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!

Couldn’t organise a FTP panel in a brewery

For just a moment there, when I read this, I thought my journalistic career might be cruelly cut short, and I’d be back in harness at the Middle Bit of England Trust. But I’ve checked the letter the GMC sent me, and I don’t think I’m one of the doctors wrongly informed that they had been brought to the attention of the Fitness to Practice Inquisition Panel.

It seems they’ve got CCTV footage of that unfortunate incident in the lap-dancing gentlemen’s club and a DNA match from a jobby left in the Medical Director’s in-tray, so it looks like they mean business. Not that I care. I’m enjoying my new role, and it’s not as if I need my NHS salary. I’ve always worked under an assumed name at the cosmetic surgery clinic, and fortunately they aren’t too fussy about paperwork.

Still, it’s yet another example of the GMC’s inability to get anything right, despite all that money they rip us off for every year (or used to - I suppose I won’t need to pay a subscription once they strike me off. Not that I’m pre-judging the outcome of the hearing, of course. You will long ago have realised that I am, by nature, a sunny optimist).

Surely there’s been some sort of mistake…

Now I’m the first to admit that I may have made a few mistakes in my time - that night with The Krankies and my ex-wife (fanarsingdabbydosy … not), an apprenticeship in radiology (what was I thinking), and even the reasons behind my recent career change. But I’m paying my dues. Suspension and public humiliation (or at least it would be humiliating if I gave a stuff for the opinion of the lumpen proletariat, aka patients).

And yet THIS BLOKE lets a bunch of wbankers off a £10 billion tax bill and walks away with a smile on his face. The only one who gets it in the neck is Mr Mba, the whistleblower who drew attention to this minor accounting error. I feel a lot of sympathy for Mba - after all, my actions were essentially aimed at drawing attention to the deficiencies of the senior medical management at the Middle Bit of England NHS Trust. Who’d have thought it - me, a downtrodden whistleblower?

Don’t let the bed bugs bite

So, the little buggers don’t like hairy skin? I can think of several erstwhile colleagues who may feel reassured by that. Beardy dweeb urologist Johnson (you remember him?) will certainly have cause to feel grateful, assuming the rest of his body is as hairy as his earnest let-me-explain-to-you-the-importance-of-responding-promptly-and-sympathetically-to-patients’-complaints face. Not to mention the chief nurse - her legs looked like the sort of thing you’d see emerging from the kilt of a particularly hirsute caber-tosser.

Scots find new ways to die

And talking of Scotsmen (see what I did there), I see that our enterprising neighbours north of the border have reacted positively to the news that their record death rates from cancer, heart disease and stroke are unaccountably falling, and are well on the way to restoring the status quo by ceasing all physical activity and subsisting on a diet of deep-fried Mars bars, Tunnock’s teacakes and Buckie.

At least there will less whining about independence. Give them what they want, I say. Now we’ve used all the North Sea gas, and found a new supply of our own in the shale under Blackpool, pull up the drawbridge, rebuild Hadrian’s wall, and let them pay for their own healthcare instead of sponging off us…

Nuns on the job?

I was taken by the idea that nuns should start taking the oral contraceptive, to protect them from their current high rates of breast, ovarian and uterine cancer. Not sure what the Pope will make of it, but assuming he’s OK with the idea, why not go the whole hog and let them get pregnant? Funnily enough, I’ve got a film on my lap top that covers this issue in graphic detail. It would provide an outlet for all those Benedictine monks currently in hot water, and ensure a steady supply of priests for the seminaries. There - job done. I wouldn’t be surprised if they make me a Papal Knight. If it’s good enough for Jimmy Savile…

GMC in subscription fee cut shocker!?!

Just as I am preparing myself for a future that no longer requires me to give huge sums of money to the GMC in order for them to persecute me and screw up even the simplest paperwork relating to my registration (see first item), they REDUCE their subs for the first time in living memory. Well, I hope you all make the most of it.

Personally, I’d advise sending the £30 you now have spare to the ‘Free the Middle Bit of England NHS Trust One’ campaign, c/o Lenny Spudge, 3A Inkerman Terrace (over launderette), Wolverhampton.

GPs??!…HOW MUCH?!!

Can you believe it? The pill-pushers are raking in £750K - that’s nearly half the salary of an orthopod. It’s not right.

It’s not as if they do any training - they go straight from medical school into the cardigan and comfy chair, gazing into the middle distance while self-obsessed patients maunder on about their drab, unsatisfactory lives. Their seven-minute solution? A script for Prozac. I mean, what’s so bloody difficult about that?

