Posts tagged with Rallying the Troops

Dr No is fed up with the Health and Social Care Bill, and the interminable waffle that surrounds it. To him, it is clearly the death warrant to the National Health Service. Once enacted, it will allow any willing cowboy – and that includes the unscrupulous doctors amongst us - to ride into town, and hawk their wares. Britain’s greatest post-war achievement, healthcare on need not ability to pay, will be dynamited, and Wild West law will prevail. Many, far too many, will perish.

Faced with this threat, what do we have? Walls of argument as penetrable as fog. Touching faith in democratic and parliamentary process. But as Dr No wades through Hansard, he finds no cause for celebration. The worthy but windy briefings swirl away as an autumn mist. The Noble Lords, when not bemoaning the declining standard of Westminster biscuits, cast their breath on the looking glass of truth, and see not the angled knife at our health service’s throat, but instead their own wondrous learning, so wonderful to behold.

Dr No has Boots down as an otorhinolaryngologist - an ear nose & throat surgeon, but then the Greek always sounds better in the plush of private practice. These are the chaps who mount CDs on their foreheads, the better to peer into your orifices. Quite why the tonsil baggers need to mount a CD on their forehead to see what they are doing baffles Dr No. Gynaecologists seem to manage very well, without resorting to shining Abba’s Greatest Hits up the old hoo ha.

One might suppose all that peering through CDs might narrow both mind and vision, but Boots has clearly escaped a constricting fate. He has cast his surgical presence wide on the Borsetshire stage; and few indeed are the pies that have escaped the Boots finger. He is very bright, reads widely, and has the natural gift of synthesis to Boot. And so it is that when we come to survey his blog, we find well crafted posts, always finely written, invariably most interesting.

Readers who frequent the pages of the UK medical blogosphere cannot fail to have noticed the decline in blogging activity. Almost a year ago, Dr Rant posted ‘Farewell Lord Darzi’ which was a farewell post in more ways than one. Earlier this year, the sun set spectacularly on Dr Crippen, and more recently The Jobbing Doctor turned off his steady flow of posts in mid-stream. Many of those who are still posting are doing so at reduced frequency. Only L'Oréal Pal continues to post regularly, presumably because she thinks she’s worth it.

Today is St Valentine’s day. It is also, by coincidence, the first anniversary of Dr No’s first post – a frivolous piece that borrowed from the wonderful Peter Cook, posted in the main to verify the site was live. A summer of distractions followed, and it was only in August that Dr No went public, with The Peter Squared Principle. Other bloggers were kind enough to link to Bad Medicine, even if the wise and sage Witch Doctor noticed the erratic posting history, and asked very reasonably ‘is he only going to be a blogger on heydays and holidays’?

Well, six months on the answer is plain for all to see. Dr No now posts regularly. And, as befits an anniversary, he finds himself reflecting on the past, and looking into the future. Whichever way he looks, he sees three dominating themes that have and will continue to exercise him. They are the Big Themes, and all carry a threat of very very Bad Medicine.

Sir— We have, over these past few months, seen a sharp rise in hostile activity against our profession. The government, and its evil henchmen, have been waging war against us on many fronts. They have sown malicious stories in the press, and have imposed many vexatious rules upon our work.