Using a Nut to Crack a Sledgehammer

Here’s another tale from serviceland. A funny picture, but like a lot of these tales not that funny really.   We do weird things, absurd things – they often follow a familiar pattern.  An injustice is uncovered, in this case people not getting equal health treatment.  So the well intentioned wheels of serviceland grind painfully into action.  Everyday solutions are considered but then quickly brushed aside.  We come up with a neat alternative;

We set up a working group which eats up months of people’s time, we invite some self advocates and family carers to give their time for free,  and spend the next year deciding on the best template to use for Health Action Plans, which we call HAPs (get in the bag).  11 months in we end up stealing one from the neighbouring local authority and changing the logo on the bottom. We’ve got a template, but who’s going to fill it in? Better employ a HAPs Co-ordinator........over lunch we leaf through ‘Death by Indifference’

Outside of serviceland we'd go to the General Medical Council, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and the European Courts of Human Rights but sometimes in serviceland they are eerily quiet......

That was a bit preachy, I’ve certainly played my part in building this weird land, and I’m not dismissing the changes brought about by health action plans.   Perhaps I shouldn’t write this on a Sunday.

Well the pressure is on! One a week, that’s 52 a year.  At least when I made my infamous ‘Sweary Poster Alphabet’ there were only 26........Next week the insidious genius of capitalism, or something like that.