Question Time Special

While the news has been dominated for the past two weeks by the election and the terrible attacks in Manchester and London, my life has become pathetically obsessed by the fact that I have a piece of plastic fork stuck inside my intestine. One moment of carelessness, the sort of thing that happens when you have a young child and spend your life not concentrating and attempting to multi-task, and as a result I am now living in constant fear that I am going to win a Darwin award for the most stupid death of the year.

We were having a lovely day out in Bridlington, and had been to see the breeding sea birds at the spectacular Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve.

Our daughter was full of the moans, as she had been made to go for a long walk and it was well past her lunchtime. So we pulled up at our favourite chippy, 149 on Marton Road, and bought ourselves a picnic to eat on the cliffs next to the car park at Sewerby. Randomly, some friends from York were seated at the next bench. So I was talking, sharing my meal with my daughter, admiring the view, feeling pretty darn hungry myself, enjoying the yummy food, and therefore not paying attention to my cutlery. It was only when I swallowed that I felt something sharp. "Crikey, that was a big bone, or a tough bit of batter," I thought to myself, only to then notice that a tine of my fork was missing. I tried to calm my instant panic, by reassuring myself that it would just past straight through, like one of my top teeth when I was seven, which dropped out of its socket while I was leaping up and down on a bean bag and I reactively gulped down.

Anyway, not to put too fine a point on things, it hasn't re-emerged, over two weeks later. And I have a sharp pain on the right-hand side of my small intestine. And no doctor will effing believe me. The trouble is that plastic doesn't show up on X-rays. So there is nothing to see. I have had a CT scan with oral contrast, quite a miraculous achievement in itself for a Sunday afternoon in York Hospital on a Bank Holiday weekend, but all it showed is that my bowel is still intact. Obviously I don't want to be cut open unnecessarily, but I know it's there, sticking into me a little more as each days go by. And I can't get the bloody thing out, no matter how hard I try.

So here I continue, each day in pain, each day feeling very sorry for myself, and a bit scared of what the next few days or weeks might bring, with a sharp object in my body made of toxic plastic. It brings home to you just how special your family are to you, and how much there is to live for, and all the things that you never quite got round to doing. "You aren't going to die," my husband groans in exasperation. He is used to this sort of talk from me, and naturally doesn't like it. I am very paranoid about my health. I always was, and then watching my mother die of cancer made me a million times worse, especially now I have a child of my own, who I couldn't bear to leave motherless, because I just fricking adore her. 

And what a bloody idiotic thing to have done. That desperation to travel back in time and reset the clock, to go to a different chippy, to just chew my food that bit more thoroughly so that my teeth could have found the big sodding bit of plastic before my gullet. But it's happened, and there is nothing I can do about it now.

So it was good in a way that Question Time came to York last Friday, to remind me of the bigger picture. Here I am stressing about a tiny piece of fork, when we have the chance to decide and change our futures this coming Thursday, and when the May and Corbyn bandwagon was rolling into town. They'd both been to York already during the campaign. May spoke to ten Tory party activists in a back room of the Barbican (that "getting out and meeting voters rather than taking part in TV debates" that she keeps referring to, part of her "strong and stable leadership" mantra repeated ad nauseum, alongside "It is very clear that" and "negotiating Brexit" and pulling that funny fish face every time she tries to think of her own words) whereas Corbyn addressed a packed St Helen's Square, holding up an amplifier so that everyone could better hear Rachael Maskell's introduction. This was early in the campaign, when he was very lacking in the polls, but even then he had the popular touch. 

I have never been a Corbyn fan. I am angry that he ordered a three-line whip on the Article 50 vote - and that he voted to allow May to hold this election in the first place. He seemed to have no clue about what it means to be in Opposition, i.e. that you are supposed to oppose. But Corbyn is genuine at least. He is a man of conviction and integrity. He tries to stay on the side of decency. He is a pacifist. He gets out and talks to people. He is comfortable in his own skin. He tries to answer questions put to him. He doesn't U-turn at the drop of a hat, though he might want to learn the art of compromise a little more succinctly. But most importantly, he isn't full of shit. Unlike Theresa May. And all of that has counted a lot over recent weeks. 

