Everybody (NHS included) needs Peter the Plumber

Last week I experienced a secular epiphany. Let me set the scene. We live in a Victorian cottage (circa 1850) which has been considerably extended through the years, with a plumbing system to match. Following replacement of a leaking hot-water tank some years ago the system, which had never been that efficient, seemed to go into terminal decline. About half the radiators ceased to function and no amount of fiddling with bleeding valves made any difference.

Various heating engineers consulted during this time would suck their teeth, mutter about having never seen anything like this before and talk of stripping the whole thing out and starting again; not an encouraging prospect.

However the winters during the last decade have not been that bad. Being raised in the post-war generation when central heating was largely unheard of, the wife and I are of the “if you are cold put on another jersey” disposition, and “if you spent less time on your backside playing computer games you wouldn’t get cold”.

But this last winter has been an exception and we have frequently resorted to (expensive) electrical heaters to keep us from freezing. This finally stimulated us into action and, on the advice of a friend, contacted Pete the plumber.

He popped in at 5pm on his way home last week. He spent about 45 minutes inspecting various things including a foray into the loft to examine the piping. Emerging, he informed us that “the positive drainer was plumbed into the inflow-outflow balancer system and that this resulted in a negative contra-flow in the secondary flux capacitor”, or something like that! Anyway he had repositioned a pipe in the loft, and that should sort it. 

Even as he spoke radiators, which had been cold for the last decade, became piping hot clicking furiously as years of retained air was expelled out of the system like some old chronically constipated colonel given a large dose of laxative by matron. Then with a cheery, “give me a bell in autumn and I will come back and balance the system for you”, he disappeared charging us, wait for it, forty pounds! I am now sitting here in my shirt-sleeves in a (to me) uncomfortably warm house wondering how such an apparently complex problem could be so easily and cheaply sorted.

The latest issue to exercise my trust is a complaint from our local GPs that clinic letters are, in many cases, sent to the GP Principle and not the referring doctor. My colleagues have responded robustly, stating that the reason for this is that they frequently do not know the referrer due to issues with, yes you’ve guessed it, the Chose and Book system (or Chaos and Luck as one of them calls it). The Patient Access Manager (?) has stated that they have been trying to sort the issue for some time but, “but this has been hampered somewhat by technical issues out of our control”, i.e. the NHS IT system, costing £billions, is not fit for purpose.

I wonder if Pete the Plumber has any computer experience?

Tags: NHS IT