Still, you’ve got to hand it to them. I thought God’s own specialty - GENERAL AND HEPATOBILIARY SURGERY - was up there in the money for old rope stakes, but these guys don’t even have to work on their feet like we do (or did, in my case - that’s one good thing about this journalism lark, you can do it sitting down, pissed). Respect, as the young people say.

TAVISTOCK TOSSERS!

It’s almost worth joining the BMA, just so I can resign. First of all they come out with another of their nannying calls to ban something - smoking in cars this time, not boxing or their global campaign on running with scissors - then it turns out that they can’t even get their numbers right.

Mind you, if you wanted an illustration of the fact that the BMA are a bunch of wasters, you only have to note that their rep in the Middle Bit of England Trust was Dweeb Urologist Johnson - the compost loving willy-wrangler, whose most notable contribution to industrial relations during my time there was to ‘negotiate’ an increase in staff parking charges. Not that it mattered much, he was the only one who actually paid up. Prat.

FAKE DOC CUFFED IN CONCRETE ARSE SHOCKER

I’d been congratulating myself that after only a week in my new job, I was already demonstrating a gift for the eye-catching headline, but as you’ll see from the link, I can’t claim credit for this one, which should be in line for some sort of award.

It just has it all, including the constructive and appropriate use of the word ‘arse’ which, as you all know, is a special interest of mine. In fact, the headline is better than the story, which just reports, yet again, how mind-bogglingly stupid the average punter is. Oh well, I suppose if they weren’t, the cosmetic surgeons would all be out of a job, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Oh…alright, then.

Although, looking at that picture of the woman again, I can’t help wondering if she hasn’t got a contract with infection control at Middle Bit of England NHS Trust…

ADVICE…on drinking?

More whining in the Sunday Times (link only works if you give money to the needy Murdochs), this time because ministers and civil servants drawing up advice on drinking have had 85 meetings with those magnificent men and women who manufacture alcoholic beverages. Apparently ‘health groups’ are complaining because the industry boys get more access to Whitehall than they do. Well, what do they expect? If I was a senior civil servant and had the choice of meeting half a dozen members of the board of Diageo, or sitting around a table with a bunch of miserable beardies over a carafe of spring water and tofu biscuits, I know what I’d do. For a start, think of the freebies the drinks team would bring along - it would be a right piss-up. Anyway, who needs advice on drinking? Can’t help recalling that quote (was it W C or Gracie Fields?) in response to an unwise journo who asked him about his drink problem: “I drink, I fall down. No problem.” Might try that one with the GMC…

WELL STAY AT HOME AND DIE, then

More whingeing from the Murdoch stable, this time quoting a report from those Dr Foster nerds about ‘botched operations’. (Definitely spent their formative days being bog-washed and wedgied at minor public schools. Get proper jobs…).

It’s the usual bloody complaint about wrong-side surgery. It happened 57 times last year, apparently, so think how many times they removed the intended limb/organ, but no-one gets any thanks for that, do they? And ‘a foreign object’ was left inside the patient on 125 occasions. Garlic bread, Lederhosen? It doesn’t explain but one can surmise it wasn’t an English surgeon who put them there…

Anyway, I bet none of these ‘objects’ were false teeth. I well remember the occasion when the nurses forgot to remove a patient’s dentures before she came down for her cholecystectomy, so Dan the FG took them out when he intubated her and left them on top of his gas machine. Too good to resist I’m afraid, so when his back was turned, I tucked them out of sight in the pelvis and stitched up. A bit naughty I suppose, but I was still feeling skittish after a particularly good mess party the previous evening (remember those?). She didn’t come to any harm, and it made for a really good post-op abdominal x-ray.

Luckily for me, the dozy radiologist saw teeth, and said it must be an ovarian teratoma, so there was no come-back. Happy days!

But to get back to those testosterone-challenged Dr Foster odd-balls, what these people need to understand is that any big building full of sick people and doctors is bound to be a dangerous place. Grow a pair, and deal with it.

If you wondered why I haven’t been around recently, I’ve been spending some quality time cloistered with my medical defence team, because it transpires that today’s NHS managers can’t cope with employees who demonstrate any spark of individuality or original thought. Well, sod them, bunch of unimaginative ingrates.

I was finding all the right-on hand-washing, patient choice, evidence-based medicine, namby-pamby bloody nonsense too restricting anyway, so I frankly welcome the opportunity to strike out in a new direction - THE MEDIA. If that big-collared plonker Harry Hill can do it, so can I.

To that end, I’m pleased to announce that the Editor has given me a roving brief to comment on the medical news stories of the day, and you know? - I think this could be what I was born for.

IT’S TIME TO SHAKE THINGS UP. If the Ed wants THE JERRY NELSON VIEW OF THE NEWS, he’s going to get THE JERRY NELSON VIEW OF THE NEWS. It’s high time someone else other than that thoroughly sensible chap Littlejohn made some sense.

