Pervy plod and DoH timewasters
It turns out that some public servants spend most of their time shopping, gambling and perving online when they should be working (as always, The Times link requires financial obeisance to the Dirty Digger). Seventy civil servants at the Department of Work and Pensions - who I had imagined would be fully occupied working out ways to screw up our NHS pensions while preserving their own feather-bedded retirement plans - have been sacked for their illicit online activities. The police are just as bad, while at the Department of Health, officials spent more than 83 days on Facebook over a two month period. Frankly, I’m surprised that they managed 83 days at work between them over such a relatively short period. And I can’t help wondering which officials were involved. Could well be Andrew Lansley, trying to find some new friends now that he has alienated the entire workforce of the NHS…
An expensive boob
So a certain type of lady is getting all uppity because she only bought the cheap prostheses which leak or catch fire or cause cancer or something, instead of the good ones that would have lasted long enough for her to fulfil their destiny by pulling an Essex car dealer or Russian oligarch. Well what did they bloody expect? You get what you pay for in this life, and cosmetic surgery is no exception. And now they actually expect me, the taxpayer, to cough up for replacements, just because the government of the surrender monkeys across the channel has, as usual, caved in to public pressure. Well, stuff that. They can just haul their sorry liposculpted arses back to the cosmetic surgeons (amongst whom I number myself, now that I’m forced to take work where I can get it) and pay for their own salvage surgery.
Over-age drinking
The bloody healthy living, anti-everything establishment just can’t give it a rest, can they? Tiring of attacking young binge drinkers, they’re now having a go at the wrinkly tipplers. Luckily, I don’t have to live in London - I just go down for conferences courtesy of the study leave budget to get a few decent meals and a bit of night life* - but it sounds as if the inhabitants of Hammersmith risk life and limb at the hands of cruising bands of geriatric winos every time they venture out of doors. Well, good luck to them I say; they’re retired, they’re bored and they’ve got the cash - go for it. And as for the old girl they interviewed, who said “I think I just stopped in time…because I couldn’t get off the floor”, she’s simply following an eminently sensible protocol I’ve adhered to over many years.
Incidentally, if that nice Dr Ford Granada Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of GPs, has really never seen a retired 70-year-old bank manager vomiting in the street, then she wants to come down the golf club with me and a few of the boys on a Saturday night. OK, it won’t be in the street, but my dear pal Danny Spudge, who was a big nob in the world of banking (or was that waste disposal, I forget), once filled the cup on the 18th green with a monumental barf. More hole-in-one than down-in-one! BWHAHAHA - see what I did there!
* I suppose that’s all down the pan as well now, thanks to the GMC. Arse!
Oh good - another target
This time, it’s Dave’s idea of sending nurses around the ward every hour to check on patients. Honestly, he’s so lacking in common sense anyone would think he was the son of stockbroker, who went to Eton before studying PPE at Oxford and going into ‘Corporate Affairs’! If I’m in hospital recovering nicely from uncomplicated surgery (admittedly not likely at the MboE Trust, given their current complement of surgeons) then I don’t need Tracey or Shazza coming round every hour interrupting my perusal of the Sporting Life to ask if I’ve opened my bowels - she’ll know soon enough when I have. Equally, if I’ve just been admitted with a ruptured aortic aneurysm, I don’t want to wait 55 minutes to have my BP taken because I’ve just missed the previous ward round. If the lazy buggers would just get off their arses once in a while to check patients who need checking when they need checking, and if they had ward sisters who made sure they did that, then everything would be OK. And anyway, if they spend all their time traipsing round the wards, Europe will soon have a Quality Street mountain to deal with, as well as its problems with the Euro (and are you enjoying that financial cock-up by our European ‘cousins’ as much as I am?).
Well, that’s it for another week. I have to say, I continue to enjoy my new freelance existence. Tomorrow is Tuesday, which in my past life would have meant sharing a morning list with Miss (and don’t dare call her anything else) Felicity Morgan, New Age vegan obstetrician - whose absence of humour was only surpassed by the hairiness of her legs.
But now, I’ll be up at eleven, a quick chat with my man in The City and then into the pub before the office crowd get in.
Read it and weep, wage slaves!
Tags: Humour
Dear Mr Nelson
Thank you for your latest “thought for the day” reading which is akin to taking a slug from the hip flask of sanity in a world of political correctness gone mad. I think you should be invited to have your own slot on Radio 4’s Today programme instead of the usual predictable selection of gay Rabbi’s and born again vegetarians etc.
Sorry to hear you have fallen off your column into a sabbatical but MboE’s loss is your reader’s gain. Do you not worry what damage pecker checker Johnson and the hirsute Ms Morgan will do in the absence of your restraining influence? Are they an item perchance? Or does Ms Morgan bat the other way whilst Mr Johnson plays with his own bat.
I would, however, like to complain about the absence of mention in your medical current affairs blog about a very important recent multi centre prospective comparative study published in the Christmas BMJ that proves once and for all that male orthopaedic surgeons are more intelligent and have superior grip strength to male anaesthetists. Will we have to rewrite our medical joke books?
Here’s hoping your journalistic talents achieve the recognition they deserve and good luck with the sabbatical and the GMC.
Jaffa
Thank you Jaffa, nice to get feedback from right-thinking people. A slug from the hip flask of sanity eh? - I like that. When I have my own newspaper (and it can only be a matter of time), i think I’ll use that as the masthead.
No, I hadn’t read the issue of the BMJ you mention-the paper they print it on now is so absorbent that I rarely get the chance to look at the contents before it’s all gone. Perhaps I should stop hanging it on that nail in the bathroom. Sounds like an interesting study, though. Certainly Dan the FG was a limp-wristed to**er, and anaesthetists in general are undoubtedly an effete bunch of wasters.
Incidentally, if your pseudonym means anything, I can put you in touch with a mate who does a nice line in hormone injections. Mention my name, and you’ll get a discount.