Nelson's Column, Bolg, Blog, whatever...

Arsington bloody arse, with an extra pint of arse for the weekend.

There was I, having awoken in a positive mood, enjoying my favourite breakfast of toast, butter, marmalade, butter, coffee, butter and a cigarette with extra butter, when up pops the health-fascist-of-the-week.

Some ‘leading heart surgeon’ has announced that butter should be banned, an issue that’s so pressing he has abandoned his search for an even vaguely convincing toupée.

Apparently only “radical action” can save growing numbers of young adults from heart attacks and clogged arteries.

Oh gosh, mate, are you sure banning butter is radical enough? Why not tackle the genetic causes of heart disease with eugenic extermination camps? What are you going to do when people start smuggling butter in from France? Jail them? Kill them? Will we need a War on Butter?

Maybe we need a pack of butter sniffer dogs? A heavily-armed Metropolitan Police butter squad? Butter rehabilitation programmes? And when banning butter is shown to have had precisely fuck all effect on the nation’s health will you do the decent thing and shoot yourself in the face with a service revolver, or will you decide that cheese, milk, red meat, and Curlywurlies will have to go too? What would it take for fascists like you to actually arsing well stop?

You know what the real problem is here? Heart surgery! It was always an accident waiting to happen.

You see, not everyone can get into medical school. And not everyone who gets into medical school can be a surgeon. And not every surgeon can make it in a tough discipline like DGH hepatobiliary surgery with an interest in blogging.

So some - generally those who lack the delicate touch to do orthopaedics or the personality to be urologists - end up in the sump of the surgeon’s art: cardiac. And the big problem with cardiac surgery is that it only really involves one and a half different operations, with the difficult bits like vein harvesting done by nurses.

So cardiac surgeons are all, quite simply, bored. And, as Shakespeare said, the devil makes work for bored hands.

Some try to take on different surgical operations which are actually difficult, with disastrous consequences.

Others go in search of other diversions. After a bit of digging I found this article. See what I lengths I go to in order to bring you the truth? I read articles in The Guardian by people called Felicity. I actually feel dirty now.

It would appear from the right royal kicking he’s getting in the Bolgosphere that not only is Mr Leading Heart Surgeon an authoritarian git who thinks he has a god-given right to tell me what I can and can’t eat for my own good, it turns out he knows less about the subject than I do.

And the reason his idiotic ideas have gained such a wide audience is because they were spread (har!) by the PR agency that works for big-assed multinational Unilever. And do you know what Unilever makes? I’ll give you a clue: it’s not butter.

Gosh what a great game! Take a groundless assertion, give it to a corporation who could profit from it and expect everyone to do as they’re told because you’re a self-styled ‘leading surgeon’.

Can I play? “Top Middle Bit of England surgeon says smoking is good for you and should be compulsory”. Has a nice ring to it. I’ll give Philip Morris a ring.

Well, thank goodness the weather has improved. Been completely snowed in at home, unable to make it in to work without undertaking a treacherous half-mile journey down a flat road which, although it had been ploughed, salted and gritted, still looked a bit too dangerous for me to risk the new Range Rover on.

Needless to say, Dweeb Urologist Johnson sweated it in 20 miles in a Toyota Prius from the arse end of nowhere, and stopping every hundred yards to dig himself out of snowdrifts and losing three toes to frostbite in the process. All that tells you is how very, very badly he wanted to look up old men’s knobs with a telescope. Luckily, despite the relative confinement, my time was not completely wasted since the routes to the private hospital and the pub looked just that little bit less tricky. 

And of course the Test Match was on. Phew!

Still, back to the treadmill today, only to be presented with this joyous piece of news. What a bunch of arse. As if they don’t get their claws on enough of our money! Luckily I have nothing to worry about, since my financial affairs are in the hands of the top accountants Spudge & Co. I must say, they were a real find. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when you hire someone who really understands the rules in detail. Over the years they have saved me thousands. It’s equally amazing how many people are unaware of some of these loopholes.

For example, did you know that you don’t have to declare income from private patients who’ve died? That saved me a ton of money on its own. 

