2 (34) IN LESS THAN A CENTURY X.

WHAT A WASTE.

The eighties. In 1981 there was race rioting around England and hunger strikes by Republican prisoners at the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. The Conservative government was having a rough ride and blaming it on the last Labour government because that's what politicians of all parties automatically do. 

I was wryly amused when, in 1982 (and as quickly as they had been formed), Area Health Authorities were abolished. On the Island there was a muttering departure of top egos (most of them carrying fat redundancy cheques) and that was that: work procedures changed but little, the remaining top jobbers - many of them prize examples of confidence over competence - cultivated new ways to justify their existence and most patients either did not notice the changes or were stricken with apathy. 

A couple of weeks after it was all over I ran across the departing AHA Chairperson in a local department store. I had first known her when she was a quiet little member of the NHS Executive Council. 
Promotion to Chair of the AHA had magically transformed her into a provincial Margaret Thatcher, complete with the patronizing voice and dutiful, sycophantic retinue. Demotion had clearly upset her and she bemoaned the removal of her favourite high-flyers with the words: “What a waste.” 

I tried to look sympathetic as I responded: “Well, we all have to accept change don't we, my dear.” 

It was one of her own 1974 pearls of wisdom. We never spoke again. 

Those still working were the lucky ones. The country was in a state of recession with 3 million out of work. Things were looking increasingly grim for the Thatcher regime when along came the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina. 

Prime Minister Thatcher sent a task force to liberate the islands and its success carried her back to power in 1983 by a landslide 379 seats (a 144 majority) There followed a massive programme of privatisation and deregulation (just about every nationalised concern except the NHS) and the eradication of the entire coal mining industry. 

This appeal to the self-serving profiteer in many a worthy citizen, together with sympathy for those Tory MPs and their families who had suffered in 1984 from the IRA bombing of their conference hotel in Brighton, led to a third Conservative re-election in 1987. 

Did I say somewhere that the eighties had to be an improvement on the seventies? 
I was joking. 

Job-wise I plodded along giving the best I could to whatever I did and gradually becoming more and more disenchanted. 

Finally, late in 1988, with another gigantic reshuffle of the NHS pending, I got to the office one morning to be told that a colleague in the hospital finance department had been given early retirement. The member of staff who met me with the news was one I trusted implicitly. 
“Good for him,” I said. “I wish I could.” 
I then went into my office and waited for the summons to the Administrator's room: it took about half an hour. 

“Ah, Dennis,” he said, “I am told you want to retire...” 

So, at the end of March, 1989, I took early retirement. The following month my last Barnden's Beat was published in Link, the Wessex health staff newspaper. It was headed No regrets... and summed up - past, present and foreseeable future - why I was not unhappy to leave the NHS. By the time it was published Maureen (pictured below with our young buddy Hannah) and I had taken off on a driving holiday that took us up as far as Inverness in Scotland. 

  No. I had no regrets.

2 (33) WORLD NEWS.

THE MAYHEM IN PARIS. 

Murderous, quasi-religious zealots. 

I had started on a post about the eighties when the headlines from Paris came through. Memories of Thatcher, race riots, picket strikes and the transfer of the utility services to privatisation, faded into insignificance when faced with the news that murderous, quasi-religious, zealots had butchered and maimed over two hundred innocent civilians in the French capital. 

Clearly the lunatics had broken out of the asylum again. 

There is little I can opine that has not been better expressed by informed minds in the media. In i this week there was an excellent article by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown expressing, with regret, her belief that we shall need more state surveillance in Britain.* 

There was also thoughtful input on the mayhem in Paris from i regulars Ian Burrell, Stefano Hatfield, Simon Kelner (below) and Matthew Norman. 

Kelner's View (Thursday Nov. 19th), headed Glorious night for football – just forget about the game, was particularly pertinent. Whilst lauding the “great dignity and wholeheartedness” with which English football fans showed their empathy with the French people at Wembley last Tuesday (“ ...it is at times like this that we see how powerful, emotionally connective, and – yes – relevant sport can be”), Simon Kelner saw it as just a one-off. It would not “turn us into more thoughtful, compassionate people,” nor would it “encourage us to put national interest aside for the greater good.” And it would not stop “England supporters screaming abuse at French players should the two nations meet in proper competition next year.” He concluded that we must celebrate this welcome “outbreak of humanity” for now and added: “I just wouldn't read too much into it.” Too right, mate. 

My apologies to Mr. Kelner and i for so cheekily quoting his work in this amateur blog post and I promise him (the first editor of The Independent, no less) that it won't happen again. He did write what I was thinking better than I might have done, though, and I wouldn't credit that to many scribblers. 

Personal thoughts on the entire Middle Eastern conflagration are hard to portray. My sympathy for the kith and kin of those irrationally murdered in France and elsewhere by stupid born bastards calling themselves ISIL - or whatever - is matched only by my concern for the many innocent souls killed and injured in the (don't tell me it's not indiscriminate) bombing of locations in Syria and Iraq. 

What (I constantly find myself asking), in the name of all the oil in the ground, are we and the Americans and the French and any other nation outside of the Middle East, still poking our noses in there for, anyway? And is it worth hundreds of thousands of lives - maybe even WW3 - to get it? 

For chrissake, somebody, find a cheap alternative fuel for motor vehicles. Let's get out of this nightmare. 

*I think we are already the most photographed populace in the world, even when the powers-that-be no longer have the funds to keep all the cameras running. But who knows? Yasmin A-B could be right. 

Be back soon.