The Passing of an Era

The death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, leaves a huge hole in the lives of both citizens of the United Kingdom and of course, Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Family.

To them we offer our sincere condolences.

Prince Philip was a man who fought in real armed conflict for his country and was a long-serving and loyal consort to his wife. But he was also one who retained the common touch, one who was known for being blunt. This was often written of in critical terms but it is not a view we share. There are times – and many of them – when one needs to cut through the barriers that officialdom can needlessly create and the Prince was a master of the art.

His passing however, also reminds us of an uncomfortable truth; our time on this earth is finite. None of us are here for too long, even though we measure that length in years, which can seem to last a very long time.

As Queen Elizabeth II’s strength, vitality and adaptability remain undiminished by her own advancing years and as she prepares herself for life without her husband, we citizens must also prepare ourselves for life without our Queen.

Although we hope that she will continue to reign for many more years, the time will come when she will be no longer able to.

And Another Thing…

Having mentioned strength, vitality and adaptability, we must also say that the National Health Service, the NHS, possesses none of these qualities.

As long as it remains riddled with Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Deputy CEOs Assistant CEOs, Deputy Assistant CEOs, Directors, Deputy Directors, Assistant Deputies and battalions of Managers of all kinds ad infinitum, it will continue to be a bloated, inefficient organisation that is not fit for purpose.

As has been widely reported over recent years, countless numbers of innocent people, of all ages including the newly-born, will continue to be killed by this bureaucratic monolith. Front-line staff will continue to be harassed, hounded, discredited and driven from their jobs by back-covering management, whose sole purpose is to protect their box-ticking little empires.

As lockdown eases (for now) it is still difficult at best, impossible at worst, to actually see a GP or a Dentist. The signs remain outside hospitals and surgeries:

‘DO NOT ENTER THIS BUILDING’, they scream insistently, going on to describe symptoms of a common cold, ‘flu or a number of afflictions with which we learned to live decades ago. COVID-19 is more than a mere ailment as we know. But the acronym NHS remains, over a year since the first lockdown was imposed, as we have previously described – the No Hope Service.