Oh, this was simply over a period of a day or so. I didn't go through what Farage did only because I had a damned good idea of what I had and wasn't leaving until I'd been referred to the right person.
I managed to diagnose my dad's strangulated hernia (which is a medical emergency and can be fatal) a couple of months ago on the same day he was sent home from the hospital because they didn't know what was wrong with him and assumed he had a vomiting bug. I was quite staggered how this could possibly happen.
I was reading 'The English And Their History' by Robert Tombs recently (very good, btw, and he has little time for lefty nonsense) and he was making the point that at the same time, England sustains one of the world's biggest capitalist enterprises in the City of London and one of the world's biggest unreconstructed pure socialist enterprises in the NHS. He made the point that the capacity to accept the presence of these two things whilst perceiving no apparent contradiction between them went some way to explaining the English psyche.
I have been watching a series of programs recently about a Central London NHS Trust, Paddington/Charing Cross etc. Quite staggering really.
Very sick people, very sick, no bed in ITC, no operation.
Teams of consultants/surgeons/anaesthetists stood around all day waiting for an operation that may not happen.
Incredible.
I am not sure it is much better here tbh.
Yes, well the NHS is abominably organised because it is a monolithic, centrally-planned nightmare. It is hugely overpriced relative to what it delivers comparing unfavourably with cheaper systems in places like Finland. It is the largest non-military employer on earth and Gordon Brown pretty much doubled spending on it with no significant improvement in outcomes between 97 and 08.
The British are childishly encouraged by the media (in propagandist programmes such as the one you describe) and politicians to treat it as a sacred cow - almost a religion in itself, in fact (see the absurd Olympic games böllocks for evidence) and anyone who wants to get elected has to promise to at least 'ring fence' spending rather than to apply much-needed cuts. And, of course, we cling absurdly to the shibboleth of 'free at the point of use' - all of which means we'll never see any improvement.