The Bitch: Help the NHS - Squeeze a Mum!

by Michael Knell

Well Darlings,

It might only be a quickie this week. I am busy. I have found a lucrative online opening to help all those mothers about to give birth who are at risk of turning up at their local NHS maternity unit only to be told to: "please try again later as the unit is currently full". The method I'm teaching involves the use of a dummy - find your own if Gordon is unavailable! - to put a scissor-lock around (like a wrestler would with his legs), and some dumbbells with a good solid iron bar to bite on. All together now, gals: S-Q-U-E-E-E-E-E-Z-E-!

Figures obtained in a freedom of information request reveal that from the 70% of hospital trusts providing the necessary data, over 40% (that's nearly half!) said they reached capacity and had to refuse admission to mothers needing their services at least once last year. One, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (one of the biggest in the country), has apparently refused 28 times. Whoa up, now! There could be a rush on those dumbbells!

As any father who has been forced to melt chocolate over sardines and cheese-on-toast at three in the morning will know, a pregnant woman's sense of taste and smell drops off considerably. And perhaps that is fortunate, because it seems one never knows what might be encountered in a hospital these days.

Take the nineteen-year-old Hertfordshire teenager, Andrew Cowper, who arrived in the operating theatre to have an operation on his knee, only to be confronted by the most putrid stench. Enquiring the cause of it, the surgeon told him it could be a dead rat. What? In a hospital? No! After asking the surgeon whether or not he would undergo the operation in such circumstances - and being told: no! - the lad decided against having the treatment carried out at that time. Queen Elizabeth II hospital rescheduled the operation. The smell? Sure enough, it was a dead rat.

Now, unless that surgeon had some previous employment enlightening him as to exactly what a dead rat smells like, or was unfortunate enough to have experienced a similar circumstance at home, both highly unlikely scenarios, I'm guessing dead rats must be pretty darn common in that hospital! Hmm . . . Perhaps they have been put on those fortnightly refuse collections in this area.

Never mind! What's a rat infestation amongst friends when you can waste millions of pounds on persecuting the cigarette smokers? Packets of ten disappear from the shelves later this year, and there is talk all tobacco products may have to be hidden from sight in our shops. Under the counter sales will take on a whole new meaning. Such an action, folks, is only one short step away from banning cigarettes from being seen anywhere at all. When those huddling up around the pub doorways in all weathers to enjoy a cigarette are banned from doing even that, then those 57 pubs and clubs now closing every month because of this ridiculous ban will seem like peanuts.

There are already fears the Laurel Pub Chain, which owns some of Blackpool's best-known pubs, may have to call in the administrators because of poor trading conditions brought on by the smoking ban. 60 of its licensed premises out of the 65 it had on the market are to close immediately. Another 30 have already closed. More and more people, refusing to be treated like lepers, are changing their social habits and now prefer to drink at home - in front of the children too! This is progress? It cannot be healthy to subject our children to the ribaldry that comes with alcohol consumption, let alone all the smoke when groups of friends get together for social evenings in such confined spaces. This law is in danger of killing more people than it ever hoped to save!

It is a sad fact that things continue to decline in the UK - especially, it seems, in the NHS. In Swindon one woman has removed her husband from the Great Western Hospital. The word: "rescued" is used in the newspaper. The man had already suffered a previous stroke, and yet the hospital ignored the danger of another from his rising blood pressure, maintaining they knew best. Then when the regular medication he needed to combat the epileptic fits he was prone to was three hours late, and still not forthcoming because: "the nurses could not find his medication chart because it was locked in an office - so he could not be treated", the man's wife had enough.

Feedback to this story suggests this is not the first time someone has had to be "rescued" from the clutches of this hospital. There are some terrible tales unfurling. But search any local newspaper online today, and you are likely to see similar stories everywhere.

So many of the NHS failings appear directly attributable to meeting the waiting room targets. The cost of meeting these targets is paid for by sacrificing treatment - you might be seen quicker, but should you require treatment (or even a bit of care - like feeding) you may have to wait record times to receive it! There are not the resources available to adequately maintain both.

The way in which the NHS, under the pretence of providing "preventive medicine", has misguidedly deviated into becoming an instigator of punitive laws - ban anything and everything if it might possibly stop people bothering them with an illness - has been an utter disaster. Costing us a fortune, money that would be better spent on treating the sick, it simply does not work.

Was not prohibition in the States proof enough that banning something does not work? Most recreational drugs are banned in the UK, yet they are still used by millions of people every single day - and maybe surprisingly to some: the majority of these people are everyday decent folk holding down good jobs. Like the alcoholics, the druggie drop-outs we see on our streets are only an extreme minority, and not representative of the majority of users. We need to accept a few truths, even if we don't like them.

It is time for the NHS to return to doing what we pay it to do - provide adequate treatment for the sick - and stop wasting our money! Give us back the freedom to live our lives as we would wish. When the NHS stops wasting money trying to control us and everything we do, then there will be sufficient money in its coffers to treat us, and a chance of it returning to being, as it once was, the envy of the world.

One mother is sufficient for each of us - we do not need the State or the NHS trying to take her place!

"The Bitch!" 20/03/08.


About the Author

"The Bitch!", a weekly UK News Review column, is hosted by the author and columnist Michael Knell. These articles appear on the Blackpool Gay Directory website, but are not usually specifically gay in content. More information on the author: http://www.michaelknell.com and on the directory: http://www.astabgay.com.