All hands to the pump!

There are numerous films where a ship gets holed and starts taking on water which seems to ensure that all the heroes and heroines, all actors, will drown under the weight of incoming water (work) miles away from help (rescue).

So imagine our relief (despair) at the news this week that a report commissioned by NHS England has stopped the influx of water in an instant into the gaping hole of no manpower or funding to sustain the RMS NHS Titanic (General Practice sub commissariat).

Balance this against another report saying that the influx of water has increased as has the size of the hole and we are sure that the current captains of the NHS are listening to the orchestra playing while supping vodka and caviar on the quarterdeck fully expecting those less qualified than doctors to take a thimble into the water filled hole stand waist deep in the water and throw the thimbles of water over their shoulders in order to keep the NHS afloat.

Of course after many vodkas they will not realize that those with thimbles have been deployed from some areas of shortages while others are from areas of excess which once again leaves the ship unbalanced and with a hole to plug and no plan with which to do so.

Praise be to the Party for ignoring a problem for years and hoping that lots of sticking plasters will repair the gaping hole into which increasing quantities of water do daily flow freely into. Still by jingo a good report from numpties is just as good as a solid steel plate over a gaping hole to keep the water out and far cheaper than having a steel industry to make such a plate and the steel with which to make it.

A Thank You.

Occasionally as a GP you get a thank you letter but this has to be tempered with the unwritten rule that when you receive one it is usually followed by 3 letters of complaint. So can you imagine how happy United Kingdom GPs must be to have all been thanked by none other than the current secretary of health our very own Jeremy Hunt.

We are sure that fellow GPs across the land on the junior doctors’ strike days were busy as usual on the golf course perfecting their swing rather than seeing patients. We thought we would enlighten Jeremy as to what happened on the ground.

First all our junior doctors’ appointments were cancelled thereby reducing appointments available for 2 days. Several doctors went and joined our juniors on the picket lines others, while doing home visits, tooted their support from their vehicles along with other members of the public and unusually there were actually free appointments in surgery despite the reduced numbers of appointments available.

So thank you Jezza for thanking us for what we did on the strike day and we suspect quite a lot of other GPs did exactly the same to support the NHS.

Praise be to the Party for Jeremy a man so in touch with the medical profession and the NHS he has not got a clue about it but thinks he knows it all. You can show your appreciation here.