I’ve sent yet another whingeing message to our local health centre via an on-line form. Naturally, the service, if that’s what you call it is run privately for profit by ghouls seeking to line their pockets at the taxpayers’ expense and not by actual doctors. Well, what are doctors for, other than to make you better when you’re ill? Where’s the profit in that? Money, money, money, must be funny. It’s a rich man’s world.
I was wondering where all the doctors have gone and today I found at least part of the answer: they’re in prison. Not as in-mates, I don’t think, but running healthcare services in prison. GP practices can’t afford to hire GPs, so private companies are advertising aggressively to scoop up GPs as employees. So, while I am waiting for a reply to a query about my ongoing mental health tribulations – and don’t worry: it’s not Samaritans time just yet – I am having to consider committing a serious crime in order to access treatment.
I don’t have enough energy or strength to go and murder someone, so that’s one form of crime that could see me imprisoned ruled out, but there must be some crime I could commit that wouldn’t be particularly damaging to an innocent third party that might see me banged up for a short custodial.
The National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO) is a charity that helps offenders so I figured it might be an idea to see what mental health services might be available via their website. Well, knock me down with a feather but apparently things are just as bad. Read this from said website: “Many face long waiting lists for mental health support, disruptions in their medication, a lack of meaningful activity and some people are locked in their cells for over 22 hours a day.” Yet throughout my life, people have been saying how cushy life is ‘inside’ and how people have been rewarded for committing crime by living lives of luxury. You know the sort of thing: Champagne, caviar, wide screen TV. I guess there’s just no need to provide any form of mental health treatment for those doing time. Trebles all round!
Having this avenue closed off is somewhat disappointing but quite honestly being locked in a cell for 22 hours a day just isn’t an option. 24 and I might think about it.
Instead, I wait for the telephone to ring. And I know in advance how things will go:
“My name is Dr Locum. Mental health is something I’m particularly committed to. There’s plenty we can do. You can have six weeks of basic counselling and I’ll send you a list of websites that contain various resources.”
“Is that it?” (I already know it is.)
“Yes.”
“Well, thanks for calling. It’s basically “don’t call me, call Samaritans next time”, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad we could be of help. Goodbye.”
It’s more polite than that, but you get the way I’m drifting, don’t you? For “There’s plenty we can do”, read “There’s next to nothing we can do”. So it goes and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes. And where it’s going, no one knows. (Thanks to Nick Lowe for that bit.)
I’ll close now by offering my thanks to those who have made the NHS what it is today. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Thanks for nothing, you absolute wank puffins. You took my NHS and you’ve reduced it to a private answering service to benefit your fat cat friends. And as well as being mad, I’m getting mad.
As the founder of the NHS Aneurin Bevan said: “No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin.”
And as Howard Donald once sang: never forget.
