NHS: wasting your money.

I have in my hand a piece of paper. It’s a letter from the local medical service, who wouldn’t recognise me if I went in there wearing a name badge. It’s staffed mainly by people who were still at school last time I visited.

Every so often they send me letters inviting me to have blood pressure checks or cholesterol checks or some other checks. I ignore them all. Firstly because I know they don’t care about me, they get paid for doing those tests. Secondly because I am fine and need no medical attention. Thirdly because no matter what symptoms I turn up with in the future, they will be caused by smoking. I already know the diagnosis so why waste time going there?

This one was different. This one was addressed to ‘Mr Legiron’ as usual, which puts them in the bad books straight away. It’s Dr. Legiron, a proper scientific doctor not a sawbones quack one. In most situations I don’t care, I don’t use ‘Dr’ at work, I’m just the janitor. I never used it much in my years in universities and colleges – no point, almost everyone was ‘Dr’. When being addressed by snooty bastard arrogant twattish pompous know-it-all arseholes however, they can bloody well get it right.

The contents of that letter were clearly the result of several meetings, a lot of expensive staff time, then poorly paid typist time and finally postage. It’s one page but I’m sure it cost a lot of money to produce, money that was not spent on patient care.

It begins thus.

Dear Foul Denormalised Filthy Freak

According to our Practice records you still appear to be smoking.

Okay. That elicits a ‘Fuck right off’ before we go any further. Also, if they are looking at their records they will have noted that I am on no medication and haven’t been since I had chicken pox when I was about seven, have not been diagnosed with any illness at all, have not visited them for a very long time (and this letter strongly encourages me to continue to stay away) and might, for all they know, be dead by now.

Their records also fail to show that I also ignore each and every one of their petty little targets on drinking, diet and everything else. The NHS was supposed to be there to heal the sick, not to dictate everyone’s lifestyle. They have failed miserably at the former – the NHS kills many more people than smoking, drinking and diet combined ever could – and they have repeatedly proved themselves utterly useless at the latter. What are we paying them for? They are no bloody use whatsoever.

The rest of the letter could be summed up as ‘Nag nag nag nag nag, yours sincerely, A Dreadful Arnott Mindless Drone’. Here is the text of it for those who like a good laugh.

Clicking should make the full horror clear.

If any antismokers are prowling, consider this. The NHS has now officially spent more money on nagging me about smoking than it has ever spent on treating me for anything that could be even remotely considered smoking-related. Not even with their broadening of ‘smoking related’ to include dandruff, Dhobie’s itch and Dutch Elm disease. You like to complain that smokers ‘cost you money’ but you are happy to pay for crap like this while your grandma dies of thirst in a bed caked in her own faeces because the NHS is too busy nagging me to bother with them. YOU did that, antismoker. YOU wanted it to happen and YOU made it happen. I expect you will dismiss this as the ravings of an addict but as long as YOU want the NHS to continue nagging me about things that are not making me ill, while leaving the elderly to die in pain, then it will continue.

There is nothing we smokers can do about it. The British Meddling Arseholes and the self-absorbed pinheaded Monsters of Government will not listen to us. They are listening to YOU.

I don’t know how scum like Arnott and her drones can sleep at night. Wait, yes, I do. It’s because they have their heads so far up their own arses they can see the back of their teeth. As for our politicians, they are demonstrably insane and have now been forced to install their own loony-wardens to make sure they turn up for work with their coats on the right way round.

So we are to have tax-payer funded morons dressed as MPs visiting taxpayer-funded cretins dressed as doctors and paying them taxpayer’s money for every visit. It’s nothing more than a merry-go-round gravy train, isn’t it? These people think they deserve respect, you know.

They deserve prison. They deserve to share a cell with Sweaty Bob McPenetrate and and Hairy Jim McAssrape and since the cell has only two bunks, they can decide who to share with.

Respect? Really? Are we expected to respect slugs and woodlice now? They are surely more deserving of respect than the medical or political professions. At least slugs and woodlice are not parasites and they don’t try to control the lives of any other slugs or woodlice. Yes, I think it’s fair to say that slugs and woodlice are far more deserving of respect than any of those people.

They are ‘denormalising’ us? Good Beef in Gravy, they are the least normal of any of us! To have the BMA and Wastemonster and their idiot drones tell me I am not like them is the greatest compliment anyone could ever hope for.

The NHS has today surpassed itself in terms of demonstrating its own uselessness. Sending letters to people who make no use of their services to nag them about something that is costing the NHS nothing at all is the height of corporate lunacy. To have such actions endorsed by government and by the high shamen of the witchdoctor’s biggest club just proves how worthless it all is.

The NHS has had its day. Time to shut it all down.

As for Government, I wonder if Guy Fawkes has any living ancestors? We need you now.