Most of us who are not super-rich have had dealings with the NHS and can recount excellent experiences. Yet for every such tale we all know from our own experience, or that of family and friends, of failings from the insignificant to the outright horrific.
Our medical service seems to offer good value for money. I have no doubt that it IS underfunded and requires a larger percentage of GDP devoted to it, particularly as an ageing population creates additional demand. But there is nothing for the non-statistician to "benchmark" against. If I collapse in the street am I likely to get better treatment here than in, say, Paris or Berlin? The Spanish health service is usually lauded as excellent but how does it compare with ours? If I contract bowel cancer how long am I likely to survive in England, compared, say, with Norway or the US?
I have an NHS hearing aid. The appointment was via a private shop. The tester there was concerned about something and wrote to my doctor who duly sent me to a very busy hospital department. They did look after me splendidly. Now I carry on and get any newer model of hearing aid or batteries via the private shop. Some people see this as an anathema. But do busy - and very expensive - hospital departments really need to go back to dishing out hearing aids/batteries instead of dealing with more serious stuff? Corbyn and his Marxist chums say "yes" but I don't buy it.
The rich and privileged in Britain have the option of private education and medical treatment. Despite all the b*llshit about British sovereignty and "taking back control" we are a nation of pathetic grovellers - sucking up to the ludicrous royals, aristocracy and the otherwise privileged. There is nothing we like more than bending the knee before these greasers. In turn they love to patronise us plebs and talk down to us.
Which brings us to the Great British Menu where cooks prepare ridiculously expensive and elaborate dishes and serve them with ludicrous "props" to members of some "deserving" organisation. Last year the grub was doled out by the licence fee-payer to the poor starving mites at that ultimate bastion of British snobbery, Wimbledon Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club. (My last post here showed that the whole top Wimbledon Board were white in multi-cultural sarf London!)
This year an elitist "banquet" is to be served to our most egalitarian body. The shtick of the programme - repeated ad nauseum and almost as often as the words "sous vide"* - is that the meal is for the "heroes" of the NHS. As in BBC magazine programmes like "Midlands Today" a nightly sob-story is reeled out - here to illustrate just how, er, heroic individual NHS employees are. This becomes as cloying as a BedPanna Cotta. The rich BBC in full de haut en bas mode have literally decreed "let them eat cake" - and lobster, and venison etc etc.
There is no balance to this inane glorification of an often flawed organisation. I am still waiting for the episode where a "hero" of the medical negligence department explains how his/her workload has expanded exponentially as life-ending or life-changing errors wreck lives and the budget to cover legal costs etc in 2016/17 was £65 BILLION in England alone!
On top of all this we have the presenters condescendingly telling NHS staff just how marvellous they are. But are they themselves patrons of the service they laud to the skies?
I can't comment on Andi Oliver but fellow judge Oliver Peyton married one of the Polizzis - a granddaughter of hotel tycoon Charles Forte. It seems improbable that the famous and wealthy clan are unfamiliar with private medicine and, indeed, when Peyton had addiction issues he hurried to the Celeb's expensive private clinic of choice, The Priory.
The other judge, Matthew Fort is an old Etonian. Having benefited from a private education it is unclear whether he also avails himself of private medicine.
Back in the early days of the NHS one Tory MP often railed against what he called "the unlimited expansion of the Health Service." He preferred a contributory funding regime instead of "socialist" funding via increased taxes etc. He was very much against the proposal for a full-time NHS GP service. He would, no doubt, be horrified at the size and cost of the NHS now. Who was he? Step forward the member for Cl*theroe, Richard Fort - father of.....
So, BBC, do the presenters of this whole charade use private medical services or the NHS? I think licence-payers should be told!
* ie "boil in the bag".
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