The only challenge will be choosing between the numerous examples of twattery which assail us on all sides (and whether I can get a full 18 holes in before I have to start my punditry).

As well as the welcome challenge of a new career in journalism, I’ll also get a break from that bunch of irritating wasters I’ve been forced to share a theatre suite with for the past ten years - no need to watch Dan the Fat Gasman wobbling round theatre with his tits falling out of his top, smelling of sweat and defeat; no more coffee breaks spent listening to menopausal Rosa Kleb look-alike theatre sisters moaning because someone’s eaten all their Quality Street. And no more lectures on ‘professional principles’ (or my perceived lack of) from Billy-no-mates knob jockeys who think that spending all day sticking telescopes up willies has anything to do with proper surgery.

So, as a taster of things to come, let me give you my first batch of perceptive insights into the news stories of the day…

WTF!!!!? CHIEF EXEC SACKED FOR SWEARING

You’d probably expect me to start with this one, and you’d also expect me to concentrate on whistleblowers, and give it as my humble opinion that anyone ratting on his or her medical colleagues should be given a good kicking. But no - I can’t even think about that. I’m too pre-occupied by the ludicrous suggestion that anyone could be sacked just for saying ‘fuck’ nine times in two years. I mean…..fucking hell - I said it nine times before breakfast. And this was in the depths of Lincolnshire. You’d think they’d be too busy strumping their cousins and livestock to worry about a few swearwords.

JACKO’S WACKO DOC GOES DOWN

I see that Michael Jackson’s doc has been found guilty of giving his patient a powerful anaesthetic agent while lacking the expertise to deal with the consequences. Let’s hope they don’t come after Dan the FG - he’d have to ask for 14,856 other offences to be taken into consideration. Not least the one where he connected the anaesthetic gases to the chest drain instead of the ET tube. (Then the corpulent nonentity had the nerve to complain when I slashed the piping with a scalpel - thus saving the patient’s life. Great sound when his chest decompressed though - like an elephant farting.)

THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT IS ANYONE HOME?

As for the discovery that some patients in a vegetative state show evidence of awareness on electrical testing, I can think of a few members of staff at my erstwhile place of employment who should be given the once-over. Starting with the social workers, and anybody with ‘facilitator’ or ‘practitioner’ in their job title. Not to mention that Prius-driving knobhead of a ‘Medical Director’.

SCOTS GET THE TROTS

So people are being advised not to eat Lloyd Grossman’s korma sauce because it might give them botulism? Frankly, anyone eating anything marketed by that irritating git deserves all they get. Anyway, it’s only the Scots who are affected. Let the outbreak run its course. And perhaps ship a few crates to Wales.

FRESH AIR BAD FOR YOU

Apparently, the government is backsliding on its obligations to improve air quality, and it’s costing lives. However, your conscientious reporter has taken the trouble to read the report carefully, and it turns out that for most of us, we’re only talking a month or two off our life expectancy. Only the most severely affected will be scythed down years before their due date, and guess who the most severely affected are? Cyclists. So that’s OK, then. Bastards.

Yes, I think perhaps I could get the hang of this.

Mr JERRY NELSON

Area of practice: Middle Bit of England NHS Trust

Planned dates: 15 November 2011 to 2 December 2011

St James’s Buildings, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ

The Fitness to Practise Panel will meet at St James’s Buildings, 79 Oxford Street, Manchester, M1 6FQ to consider a new case of impairment by reason of misconduct and deficient professional performance.

The Panel will inquire into the allegation that on 11 October Mr Nelson, employed as a general surgeon at Middle Bit of England NHS Trust, appeared under the influence of alcohol, using abusive language and risking patient safety.

It is alleged that on the day after being ‘de-listed’ by a major private health insurer and notification that his application for a Platinum Clinical Excellence Award had been turned down (for the 13th successive year), Mr Nelson turned up to work drunk.

At 9.23am, an electric car – belonging to the Medical Director – was shunted out of its parking place in the consultant car park and into a flower bed. Eye witnesses said the offending vehicle was a Jaguar and a well-dressed man walked away with a golf bag over his shoulder muttering “tree hugging, car park hogging bastard”.

At 10.24am, three ambulances attending A&E and four patients walking out of hospital were struck by golf balls. An eye witness spotted a man fitting Mr Nelson’s description playing shots from the hospital’s roof.

At 11.37am, Nigel Smith – Mr Nelson’s secretary – was found locked in a cupboard with the following message written on his forehead: “Nobody likes a smart arse”.

