When I want your advice I'll ask for it

Oh what fun. Just when you thought we actually had got rid of the NuLabour nanny state do as I say bollocks up pop BlueLabour with a tick-the-box-your-government-knows-best bullshit scheme where all NHS staff have to lecture you to promote "Good Health"  every time you have the misfortune to come into contact with you.

Now we all know this is going to be a box ticking exercise like the last lots' "Quality of Outcomes" shit. As an example of what will happen here I give you Mrs Dracunculus. She was at the doctors today, routine visit for a long standing complaint just to review, make sure its not getting worse, check the ongoing medication and tweak as necessary. Now she gets five minutes of the doctors time in which he has to do this and she informs me that five minutes was fully used. But in the future three of those five minutes is taken up with a stern lecture from Dr Mopp about how the glass of Sauvignon she likes of an evening will make her sodding tail fall off so what's he going to miss about the actual problem he was being consulted with in the first place?

What we have here is the underlying problem of the NHS. It was set up with the noblest of motives; free at the point of use so all citizens would be able to have their serious medical needs attended to and we would be free of the spectre of people dying for want of seeing a doctor. But since its founding its grown to way, way more than that simple basic service, and we're all partly guilty of making it suck. Over the generations we've demanded more, more, more from the NHS. We want every sniffle and cold treated, every illness given immediate and the best treatment, the treatment of ridiculous conditions (you can get a sex change on the NHS for fuck's sake) and the system simply can't cope. Accordingly the government step in to lecture, harangue and bully us into whatever bullshit they can come up with to try and keep us "healthy" and out of the doctor's surgery. We allowed the NHS to change from a backstop into a state monolith that seeks to control our "healthy choices" because they feel they have to just to stop the whole edifice collapsing in a mountain of debt and unpaid bills.

I'm quite aware that the Cuban Habaneros and that bottle of Malbec aren't good for me thanks. It's my choice and when I want your health advice I will ask for it. Oh, and I have BUPA so, state, kindly sod off.

On not stinking like an ashtray

Your little dragon was out on the ales last night with long time friend and occasional commentator on this blog "Blackpowder"¹; as usual at these events much Timmy Taylor's Landlord was consumed, laughs were had and I seem to remember we called the McCanns a bunch of creepy cunts on more than one occasion.

However about half way through the evening I noticed something... I was breathing. As you may know I'm a slightly asthmatic dragon and I don't tolerate smoke especially well but it wasn't smoky. Of course I'd forgotten about the smoking ban and this was the first time I'd been in a pub since it came into force. I must admit to being somewhat torn on the idea of a smoking ban. On the one hand I take a classic libertarian approach in that people can do what they want to their own bodies and the owner of a premises should be free to dictate the terms of use of those premises. conversely I fucking hate cigarette smoke and waking up in the morning stinking like an ashtray with a trip to the dry cleaners in prospect as my clothing now smells like Beelzebub's arse.

The clincher came this morning however. After a night in the pub on the Milk of Amnesia I woke up without that feeling that throughout the night two gay bull elephants have been bouncing up and down on my chest whilst having sloppy botty sex.

Smoking ban = good thing.


¹ Who I think I managed to persuade to start his own blog which is sure to be hilarious and even more grumpy than mine.