This is a brief interruption to normal service, where I invoke my privilege to have a quiet little rant, and have disabled the comments.
I hope that normal service will be resumed shortly. Please skip the rest of this article if you, like me, think that there is no value in halfwits spouting their ill informed opinions on the electric internet.
I was perturbed to hear two separate “news” items on Radio 5 this evening, within a few minutes of each other.
The news was that:
1) Someone who had been receiving visits from his local social services flipped and killed someone.
2) Someone, and I did not listen to how they came up with the figure, neither do I give it any credence or import, that 1 in 7 medical diagnoses in the UK are incorrect.
They then proceeded to get a social work manager to apologise, and a doctor who had misdiagnosed someone to apologise.
FUCK OFF.
Social Work. Would you do it? Would you want to spend your days trying to help or monitor the activities of someone seriously mentally ill? Particularly if you knew you would never have the resources to support you? Particularly if you knew that the state of psychiatric science was in its infancy and that there are millions of people out there, fucked up beyond comprehension, with no one knowing how to treat them? And then to compound it all, as soon as you make a mistake you get the full weight of the parasitic mass media on your back, blaming you for being under resourced and under educated. Bastards. We are lucky to have any social workers at all in this country. They are underpaid, underappreciated and under supported. People going into this profession are those who want to help others. There is no other reason why you should surround yourself with so much crap on a daily basis. And then when some poor sod makes an error they are pilloried by our righteous Murdoch arse lickers and fascist tabloid twats, people who have never done any good for anybody.
The medical profession. A profession doomed to failure, because, ultimately, their job is to stop people from dying. Would you want to be a doctor? (No, Donn, the opportunity to ask ladies to take their clothes off is not a good enough reason). Spending your mornings with the sick and disgruntled, the ill and the miserable? Examining urine samples, telling people that there is nothing to be done for them. Hanging around with people that you would like to help, but can’t because of the same combination of problems as besets social workers – insufficient resources and insufficient knowledge. A nurse at the top of her profession can only be expected to be paid £40,000 a year in this country. Many are earning half of that amount. Would you do it?
Yes, I do feel sympathy for those people who have lost their friends and relations because of mistakes. But I can see no value in a witch hunt conducted among the caring professions.
And much as I enjoy listening to Peter Allen on Radio 5, he ought to be very ashamed of taking part in this disgusting display today.
This is the conclusion of today's sermon. We will now sing hymn number 72 "Let's burn Thatcher".