Or from patients who have a ‘Q’ in their names? Or from anyone who had surgery on a Tuesday? Or that the government throws away all your records after six months, so you can’t be done for anything that happened before then? Or that it is quite Ok to tax-deduct school fees, child maintenance payments, groceries, holidays and golf equipment? Neither did I! See what quality advice can do?

All the same, given the climate, I think I will give Spudge a ring check it’s all Ok. 

UPDATE

Funny. Keep getting ‘number unobtainable’.

Oh, rapture! Oh, joy! Be still my beating heart! It’s Patsy to the rescue!

Just as I though I’d never see that beautiful face or hear that slightly whiny schoolmarmish voice again, my beloved pops up to save us all from the Evil Clunking Fist Brown. She’s going to cajole and persuade and twist arms and call in favours and rally support and FINALLY persuade the Labour Party to grow some testicles and get rid of the useless arse.

It’s going to be the best back-bench revolt ever!!

Serves him right for being so horrible to her when he took over as PM, after she very kindly offered to help out with the government by being Chancellor of the Exchequer or something, and he turned her down flat, the ungrateful Scottish knob.

She did a jolly good job as health secretary, for very little thanks, and that was after a stint at trade and industry, where she did a stout job of safeguarding the British car industry, and before that she had a pivotal role in masterminding Neil Kinnock’s fantastic 1992 election campaign.

And yet there are people - it makes me angry to even think about this - that reckon she’s a talentless bint whose entire career has been one prolonged car crash of fuck-ups and incompetence. Even Johnson the dweeb urologist can’t see what a jewel she has been in the crown of our nation’ s governance.

He turned up in my office the other day and tried to allege that she was the worst health secretary who’d ever drawn breath, but I managed to persuade him, with cogent argument and by shutting his hand in the drawer a few times, that she was probably the best…apart from seven or eight others.

But now she’ll show them! Now she’ll rescue the whole country!! She’ll be kingmaker!!! Perhaps in gratitude the Labour Party will see sense and vote her in as leader, then I can gaze at her gorgeous yellowing skin and slightly weird hair at PMQ’s as she talks patronisingly to the leader of the opposition.

You just wait! Maybe she’ll remember me and I’ll become her ’special’ advisor again. Oh baby. She’s unleashed a groundswell, an unstoppable force, a tsunami! It’ll be her finest hour! She’ll….

Oh Wait. It’s failed. Arse!

Saw a thing on the internet this week about how women doctors need more support to become leaders. That’s certainly true. If they’re going to stand for high office, the last thing they want is a badly fitting bra!!! Hahahahaha!!!

I said: the last thing they want…oh never mind.

Anyway, this is somewhat apposite, as the job of Medical Director has come up after the previous incumbent took an enforced sabbatical of five to seven years with eligibility for parole after three. And my spies tell me the luscious Gabrielle is thinking of standing.

Gabrielle, as those of you who don’t live an a cave will remember, is the posh totty anaesthetist who I have been trying to get to do my lists for ages, but failed partly because the lovely G seems to want to spend all day watching Dweeb Urologist Johnson looking up old mens’ todgers, but mainly because of the intransigence of Dan The Fat Gasman, who won’t stand (or waddle) aside.

Dan has been even more insufferable than usual because he’s just got back from holiday with his ‘hot’ new girlfriend. Can you imagine how ‘cuddly’ she’s going to be?! Says I’ll be jealous when I see the holiday pics. Only if I’m a Japanese whaler, I replied. Hahahaha! God I’m good. 

He’s bringing them in tomorrow. More likely to die laughing than through envy…

Anyway, I think G would make an excellent Medical Director, because the combination of her being posh, hot-looking, strict, and in charge of me would be the single biggest boon to my health since they invented that (cough) gentlemen’s medication that I sometimes take. (Cough).

So anyway, sidled up to her in the coffee room, and said how I though we should have more women in positions of authority, and how the profession really ought to be removing some of the barriers to progression, which went down really well. I then suggested a few things she might like to do if she were appointed, like closing the Urology department, and putting a weight limit on anaesthetists working in the trust. She seemed to really like my ideas!

So, fingers crossed! (Cough).