What A Carve Up
I'm nearly fifty. If I were a caveman I'd already be dead for twenty years - either sabre-tooth fodder or spread like jam in the footprint of a mastodon. At the start of the 20th Century the average life expectancy was approximately my age now, which is heartening. I've already outlived almost everyone in history, unless you believe those lying Biblical Patriarchs. And I feel like I've done nothing to earn it: I eat rich foods, I drink far too much (not at the moment, but historically) I do very little exercise, and have broken bone after bone over the years. As a caveman I wouldn't have survived the broken ankle. As a man from the early twentieth Century I would have had the leg removed after breaking my knee (it was touch and go even in the early 21st). I'm also practically blind, so I would already have been dead of bumping into something nasty and pointy in practically every period of history.
Also I'm not rich. And that has been a major contributing factor to the lining of mass graves and plague pits since time immemorial. So what has been the secret to my astonishing longevity? How do I thrive when paleo loving primitives had already been pushed into peat bogs for decades?
The NHS.
It's the NHS isn't it.
I have two legs, most of my teeth and can see to write this because of the NHS. It is the UK's single greatest achievement, a way of countering the Second World War with a kind of anti-war. Instead of indiscriminate killing there would be indiscriminate healing: if you were a UK citizen there would be a sanitary hospital bed and trained medical staff to look after you, paid for by your taxes. What a beautiful innovation. What a strange and lovely thing. The first generation to benefit from it are getting on a bit now: the NHS started in 1948 when my mum was 8. She's in hospital right now - her second broken hip in a year and the NHS are doing all they can for her. Its a miserable time: she sounds groggy. She's in a lot of pain. She's had a number of blood transfusions but her haemoglobin levels haven't gone up. She's had a CT scan which found nothing and today she's having an endoscopy, which she won't enjoy. Her phone has been playing her up too so she can be hard to get hold of and she's only allowed one visitor because of Covid restrictions. She's having a miserable time of it. But the staff are doing all they can. And she is in a great hospital during a pandemic and they are taking every precaution to ensure her safety. Its all horribly worrying but she is in good hands.
The government know how great the NHS is. There's a reason why the biggest lie the "Vote Leavers" told was that they'd give the money we saved not being European to the NHS. There's a reason why Boris Johnson had himself filmed clapping like a seal on salmon day in support of the NHS. There is a reason why people banged pots and pans on their doorsteps and chalked messages on pavements and painted rainbows in their windows and framed their profile pictures with "Protect the NHS" banners. Its because the NHS is the UK's greatest ever achievement: better than two world wars and one world cup, better than the Imperial dream, better than The Beatles and the Stones or Percy Pigs. It is the greatest thing we ever did.
And now the Tories are selling it. To America, where medical bills routinely run into the hundreds of thousands, where being able to hold your baby after birth turns up as a chargeable item on your hospital bill. That's the model the Tories want. And after all their clapping and lip-service they have chosen to reward trainee nurses with cancelled contracts and stopped pay, and awarded carers and nurses no pay increases. No one voted for this. Even the most intransigent Brexiteer voted for a bolstered and iron-plated NHS - that and disliking foreigners was literally the only thing on the ticket. The Tories' key demographic are already in our hospitals, being cared for by carers, nurses and doctors who are often either immigrants or people of colour.
If I were a carer who had gone through this pandemic, watching my colleagues die while saving lives, only to be comprehensively stabbed in the back by these incompetent Tory surgeons, I might invest in a little pandemic of my own - a fucking Shipmanesque pandemic - cutting a swathe through ailing pensioners with the Daily Mail resting on their bedspreads. But that's me and I'm not very nice.
These carers will carry on caring. The nurses will continue with their thirteen hour shifts in store-bought PPE. The doctors will do their best not to kill you because that's their job. The Tories will do their very best to kill you because you are surplus to their needs. The clutter of your failing bodies isn't making them money, and worse it isn't making their billionaire pals money, so what are you for?
There used to be some PR to be had in telling people in the NHS they were doing a good job but the last time Boris Johnson shook hands with someone in a hospital he ended up on the wrong end of a drip, and I don't mean Michael Gove. So fuck 'em - good PR is so last decade anyway - we've entered the age of hyper-bollocks. Nothing sticks now because whataboutery, bullshit, disingenuousness, fibbing, verisimilitudenous in-exactitude and White Lies Matter have reached critical mass. Its a Pecksniffian pea-souper out there and you can't see Boris Johnson's hand in your pocket for the trees. There will be no more kissing babies (certainly not his own), no more crashing through walls in a fork-lift or hanging from zip-wires in Union Jack underpants. Boris no longer gives a shit. Rex Mundi wrecks everything and he wants you to know he's doing it. You can't stop him. You didn't vote for him but he's there anyway, carving up the country for his cronies, the fat owl of Greyfriars in a strangely generous mood.
I've signed petitions. I've written to my MP (I live in Belfast. My MLA is Gavin Robinson of the DUP and what a big hunka burning shite he is). Nobody represents my views. I feel utterly powerless. We should be out on the streets. We should be protesting. There should be barrels of tar and a few ripped pillows. Why aren't we? No one is reading these petitions and if they are they are gut-laughing at how pathetic we are. I've written a blog about it. Fucking whoop.
I don't know what to do. My mum will get the best care going - Basingstoke is an exemplary hospital, the staff dedicated and unflagging. She is in the best possible hands.
