the beginning

Greetings people!

I have just started this log or blog. I don't even know if it is getting anywhere, I'm not too good with computers : it goes with the age group I guess.
I hope to receive my scanner tomorrow so that I can down load some cartoons if that is possible.

Working for the NHS is what I do to pay t he rent and sometimes feel that my prime duty there is being a bureaucrat. This is the way of how politics and economics has influenced every sphere of our lives . It is not so important to do something productive and caring in this job but to be seen to be doing so . i.e if one can prove through meticulous paper work that a box has been ticked then one is doing well. We don't have patients anymore we have service users , clients and consumers . Nurses and hospitals are service providers ; it's as if we are working on a production line. Everything has to be quantified in neat little units of 'care' . This is wrong because in a 'caring ' profession one can be spending time with an individual and be making a positive difference to that person's life but this might not lend itself well to ethos of consumerism or is not very practical to corrupt politicians in parliament arguing and waving selective statistics at eachother which can mean practically anything.



Today with the disease of what is known as ' politcal correctness' , we don't have' patients 'or people do not have a' mental illness' , we have service users who have 'mental health' .This is ludicrous ! This terminology has become so established that it has become meaningless or rather it has taken on the sinister effect of George Orwell's masterpiece '1984'
For example I was visiting an elderly lady who was relapsing and becoming unwell due to her illness of schizophrenia and she said : 'I'm getting all mental health' as if this meant 'I'm getting mentally ill' By Zeus ! it's as if we cannot mention the word illness or according to the rigid ethos of political correctness , anything that may have a negative meaning.

I don't know if anyone is there to read all this , so I better not continue to rant. Must try and see if this thing is actually on line .



bye for now.
Antisthenes