16.2.08

Tendring Topics on Line

 

'Delivering Health Care!'

 

            The first item of news on BBCtv's Breakfast programme on Saturday 16^th February was one that I found chilling.

            A New-Labour Health Minister had pronounced that the day of the medical practice was fast disappearing.  It would, he forecast, be replaced by the provision of new and exciting 'Multiclinics' from which a team of doctors, armed with the very latest diagnostic, surgical and therapeutic equipment would 'deliver our health care'.  All this would, no doubt, be provided and managed by private firms co-operating closely with the local primary care authorities.

            Just, in fact, like the organisation that I mentioned on this blog a few weeks ago; the one that is proposing to provide a single up-to-the-minute Medical Centre (aka Multiclinic) to serve the sick and disabled of Holland-on-Sea and Great Clacton, to be situated midway between them and equally inconvenient for both!

            There are, I think, very few solitary 'Doc. Martin's' these days, struggling along completely on their own.  No wonder he's so bad tempered!  In the 52 years that I have been attending the same medical practice in Clacton (I ought really to get a long-service medal!) I have seen it grow from two struggling Scottish doctors (not unlike Dr. Cameron and Dr Finlay!) to a group practice of six doctors – four men and two women – working from enlarged and well-equipped premises well within the range of my iron horse (mobility scooter).

            I usually see the doctor who was so supportive of my wife, as her life was coming to an end. She paid a home visit on each one of those few terrible, but very precious, final days and bolstered my determination (which might otherwise have weakened) to nurse my wife at home to the end and allow her to depart from me peacefully, in her sleep, in her own bed, in her own home.

            I am usually able to see that very caring doctor but if I felt that I needed urgent attention, and she wasn't available, I would be happy to see any of the other doctors. I know nearly all of them and, of  course, they have my medical records immediately to hand.

            This surely is the way forward for general medical practice – the gradual growth and evolution of existing medical practices, serving a particular community, into economically viable units without the organisation or supervision of outside 'management experts' who are not, after all, giving their expertise to the NHS for nothing!

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Third Millennium Newspeak!

            Quoting the Minister's remark about 'the delivery of health care' and finding myself writing about medical practices becoming 'viable economic units' (I wish I could think of an equally succinct alternative!) made me realize how much I dislike what, with due acknowledgement to George Orwell's '1984', I think of as Third Millennium Newspeak.

            It began, I think, in the 'avaricious '80s' when it first became fashionable to regard every human institution as a market stall, and every human activity as a commercial transaction.  Economic pundits on tv or radio would knowledgeably speak of 'Great Britain plc'. Public authorities and large private institutions no longer employed staff managers or even personnel officers but Directors of Human Resources.  Employees became Human Resource Units, ultimately no-doubt to be dehumanised a little further into HRUs!

            Market Forces Rule! OK?

            In my youth we had industry, commerce and public service.  Industry meant manufacturing things – anything from ocean liners to frying pans.  Commerce meant selling things, money lending and financial services generally.  Public Service meant  - well, public service.

            Nowadays everything is 'an industry'.  We have a 'Tourist Industry', a 'Banking Industry', an 'Entertainment Industry', and a 'Hospitality Industry' (anything from posh hotels to seedy escort agencies!).  There are many more.

            I suspect that in the unlikely event of a fluent Newspeaker finding himself in a Church (or Quaker Meeting House) on a Sunday morning he would describe what was going on around him as 'providing some input for the Faith industry'.

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Renewable Energy

 

            From July 2004 until July 2006 I never looked at either a national or a local newspaper.  I feel sure that I must have heard the occasional news bulletin on tv or radio but I certainly never listened to one.  There could have been an earthquake, a tsunami, a revolution or a foreign invasion but unless it directly affected my corner of Clacton, I would have known about it only if a friend or relative made a point of telling me.

 

            One reason for this was that I had a developing cataract that made reading all but impossible but the overriding cause was the fact that during those two years I was the sole carer of my then almost totally disabled wife. It was a 24/7/52 job that left me with neither the time nor the inclination to do, or to think about, anything else. It was by no means a wholly unhappy time but it was one in which I knew virtually nothing about what was happening outside my home.

 

            Sadly, I lost my wife – after 60 years of marriage – on 12^th July 2006.  I slowly returned to the 'real world', had my cataract dealt with and looked around me.  I felt rather like a modern Rip Van Winkel.   Things had changed while I had been voluntarily incarcerated.  Prominent local people, with whom I had been acquainted, had died.   I had given up driving but had a shock when I discovered that the one-way traffic flow in Clacton's Rosemary Road had been reversed.   In early 2004 we had, I felt quite sure, been confidently looking forward to the provision – within months – of an offshore wind-farm on the Gunfleet Sands, four or five miles off Clacton's beach.

 

 Long before it became a popular cause I had been warning in my Tendring Topics (in print) column of the inevitable results of global warming and had urged the speedy development of clean and renewable sources of energy.  It had surely been not long before my world had been turned upside down in 2004 that I had attended an exhibition in the West Cliff Theatre mounted by the developers of the wind-farm.  Now, its provision seemed to have receded into the far distance.

 

            It seems though, that the distance into which it had receded wasn't quite as far as I had feared.  I am delighted to learn that a Danish Company, Dong Energy Renewables, which has already provided two wind-farms off the British coast, is beginning the installation of a thirty turbine wind farm on the Gunfleet sands almost immediately.

 

            There was an exhibition featuring the wind-farm development at Holland Public Hall on Friday 15^th February – no doubt very similar to the one that I had seen at the West Cliff Theatre a few years earlier.

 

            This time there seems to be a firm timetable for the installation.  The onshore work at Holland Haven where the supply cables will be brought ashore and thence to the existing electricity substation at Cooks Green.  Offshore work will begin in September and it is expected that the turbines will be installed and in use by next spring. 

 

            I am very pleased that this time the installers are a Danish Company. Denmark has unrivalled experience in the provision of wind-farms round its own shores. The Danes are fellow Europeans with a reputation for reliability. And, of course, many of us – particularly here in Eastern England – have Danish ancestors.

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