But I have to declare an interest, like the Tories repeatedly fail to do. In thirty years time I will be my mum's age. If current trends continue I will not be rich. If other trends continue there will be no safety net for me, the 20th Century's Utopian vision of free medical care for all will have withered to nothing, death by a thousand cuts, parcelled off to interested parties to sell it back to us at hideously swollen prices. I and millions like me will be back to the stone age. Though as I say I've already had a pretty good run for a caveman. But even cavemen can do something - its time to sharpen those flint axes.
Also I'm not rich. And that has been a major contributing factor to the lining of mass graves and plague pits since time immemorial. So what has been the secret to my astonishing longevity? How do I thrive when paleo loving primitives had already been pushed into peat bogs for decades?
The NHS.
It's the NHS isn't it.
I have two legs, most of my teeth and can see to write this because of the NHS. It is the UK's single greatest achievement, a way of countering the Second World War with a kind of anti-war. Instead of indiscriminate killing there would be indiscriminate healing: if you were a UK citizen there would be a sanitary hospital bed and trained medical staff to look after you, paid for by your taxes. What a beautiful innovation. What a strange and lovely thing. The first generation to benefit from it are getting on a bit now: the NHS started in 1948 when my mum was 8. She's in hospital right now - her second broken hip in a year and the NHS are doing all they can for her. Its a miserable time: she sounds groggy. She's in a lot of pain. She's had a number of blood transfusions but her haemoglobin levels haven't gone up. She's had a CT scan which found nothing and today she's having an endoscopy, which she won't enjoy. Her phone has been playing her up too so she can be hard to get hold of and she's only allowed one visitor because of Covid restrictions. She's having a miserable time of it. But the staff are doing all they can. And she is in a great hospital during a pandemic and they are taking every precaution to ensure her safety. Its all horribly worrying but she is in good hands.
The government know how great the NHS is. There's a reason why the biggest lie the "Vote Leavers" told was that they'd give the money we saved not being European to the NHS. There's a reason why Boris Johnson had himself filmed clapping like a seal on salmon day in support of the NHS. There is a reason why people banged pots and pans on their doorsteps and chalked messages on pavements and painted rainbows in their windows and framed their profile pictures with "Protect the NHS" banners. Its because the NHS is the UK's greatest ever achievement: better than two world wars and one world cup, better than the Imperial dream, better than The Beatles and the Stones or Percy Pigs. It is the greatest thing we ever did.
And now the Tories are selling it. To America, where medical bills routinely run into the hundreds of thousands, where being able to hold your baby after birth turns up as a chargeable item on your hospital bill. That's the model the Tories want. And after all their clapping and lip-service they have chosen to reward trainee nurses with cancelled contracts and stopped pay, and awarded carers and nurses no pay increases. No one voted for this. Even the most intransigent Brexiteer voted for a bolstered and iron-plated NHS - that and disliking foreigners was literally the only thing on the ticket. The Tories' key demographic are already in our hospitals, being cared for by carers, nurses and doctors who are often either immigrants or people of colour.
If I were a carer who had gone through this pandemic, watching my colleagues die while saving lives, only to be comprehensively stabbed in the back by these incompetent Tory surgeons, I might invest in a little pandemic of my own - a fucking Shipmanesque pandemic - cutting a swathe through ailing pensioners with the Daily Mail resting on their bedspreads. But that's me and I'm not very nice.
These carers will carry on caring. The nurses will continue with their thirteen hour shifts in store-bought PPE. The doctors will do their best not to kill you because that's their job. The Tories will do their very best to kill you because you are surplus to their needs. The clutter of your failing bodies isn't making them money, and worse it isn't making their billionaire pals money, so what are you for?
There used to be some PR to be had in telling people in the NHS they were doing a good job but the last time Boris Johnson shook hands with someone in a hospital he ended up on the wrong end of a drip, and I don't mean Michael Gove. So fuck 'em - good PR is so last decade anyway - we've entered the age of hyper-bollocks. Nothing sticks now because whataboutery, bullshit, disingenuousness, fibbing, verisimilitudenous in-exactitude and White Lies Matter have reached critical mass. Its a Pecksniffian pea-souper out there and you can't see Boris Johnson's hand in your pocket for the trees. There will be no more kissing babies (certainly not his own), no more crashing through walls in a fork-lift or hanging from zip-wires in Union Jack underpants. Boris no longer gives a shit. Rex Mundi wrecks everything and he wants you to know he's doing it. You can't stop him. You didn't vote for him but he's there anyway, carving up the country for his cronies, the fat owl of Greyfriars in a strangely generous mood.
I've signed petitions. I've written to my MP (I live in Belfast. My MLA is Gavin Robinson of the DUP and what a big hunka burning shite he is). Nobody represents my views. I feel utterly powerless. We should be out on the streets. We should be protesting. There should be barrels of tar and a few ripped pillows. Why aren't we? No one is reading these petitions and if they are they are gut-laughing at how pathetic we are. I've written a blog about it. Fucking whoop.
I don't know what to do. My mum will get the best care going - Basingstoke is an exemplary hospital, the staff dedicated and unflagging. She is in the best possible hands.
But I have to declare an interest, like the Tories repeatedly fail to do. In thirty years time I will be my mum's age. If current trends continue I will not be rich. If other trends continue there will be no safety net for me, the 20th Century's Utopian vision of free medical care for all will have withered to nothing, death by a thousand cuts, parcelled off to interested parties to sell it back to us at hideously swollen prices. I and millions like me will be back to the stone age. Though as I say I've already had a pretty good run for a caveman. But even cavemen can do something - its time to sharpen those flint axes.
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Brilliantly put and sadly true
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