webofevil: (aaargh)
[personal profile] webofevil
Went to see a friend in hospital on Friday. He currently has a tube stuck into his right kidney that drains it into a bag, though he’s assured this isn’t permanent. He was pretty chipper, considering, and certainly had enough energy to loudly refuse a bedbath. “I am a ship called Dignity”, he said at one point. I thought this meant he was out of his mind as a result of the various opiates he'd been fed the day before, and was disappointed to discover that it was in fact a Deacon Blue lyric, and then in the event they wore him down and he had the bedbath anyway.

He’s in a room at the London Clinic, up near Regent’s Park. It’s the kind of place that features all your regular cable channels and then a clutch of Arabic channels as well. When he first went to see the doctor there, the guy in front of him went in with his translator and his bodyguard. General Pinochet resided briefly at the Clinic after his arrest. The Queen Mum was a regular. The place is swimming in money. (Part of their secret is that if a visitor wants them to make a normal cup of tea outside of the 4pm-6pm window, it’ll cost £1.35.) He’s only there because he automatically gets private health insurance through his work.

So why did his IV machine have a big logo on the side saying “NHS Trust”? What the fuck is it doing in a clinic where the average guest’s personal turnover probably rivals that of Ghana? Why isn’t it—not wanting to be too ploddingly literal about this—in an NHS hospital? How often, realistically, does it actually get used by the national health? Are taxpayers still paying for this fucking machine?

As our Dear Leader addressed the European Parliament last week, he told them that governments could only gain legitimacy from listening to their people. Which of the people he listens to ever told him to fuck over the NHS? Was it any of you lot?

Date: 2005-10-31 07:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] strictlytrue.livejournal.com
Presumably the hospital pays to borrow it from the NHS. I don't know whether that means NHS patients go without treatment from such machines while this place is using it; I suspect not.

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