarious his eyes would have popped (EWP) were it not for the fact that it came from the Orkneys, where Dr No had the privilege of spending a few weeks as a medical student with a real GP doing real medicine. The statement reads:
SHARED SERVICES IN THE ORKNEY ISLANDS
The annual metronome to British public service broadcasting, the Reith Lectures, have begun this year’s tick, with Dr Atul Gawande doing the tocking. A smooth tocker with hints of George W Bush style pulsing rising enunciation, today’s first lecture – the first of four, we should note – asked ‘Why do Doctors Fail?’. Master of the personal anecdote, Gawande told the tale of a certain Baby Walker – not the contraption, but his son – who survived despite being born with an aortic abnormality, while the baby in the next cot with the same condition did not. The answer, by and large, was systems failure: Baby Walker ended up in the right place at the right time, while Baby Maine next door did not: the right place, perhaps, but too late. Walker walked, Maine died.
November is the sombrest month. As the leaves complete their fall, we Brits go through two very different but very British annual events, Remembrance and Children in Need. Both have at their heart charitie, in the King James sense of the word, but the tone of each could not be more different. On the BBC, Remembrance commentary comes from National Treasures, Huyuwoo Wedwards and Dimblebug D currently standing in, while Children in Need is forever stamped with the ebullience of a National Buffoon, one Terry Wogan. Heaven forbid that, in the current rush – 1459 comments – to secularise Remembrance, Wogan be ballooned in to Remembrance, or, for that matter, Wedwards be wheeled in to Children in Need. Instinctively, we know neither would do; instead, each to his time and place. Wogan’s 1978 Eurovision commentary, caught all those years ago by Clive James, ‘not by any means full’, simply wouldn’t do at the Royal Albert Hall. Neither would the second half of the phrase, ‘possibly for security reasons’, given that most of what is left of our Armed Forces, and a good few fierce looking Veterans armour-plated with medals and bristling with whiskers if not weaponry, were packed into the Hall for the night. Any sharp-shooters dropping by could be sure of a hot reception.