The other day we had David Cameron getting pumped up about a seven day NHS. Pumped up is the New Tory, but a lot of old hats were still put on pegs, some hats more moth-eaten than others. JC (of the Department of Health Sunshine Band) was wheeled onto the Today programme, sounding about as pumped up as a flat tyre. Despite the ill wind blowing today through NHS General Practice, with more vacancies than currants in a bun, the government’s prescription is five thousand more GPs. Quite which wind these GPs will arrive by has yet to be explained. Historically, the NHS has outsourced, or at least gained, extra doctors from abroad. Pigs, after all, can always fly, if they are pumped up enough.
Month: May 2015
Docs Told To Stick Drugs Where Sun Don’t Shine
Despite the colour scheme, Bad Medicine is not a red-top, but sometimes a red-top headline doesn’t do any harm, unlike over-diagnosis and over-treatment. The campaign against the problem of meddlesome doctors, a problem that has been around for as long as there have been doctors, had a re-launch last week, guided by a collaboration – now there’s a modern word – between the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the BMJ. What was ‘Too Much Medicine’ is now re-branded ‘Choosing Wisely’, a title so generic it could apply to anything: at least with ‘Too Much Medicine’ you knew what they were on about. The language has become stifling, like the still heat of a tropical day. We are assured that ‘Choosing Wisely conversations will rebalance discussions’ between doctors and patients, who will jointly ‘be supported to acknowledge…that, sometimes, doing nothing might be the favourable option.’ Hullo? To you and me, that’s stick the drugs where the sun don’t shine.
The Fly-Away Election
There’s no doubt that, in no particular order, the BBC, the SNP and the Tories won the election, just as, in no particular order, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Kippers lost the election. If any one moment defined election night, it was Mouldy Auld Sporran asking a craggy slit-eyed Pantsdown shortly after ten pm about the BBC’s newly announced exit poll which predicted a Tory win. Pants piled on more crags, tightened the slits and went Hatsdown: if the poll was right, Pants cragged, he’d eat his hat. At least one viewer was left wondering for a moment whether Pants’ appearance was the consequence of a life spent digesting hats. Mouldy declined to offer to eat his sporran if the exit poll was wrong. Pants appeared to nod off, his eyes the natal clefts of two hippos reclining back to back. In the bowels of the building, a prop hand searched for a digestible hat.