But whatever doubts I may have had about Corbyn, I am going to vote Labour in this election, assuming my plastic fork lets me survive til Thursday. This is partly because I have a huge amount of respect for York Central's current MP, Rachael Maskell, who defied Corbyn's whip to vote against triggering Article 50. She chose to listen to the majority of her constituents, who voted to remain by a far greater margin than the country as a whole voted to leave the European Union. She has served our city tirelessly since being elected in 2015, and frankly I have no idea when she sleeps. She is there for the big issues, and also the small. When the city was inundated by water, there she was on our street, speaking to the residents next to the park whose houses were full of the river. She lambasted David Cameron for the government's lack of funding for flood defences. When Virgin Media trashed our pavements in Southbank laying new broadband cables, she was there demanding that they pay for the damage. When a group of mums at school campaigned for a safer crossing on Bishopthorpe Road, she came to see for herself and to ask what she could do. She has much of Corbyn's honesty and integrity, and I hope will go far. But the Tories are gunning for her seat. They have the money to throw at their campaign, and Theresa May is busy sending her glossy brochures out to the more marginal wards of York, particularly those who leaned more towards Brexit. It's greedy and despicable.

Anyway, here we were, Question Time, from the Ron Cooke hub at the University of York, part of the new Heslington East campus. Not a leaders' debate, because the Maybot only does pre-programmed cliched rhetoric, but a chance for the public to ask their questions. Although no one I knew - pro-European, left-leaning - who applied to go on the programme was successful. Instead, the biased BBC had managed to dredge up a load of entrepreneurial, wealthy, nuclear-war loving, anti-foreign aid and anti-Northern Ireland peace process Tories, young and old, to have a go at Corbyn. Gold star to the woman who finally had enough of the red-button grilling, and asked if people would kindly refrain from discussing the murder of potentially millions. Anyway, the audience certainly didn't reflect the people of York - who I generally regard as open-minded, tolerant, cultured and international - that well. They were more a reflection of the Saturday afternoon binge-drinking hellhole that our city can turn into from time to time. There were a few awkward questions for Theresa May too - notably from a nurse who has had only 1% pay rises (not in line with inflation) since 2010 and from a lady who had had a terrible experience during a work capability assessment and has had to wait years for psychological treatment. But nobody pushed May on how many people she was planning or not planning to bomb, or how she will deal with the fallout from Brexit on the borders in Ireland and the IRA. That would have made her pull a multitude of fishfaces.

Hospital

Well, it's been a while. Brexit, Theresa May's incompetent government, Labour's utterly ineffectual Opposition to the incompetent government, and now the prospect of Donald Trump becoming US President this week have made me lose enthusiasm for pretty much everything, and this blog is one casualty. It's no longer fit for purpose. Times have changed. I don't want to watch television because I don't want to see the news. I don't want to travel anywhere because the pound is worth peanuts and I am embarrassed to be associated with a country that has become xenophobic in spades, bullied and dictated to by the right-wing press, and is now overrun with people too ignorant to spot the lies they are being drip-fed.

So I need to change tack, and write something more appropriate for the times, or something that might actually do some good. I am still mulling over ideas.

But a documentary last week about a London NHS trust, filmed at St Mary's hospital in Paddington, London, made me angry enough to seek an online outlet to rant. And this is currently the only one I have.

There is no escaping the fact that the NHS is currently in dire straits. Theresa May and Jeremy (cough)-Hunt may claim otherwise as they sing "lalala" with their fingers in their ears before cutting off more money and handing out more private contracts to Richard Branson, but the rest of us can see it's cash-starved and desperate. Nobody wants to get ill ever, but now there is little guarantee of speedy or safe treatment if we do.

They may be contemplating (or actually) leaving in droves, but right now, the NHS is still staffed by brilliant, caring doctors and nurses. But it's bloody difficult getting to see them. And this documentary showed why. Two highly experienced and skilled surgeons with two urgent patients to treat, and yet both were kept waiting for hours by managers trying to secure each an intensive care bed, none of which were available in the hospital. So the surgeons just sat around, scrubbed up and ready to go, for hours, waiting and waiting. One eventually got to operate, on a lady from Norfolk with a ruptured aorta. The other, treating a man with an oesophageal tumour, had to wait until the next day. So these surgeons were effectively paralysed, unable to attend to more routine matters, or perhaps see outpatients or catch up on paperwork, because they were on call, waiting for the go-ahead. They were frustrated and cross and tired, and had been at the hospital for hours before the operations were finally allowed to take place late in the day, all of which surely has to compromise patient safety. Seeing clinical experts sitting around DOING NOTHING, wasting all their years of training and and practice and research was beyond farcical. It was utterly maddening. All because the government won't give the hospital any more money to open up more intensive care beds.

