Why were the National Health workers dancing? Who else is puzzled?

They saved my life … but almost killed our friend

The general feeling in Britain is that the Olympic opening ceremony conveyed the essence of Britain brilliantly.

Overseas, though, many were puzzled and confused.

This is just fine, because so are we for much of the time.

And few things were as confusing as the capers of the National Health nurses. What did they have to do with anything?

I may have mentioned this before, but the morning after my 18^th birthday my life was saved by a surgeon at Salford Royal Infirmary. I was the first person in the North of England to recover from a ruptured liver.

The health service was different then. Most of the people involved were doctors, surgeons and nursing staff. Things day to day in a hospital were run by an army of wonderful dragons – Staff Nurses, Sisters, and the chief dragon: Matron.

I recall being taught how to make beds, and empty the rather disgusting shit from a colostomy bag some poor soul two beds down had to wear.

Can you imagine such a thing happening in today’s demarcated, rule-riddled society? Can you imagine the health and safety piffle that would be spouted?

Then what happened to that old-fashioned system?

The idiots on high got involved – the idiots who know nothing but politics. Our admirable health service was cursed with “management”. I recall the Registrar at the Middlesex Hospital telling me in 1976 that it would ruin everything.

And so it did, because far too often in my experience “management” means limitless waffle, plus wasted time and money, much of it on silly trivia. And the larger the organisation the worse it tends to be.

I still recall that when my mother died I was asked at the hospital if I wanted “bereavement counselling” as though I don’t know how to cry. The office for that utterly redundant service was closed for the weekend, anyhow. You can only be sad on weekdays.

Such folly multiplied countlessly is why despite the money poured into the NHS, old people are regularly seen lying corridors in their own urine.

It is also why our friend Ana nearly died.

She had been losing weight at a phenomenal rate, and we were dreadfully concerned.

She went repeatedly to her doctor over a period of months and was told repeatedly there was nothing to worry about. We insisted she went to hospital.

Nothing to worry about said one doctor.

Then – thank God – she got a message from another doctor, who said “If your diet doesn’t change you will be dead in three months.”

Our world is being killed by administrators.

Only the doers can save it.