My absence is
because recently I have been concerned with issues policy and not as a light
relief to Brexit. It is the National Health Service and I have had a grand tour
of our local facilities in several areas of medicine.
It is almost
if you name it I've got it and when I ask the busy doctors and others mutter
between their teeth, old age. Of course it is not quite as simple as that.
There is nothing like watching on screen a device looking round your insides to
inform you.
At least now
when I consider NHS matters good doses of several realities are at the heart of
it (joke) because these days once you are in a hospital and they have run all
the tests you become acquainted with staff at all levels.
The cleaner
becomes as necessary as the consultant,
except that you see more of the cleaners and often they can be the most
reliable sources of essential information.
The upshot of
this is the awareness that in Westminster the politicians and senior civil
services with the media, the latest report and the mounds of paper and briefing
are to them the NHS rather than all those old geezers on the wards costing most
of the investment and spending budgets.
I first landed
in hospitals in the late '30s and the '40's. One complaint had the local
medical officer of health having a panic attack. So, historically am qualified
to comment.
The fact is
that things have changed and the pace and nature of change in the last two
decades has been astonishing. Westminster does not understand this or the
implications.
Will it be the
NHS where the revolution begins?