And there were no beds anywhere else in the hospital either. People were unable to go anywhere, even if they didn't need to be in hospital any more, because there's no money to fund social care either. Managers were sitting in meetings seriously debating whether it was acceptable to turn endoscopy suites into makeshift wards, or to lie adult patients alongside children in the paediatrics unit. The lack of beds meant routine operations were being cancelled to allow for emergency life-saving operations to take place, thus causing delays further down the waiting lists for those with long-term but less urgent needs. Possibly then making them become urgent. And when serious cancer treatments and surgery get delayed, it reduces their chance of success. Everything just gets worse, people need more treatment, and the whole system grinds to a halt.

The Red Cross has likened the state of Britain's NHS to the humanitarian crisis of a warzone or a Third World country. How can this be happening? The NHS has never had everything it needs, it's never been performing as well as it could, and there undoubtedly has to be major changes to how it operates and how it is paid for, but to deliberately starve it of funds like this, ready to usher in some American style privatisation, is beyond despicable. This government just does not care. As long as rich Tory MPs can get to see their private GPs and consultants, as long as City bankers have their health insurance schemes, they will never give a shit about anyone else. Welcome to Brexit Britain, which sold itself on a lie and a false bribe about the NHS on the back of a bus.

A World Without Down's Syndrome and The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs

These were two recent thought-provoking documentaries that led to me reflecting on how the state of the NHS makes us behave.

Children with Down's Syndrome are amazing. They bring just as much joy to the world as any other child. But if you knew you were pregnant with a child with Down's Syndrome, would you continue with the pregnancy? This was the question Sally Phillips was asking us. A new screening programme is to be introduced that can diagnose Down's with 99% accuracy without any invasive tests, and she fears that it will result in a 100% abortion rate for pregnancies that test positive, as happened in Iceland when the same screening programme was rolled out there. Phillips' eldest son has Down's Syndrome. He is gorgeous, bubbly, funny, wonderful. He has a right to life that she thinks shouldn't have the chance of being taken away.

What became clear during the documentary is the lack of support for parents facing a Down's Syndrome diagnosis. Many are advised by doctors to abort because of the health risks associated with the syndrome (heart problems and the like), and not shown enough of the positives. Children with Down's Syndrome lead full, active lives and cope extremely well in mainstream schools. The decision about whether or not to terminate has to be made quickly as time is not on your side. Termination is a procedure which frankly sounds horrendous, nobody could take lightly, and must affect mothers for the rest of their lives. But who is it that is unable to face supporting a potential lifetime of health problems, the parents, the doctors, or the NHS? The NHS is at breaking point - is it cheaper to make a woman abort than to have to provide the services to care for her child? Is this governing the pressure being placed on parents by doctors? I hope not, but there has to be a proper, informed choice, which there doesn't seem to be at the moment. What people also don't take into consideration is that babies without Down's Syndrome aren't necessarily going to be any easier than babies with Down's Syndrome. A baby could be "perfect" in medical terms, but still not let you sleep for the first four years of its life.

Sally Phillips didn't have to make a decision about her pregnancy as her son wasn't diagnosed until after he was born, and her antenatal screen had not put her at risk of having a child with Down's Syndrome. Phillips clearly has the resources to cope with whatever life throws at her, emotionally and financially. Not everyone would be able to manage as well as her. But what would she have done had she known in advance?

I don't know what decision I would have made. Having spent ten weeks feeling sick and exhausted and grumpy before my nuchal fold scan, I had vested a lot of physical effort already into the pregnancy, and would not have wanted all that effort to be in vain. But then I might have felt unable to cope with any kind of disability when faced with it as a reality. Before the scan, I was in a slight state of disbelief. I hadn't managed to convince myself that I was having any sort of baby at all. I was aware I might miscarry, so hadn't let my hopes rise too high. And yet as soon as I saw that tiny little blob on the screen, complete with tiny fingers and feet, somersaulting over my bladder, to me she was perfect. I loved her, I wanted her. I couldn't have stood having to get rid of her. But I was told that all was well. I didn't have to even consider that. I know that I cried with relief.

