Secretary of State for Privatising Health, Jeremy Hunt MP, has been asked to stop patting himself on the back for the worst winter ever for the NHS.
“He’s having trouble concealing his joy,” LCD’s health specialist reports,
“Apparently he brought cupcakes in for the entire department this morning, even the cleaners, who he normally just orders to leave any room he enters.”
With accident and emergency waiting time targets abandoned, Hunt has reason to be pleased, so too the recent news on the regional variation in waiting times for hip operations.
“Just imagine how the under resourced NHS is going to cope with hard Brexit?” our health correspondent asks,
“another sudden crash in Sterling, an administration desperate for revenue, Jeremy’s suspected long term aim is so close to hand.
He wasn’t actually a Brexiter. But the will of the people has allowed him to speed up his plans like they’re turbo charged. He’s now a convert. Brexit means Brexit.”
It seems he is drawing further inspiration too from the work done on the UK Border Agency, when austerity was first rolled out to transfer taxpayer’s money to banking friends of government ministers.
Sacked so many that the service was unable to cope and under resourced and it’s then a public emergency and then…
“You hire all that staff back from via the private contractor they now work for. It’s sheer genius.
That way you’re still running the same service on the surface, but actually you’ve increased costs and funnelled tax money into private hands?
See how it works? It’s really pretty simple. People should try it at home.”
But why the concern that Jeremy shouldn’t be crowing, if everything appears to be going to plan?
“People are sentimental about the health service. Something to do with it being born in the aftermath of the death of a massive amount of people and the social conscience that awoke.
But we’ll take care of that once everyone is fighting over chicken bones on the pavement, post Brexit and the collapse in food supplies.
You’ll be thinking about yourselves first.
That’s why the US system works by keeping so many of its citizens desperately poor, even more than here, because it encourages the ‘me first, sod the rest of you’ attitude that you need to properly provide a modern health service that has profit as its primary aim.”
And what sort of cakes did Hunt bring in?
“All sorts. Whatever was marked down at the local supermarket.”
How did the cleaners react when he gave them a cupcake each?
“He didn’t give them one each. Don’t be silly. He’s still Tory Type A. He gave them one to share and told them to leave the room because they hadn’t worked hard enough to be there.”