The relief column?

In many British films about Victorian daring do often the heroes are seen fighting a brave battle to hold their position and just as it seems all is lost the sounds of bugles or the sight of a relief column causes all their cares to disappear and after killing a few more baddies there are lots of smiles and manly greetings and all is once again well with the Empire. 

No doubt NHS England safe in their bunkers fortified by retardation will be thinking that this little announcement will be having the same effect on GPs in their practices this week as reported by the news channels. Will GPs and their staff be embracing the relief column? We think not for look at the detail.

 Funding. At first sight this would seem like a huge increase in money going into general practice but it is little more than a return to what was paid 5 years ago which in fact will be less than that due to the ravages of inflation and remember medical inflation is greater than general inflation so the beleaguered garrison is not even as well armed or manned as it was at the start of the siege. 

Workforce. Clearly the extra men in the relief column will bolster the garrison and its defences except this is a paper army and is more like a work of fiction given recent comments. Still the local tribes that are NHS England switch their allegiances and promises as often as the wind direction changes in a coastal temperate climate and it cannot count for they tell health select committees the exact opposite. 

And the deployment of auxiliary troops will always make up for a lack of veteran fully trained legionaries but comrades did you notice the word co-funded in front of the word auxiliaries? In other words the beleaguered garrison will have to pay for the auxiliaries we believe over a 3 year period of subsidy before bearing the full cost themselves. And if the auxiliaries were to be found wanting then the garrison would also have to pay to decommission them too. 

Workload. So the relief column will tackle all the areas in this paragraph but they will not tackle the main offensive thrust on the garrison which is the daily charge on it by screaming tribespeople en masse who want instant satisfaction at all costs (but not to them) or else, who take no prisoners and care not about inflicting causalities. In case NHS England don’t get this we mean patients and their increasing demands for trivia to be seen NOW.

Infrastructure. Always a good scene in any film when plucky British troops plug a gap in the wall with sandbags but these are just empty bags with no sand.

Care redesign. Well this is a bit like the dinner party scene in the Carry on Up the Khyber film in terms of stemming the offensive and looks like actually encouraging it.

So as GPs and their staff woke up to the news that a relief column is coming will they be thinking that this is the relief of Mafeking provided by NHS England or merely a continuation of Rourke’s Drift depicted in the film Zulu on a ground hog day basis? Or will it continue to feel like the final scene of the 1962 film The 300 Spartans as numbers decrease and more arrows are in coming?

It is said that attack is the best form of defence and one should always go forward but NHS England with this announcement have only provided a relief column that will do nothing now other than continue to mark time while the siege continues unabated.

Praise be to the Party and for all those who work at NHS England they are such bright chaps. Scum of the earth perhaps as Wellington once said? Other generals may disagree believing this to be yet another Pyrrhic victory for their “troops” in the BMA pay and catering corps.

NHS lies never heard by any GP ever 001: I never have a home visit.

One of the great things about a free at the point of abuse healthcare system is that it is free at the point of abuse and the only thing you have to do to access free healthcare in the UK is lie.

So take the NHS socialized medicine’s free at the point of abuse GP home visiting system. Need a home visit, can’t be arsed to go to a GP's surgery? It’s FREE just ring, lie and get one.

I can’t get out of my home – but you go to the hairdresser to get your naff purple rinse?

I need a home visit I have just come back from a week in my caravan (transport to coastal trailer parks for those in the UK is of course provided by the local ambulance service for free together with state benefits to fund these trailers incredibly common on the coasts both west and east south of the Wall).

The doctor at the hospital I went to see this morning at an outpatient clinic said I needed a home visit urgently. Completely appropriate given your immobility to go to an outpatient appointment under your own steam and how you managed to get back from there under your own steam we will never know such is the selfless lying of your average NHS patient and yet the subsequent letter does not support their assertion (lie). We do ring and check were possible in these cases.

These are but a few of the  requests that GPs get for home visits and the usual requester of home visits is usually old, miserable, lonely and female (they live longer before you start and maybe possibly or rarely are more infirmed as a result of longevity but more commonly are dementing and lonely). They have peed their families of so much that their families have moved elsewhere and no longer care because they do not have to since the so called nuclear family imploded in the past few decades and the great British populus still believes in totally free cradle to grave care (not) from the NHS. Will the doctor go and wipe Granny's bottom as I am in a meeting and the carer is of sick?

Or by family who have only spoken on the phone to their (allegedly ill) family member whom they have had enough of them and they never actually see which is part of the problem. Granny moans what do I do? Ring a GP and “request” a home visit. Such patients need to be in nursing homes which cost (a family dear) but home visits for crap by GPs are completely free.

Other misusers of GP home visits are the pathetically inadequate members of society you know the ones who will ring their surgery 15 times a day, dial 999 and consult a moron via NHS 111 as many times a day too. Why can patients do this? 

Because they can! 

The NHS is completely free at the point of abuse and despite socialized education for the past few decades GPs and their staff have to deal with this (***p) free at the point of alleged need (abuse) daily. Anyone hear Bevin spinning in his grave for someone informed us that he is once said to have said that they (NHS patients) were too lazy to wash their own medicine bottles and return them to pharmacies for reuse once everything was free?

The other major source of completely unnecessary home visits is nursing and residential homes where so called healthcare “professionals” need GPs to see things that rarely if ever need treatment but GPs are there to just cover their own limited professional incompetency. 

“Doctor, you can’t be too careful with someone who is already dead but we have to preserve our source of income for how else can we 20 stone and 5 foot nothing carers – pass me another éclair Chantelle love while the doctor refuses to write a prescription and I document this in our client’s notes. The eclairs have to be eaten by someone the patients don’t touch them and we are too busy to pick them up to feed them because we are stressed and me doctor won’t give me Orlistat to help me with my weight is that another one spare Chantelle, love your new tattoo, pass it me luv . . ." 

But when you visit any patient in any Grim Reaper’s departure lounge and someone asks in the background “Who’s that?” what do you hear when a caring staff member says “It’s a doctor”?

You then hear shrieks from the other demented residents of “Doctor, nurse help me! I need to see you.” you realize: 

1) how much healthcare is valued in the UK by dements 

and

2) how little it is valued when dements hear the word doctor and start shouting for something they do not need, value, understand or have to pay for. It is just there for the taking regardless.

No different to the day job then. "Doctor I need a home visit . . .*

Praise be to the Party for ensuring that one of the most expensive and labour intensive services a society can provide to its citizens is freely available at the point of abuse even in your own home, whatever.

*. . . my plane lands in ten hours time and it is a three hour drive back from the airport I would have seen a doctor here but I would have to pay to do so and you will be shut when I drive past your surgery on my way home."