Phillips put her heart and soul into the documentary, but obviously was presenting it from a strong personal standpoint. I don't think women who feel unable to go through with a Down's Syndrome pregnancy should be judged in any way, because it's a heartbreaking decision, and an indescribably painful loss. What Phillips succeeded in doing, I hope, is opening up a debate on the issue so that parents will get to understand the true nature of both alternatives if they get a Down's Syndrome diagnosis.

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The NHS is also at breaking point when trying to treat people with long-term health issues. It ends up pumping them full of drugs, because it's the quickest, easiest and sometimes cheapest thing to do. There isn't time or money to do all the tests available. Surgical alternatives are higher risk and expensive. And it's what we've grown to expect. We're all prone to visiting our GP (assuming we can get an appointment) expecting a perfunctory check during our ten-minute slot, not many questions asked, and a prescription that will cure us to be handed over at the end.

Some drugs will cure us. But others are prescribed unnecessarily - antibiotics for a virus being the classic example. Because we've spent decades guzzling these pills like Smarties, bacteria are learning to outsmart us and are becoming drug resistant. In time, they will kill us all. Anyone who believes that man is the most advanced being on the planet needs to think again.

Other drugs are prescribed continuously where alternative therapies could prevent the need for long-term pills. The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs (Chris van Tulleken) tried to see if there was another way. He found that a daily walk could reduce cholesterol or Type 2 diabetes symptoms in some patients. The highs from open-water swimming alleviated depression in another. He also highlighted the ineffectiveness of painkillers and the more beneficial aid of physiotherapy and properly structured exercise.

Personally, I hate taking pills. I have to take thyroxine every day, and it makes me feel like crap. All drugs in my experience come with a raft of side-effects. Doctors tell me off for spending too much time reading the leaflet in the box. But I don't want to take something only to then have to deal with something else. Right now, in perimenopause, I have developed a whole host of symptoms, largely attributed to hormone imbalances, and not helped by having an auto-immune thyroid disease. I'm trying to learn to manage continuous acid reflux and menstrual problems, but the quick-fix drug solutions - PPIs, the Mirena coil - have only caused other issues. Who will look at the whole me? No GP has the time to really work out what is going on and they need to fob me off. And I don't want to waste their time either. I'm pretty miserable right now. What could The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs do for me?

Five Star Babies: Inside The Portland Hospital

There's nothing more guaranteed to fill you with love for the NHS than seeing a private hospital on television.

Is that not what you'd expect? Do you think it would be better to spend thousands of pounds on your healthcare?

Well, in the case of childbirth, after seeing this programme on the UK's only private maternity hospital, the Portland in London, I think not. Childbirth is childbirth. There are only two routes out, and neither can be put on a long waiting list or severely delayed. There are only so many ways to kit out a delivery room or operating theatre. And the programme stressed that at the actual birth, there was no difference between the NHS and the Portland in terms of care received or procedures followed. In other words, you get told to "push into your bottom" either way. And nobody knows what that means.

But it rapidly became clear that all of the Portland's patients have more money than sense.

So what do you get for shelling out £10,000-40,000 on birthing your baby at the Portland? Champagne, for one thing. Foie gras. Lobster. Pretty much all the things you've been banned from eating and drinking for nine months. Oh, and an exquisite afternoon tea. Except that the rich new mummies are so obsessed with regaining their figure immediately after delivery that they all stick to fruit platters and grapefruit juice.

You can also purchase some exclusive baby mementos. Silver or bronze statuettes of your baby's feet. Everyone gets a gift bag containing a cuddly panda and who knows what else. (More champagne, presumably.) Puts that annoying Bounty Lady to shame - she's only trying to flog you a blurry photo before she hands over your child benefit forms and free sample of Johnson's.

What you do get at the Portland is Pat. Portland Pat will stay up all night in the nursery, looking after nine bawling babies while their mummies have a pedicure and get some sleep. Pat is a wonder. She has all the down-to-earthedness of a good NHS nurse, and she is a slightly incongruous figure amongst all these hormonal celebrities and moneyed chavs. "I never get a man in here who doesn't love Breaking Bad," she coos over fluffy pink baby Skyler.