At 12.22pm, a senior midwife was confronted by a smartly dressed man who accused her of having “been hit with an ugly stick” and of being “of less use than an infection control witch”. He proceeded to drink three alcohol hand gels.

At 12.24pm, a senior infection control officer was confronted by a man who accused her of having “been hit with an ugly stick” and being “of less use than a midwife”, before he proceeded to strip to his underpants “in order to comply with the trust’s bare above the elbow policy”.

At 1pm, at a clinical governance meeting, Mr Nelson asked whether a medical manager “was the stripper” and left shortly afterwards “to get a kebab”.

At 1.02pm, Mr Nelson allegedly urged a Polish colleague to “go back home to Germany”. At 1.03pm, he urged a Geordie colleague to “go back to his own country”. At 1.05pm, Mr Nelson urged a Filipino nurse to “go back to my place”.

At 3pm, an hour later than scheduled, Mr Nelson entered theatre chanting “You fat bastard, you fat bastard” at his anaesthetist. Ten minutes later he slumped over the patient and started snoring. The Panel will also inquire into the allegation that he left theatre with ‘a handful’ of human tissue after being roused.

At 3.23pm, Mr Nelson was barred from entering the Church Steeple Private Hospital by security after having parked his Jaguar in its reception.

At 4.28pm, Urologist Mr Tim Johnson returned to his office to find erotic pictures of his wife - in various states of undress - posted around his department.

At 6.22pm, the chief executive left the hospital to find that his legally parked car had been towed away by Spudge Security, which manages the car parks, and of which Mr Nelson is a major shareholder. So had the cars of anyone involved in general medicine, and anyone with a beard. Several female ODAs were upset by the implication.

At 6.23pm, Prof Jones, chair of the national CEA committee, returned home in Surrey to find a Jaguar car on his lawn with his pet Labrador ‘Minty’ underneath it.

At 11.22pm, Mr Nelson was admitted to Middle Bit of England NHS Trust A&E with a minor head injury after being ejected from the Pussy Cat Club. Before passing out, he uttered “Arsing mcarse to the whole ARSE of you”.

The above reflects the allegations as they stand at the start of the hearing. The allegations may be amended as the hearing proceeds and when findings of fact are made by the Fitness to Practise Panel. If you require up to date information regarding the allegation throughout the course of the hearing, please contact the GMC’s Press Office.

In accordance with Rule 41(2) of the General Medical Council (Fitness to Practise) Rules 2004, the Panel may decide to exclude the public from the proceedings or any part of the proceedings, where they consider that the circumstances of the case outweigh the public interest in holding the hearing in public.

Arsing hell. For some reason my copy of News of the World wasn’t delivered last week. Consequently I have absolutely no idea what’s going on in the news. It’s very frustrating.

I even turned on the TV, but all I saw was some programme where a fat hippie tried to throw a custard pie at an old man, but then got bitch-slapped by some hot-looking chinese woman, while a lot of bald sweaty men watched from behind a desk. Bloody Channel 5, some sort of game show I suppose.

Anyway, the good news is I got a call from my old mate Lenny Spudge. Lenny’s had a bit of a difficult time, so it was good to hear he’s back on his feet. He’s one of these blokes who works hard and tries his hand at anything, but because of sheer bad luck, keeps getting made redundant.

He’s had jobs as debt collector, parking attendant, door-to-door double-glazing salesman specialising in the confused and gullible elderly market. Then he got a job in Canada as a field operative in the baby-seal-fur industry. After that he worked for a while on check-in at Ryanair, then for a company that does direct telemarketing at 3am. His most recent employment was as a nurse in a care home, which was going really well, but he had to leave because of some shoddy TV programme or other.

Anyway. Spudge has got a new job, and he’s really confident this one’s going to last. Basically, he works for a sort of charity that helps celebrities who’ve got into trouble with a wide range of problems like drugs or drink or unwanted pregnancy, or sexually transmitted diseases, or whatever.

Must be doing well this charity because he turned up at the pub in a new Range Rover and bought all the drinks. Rich benefactors I guess.

Then he says the thing about celebrities is they don’t like to ask for help, so sometimes the charity has to find out who’s having a problem before they can help them. Isn’t that great?

So I said, “You mean like teen pop sensation Justin Starburst who was recently admitted to our local private hospital wearing a gimp mask with three quarters of a wooden coffee table inserted into his sigmoid colon and enough cocaine in his system to stun a brontosoarus?”

And he said, “Yes, JUST like that.”

So, it turns out I was able to be of assistance. Lenny said the charity needed to be absolutely sure Mr Starburst needed their help, so I sneaked into The Pastures and took a few photos, and swiped some of the pics from his colonoscopy. Lenny was so pleased he gave me thirty whole English pounds!

Life’s good when you can help other people.