Every woman gets her own personally selected consultant who follows her throughout her pregnancy, and through the birth. Which possibly explains why the Portland has such a high rate of Caesarians (50%) - these consultants, one of whom is a Countess married to the Earl of Bradford, don't like having their Easter lunches in Shropshire interrupted to go and have to deliver a baby naturally. They prefer it all scheduled to fit neatly into their day. We also see a consultant quick to intervene in a natural birth that had been progressing well. After one and a half hours of pushing the baby hadn't moved much, so after a swift attempt at Ventouse, she cuts the yoga teacher mummy open and whips said baby out. Consultants must naturally feel the urge to do something to earn their money - they are only called in when there is a crisis in an NHS birth, so they are not used to letting normal deliveries happen.

I would say that for that money there should be less strapping people to monitors and more birthing pools, more massages and more midwives offering soothing encouragement. For what do the midwives get to do at the Portland if everything is consultant led? A lot of cleaning, by the looks of it. And a lot of waiting on spoilt pampered women unwilling to do anything for themselves.

The worst of which is of course Hui, a Chinese "It Girl" fashion designer that I have never heard of. Her husband runs some sort of empire in Hong Kong, and generally seems so absent that she isn't even sure if he should be at the birth. (Her mum is at the hospital too and Hui is only allowed to take one person with her to theatre.) Hui is of course, too posh - or too scared - to push. Because having a baby has got to hurt, apparently. Whereas recovering from major abdominal surgery is of course entirely pain-free, right? Just ask my friend with the morphine allergy who had to recover from a C-section on paracetamol. Hui seems genuinely shocked when her consultant informs her that a Caesarian carries risk of organ damage and infection. Yes, even in this exclusive hospital. No amount of money will win that war on bacteria.

Hui's surgery goes well. However, Hui doesn't want to hold her baby until he has been thoroughly cleaned and had a nappy put on him. No skin to skin here. When he starts crying, she sends him off to the hospital nursery for Pat to look after. And from then on out she pretty much gets anyone else in the room to hold him other than her. It is of course difficult to move after a Caesarian, but any one of those fifty midwives would gladly hand her the baby if she was struggling. Once back home she has a nanny, who is apparently there to cook, clean, look after the baby and look after Hui. What Hui is left to do, I have no idea. Get her tummy tucked for her husband and then return to work, it seems. Unsurprisingly, she is on Nanny number two by the end of the programme.

The mummies are also all too posh to breastfeed, apparently. There are a lot of bottles of Aptamil being bandied about. During a tour of the hospital it is announced that the hospital has 50 midwives, but only one lactation consultant. Really? The NHS doesn't have enough breast-feeding support either, but at least it encourages it. There is nothing wrong with formula feeding, and I would never claim otherwise, but are any of these women even prepared to give breastfeeding a go? It can be lovely, it can be a battle, it can be the worst experience of your life, but the only way to know is to try. These women are all taking pills to stop their milk coming in, seemingly without having been offered any alternative by the hospital.

So yes, I ended the programme filled with love for the NHS. York District Hospital safely delivered my daughter five and a half years ago, and I have only praise for them and the care we received during our stay. Things weren't perfect (no water birth option, no en suite bathrooms, no private rooms), but if I'd had £40,000 to spare, I wouldn't have dreamed of giving a penny to the Portland Hospital instead. For the gas and air was on tap. My midwife was an angel. My wishes were listened to and respected. And foie gras may not have been on the menu, but the toast I was offered for breakfast once my daughter finally emerged after 36 long hours of labour was one of the best (and most welcome) meals of my life.

I was also very lucky as York Hospital was not busy that day. I think it might have been a very different story if it had been a day when they were getting slammed with patients. I was the only one in my post-labour ward for 16 hours, and then only had to share it with one other person (rather than the usual three). I was very weak, so they also took my baby away for a couple of hours in the night to an impromptu nursery in the corridor so that I could have a break and some sleep. (Not that I got any sleep, but it was a kind thought.) I could well have wanted a few nights of being looked after in a luxury hotel after the birth (or really just a bit longer in hospital), but I don't think it would have made breastfeeding less stressful or my stitches heal any faster.

I used to work just around the corner from the Portland Hospital. I never really paid it much attention, since I was usually scuttling past to get to the office, the Tube station, Regent's Park or the great deli at Villandry. So I never saw any celebrity babies or future Arab sheiks being wheeled out of the building in their expensive prams or car seats. Besides, I didn't really "do" babies in those days. Now I would shout out that they were all fools, and had been taken well and truly for a ride. But would they listen? Would they care? No. For money is for them no object.

The (Second) Real Marigold Hotel

Photo credits: David Dodgson

So part two last night. More yoga, more farting, more sweat, more diarrhoea, more marigold garlands. And I got my more Jan Leeming. Heartbreaking to see her feeling so sad and lonely. Old age (not that she is what I would call old at 74) can be a very isolating place. Partners come, go, and don't come back, or they move on to the big resting place in the sky, and it's tough to be left behind. I've seen it happen to the older generations of our family. It must be tough to have the energy to meet new people, find new social circles and activities in later life. (I think these things are hard enough in your 40s.) 

But look, there's a new friend for you, Jan - Rosemary Shrager in a steam bath being a teensy bit bonkers. Brilliant.

And this time there was more on the medical system in India. There's good news - the heat seems to be relieving the arthritis, although stairs are still a struggle. The celebs all go off to the hospital. An all-out hi-tech check-up for £300? Can't argue with that. I'd be signed up right away, contributing to the local health tourism economy. 

The bargains continue - a shave and a haircut for the blokes for a quid, a trip to the laundry for the ladies to get all their washing done. 

There was an exhausting train journey to Agra. Crowded chaos and more of that first episode panic on the station platforms. A bed for everybody in the teeming carriages, although some of them involved a lot of climbing. A questionable toilet, said Miriam. Lots of henna. And singing. And dancing.

And this at the end of it:

I haven't been to India, but my dad once cycled around Rajasthan. Hence the photos. Only my dad could make the Taj Mahal lean as much as his DIY shelving. But apparently it (the Taj Mahal, not my dad's DIY) never disappoints. I'll have to ask Dad if he ever thought of retiring to Jaipur. (He chose Cumbria instead.) I'm starting to see the benefits.

Doctor Foster

What is going on here in the first episode? Paranoia and delusion? Or a woman's worst fears confirmed? It's not easy to tell. Doctor Foster on the surface has it all - sexy husband, good job, well-behaved son, nice house. Only then she finds a stray blonde hair on a scarf. Rather than confronting her husband directly about it, this discovery sets in motion seemingly irrational behaviour in Doctor Foster and an obsessive drive to determine the truth. Yes, it does rather look like the sexy husband is, um, sowing his oats elsewhere with a woman possibly half his age. But is he really? You can't quite trust anything you see. And a GP who bribes a drug-seeker to tail her husband with the promise of Temazepan is not the most reliable of witnesses. Although she does have a good sideline in evicting violent boyfriends. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" - it's all very intriguing, with a slight air of Fatal Attraction about it.

But before we start boiling bunnies, it's interesting to see the GP at work. She rolls her eyes at the latest visit from her resident hypochondriac and hastily evicts him when she finds something better to do. She has her mobile phone switched on during consultations and doesn't hesitate to use it for personal texts. She is distracted and dismissive. She also chairs a committee to strike off the only traditional family doctor left on the team, the one who laments the turning of the practice from one that cared about, had time for and knew all its patients into one that is just a systematic factory on an efficiency drive. Admittedly said family doctor also has a drink problem and fails to turn up for surgery, but he does have a point.

I think all of us have seen the rapid decline in GP services in recent times. Practices are closing or merging with others, but after a merger there seems to be no increase in numbers of doctors available, just even more patients than before clamouring for appointments. So much so that it's now often completely impossible to get one. For at least a decade it's been standard practice to ring your surgery on the day at 8am sharp to book yourself in. Not long ago - after a night of watching my delirious daughter hallucinate, struggle to breathe and not even be able to keep a sip of water down - I had to wait on the phone for 45 minutes before my call was answered, by which point the ten appointments available that day had long since been allocated. I knew it was probably a virus, but it's hard to think straight when you have been up all night and she was so ill that I needed reassurance that it wasn't something more serious.

There's that mother's instinct, which a GP has to trust. I find it's more reliable than my instincts about my own health. I don't want to bother a doctor unnecessarily, which means I, like many others, am relying ever more on NHS Choices and online discussion forums for information. NHS Choices is generally very helpful. Some of the other sources are terrifying. Possibly medically uninformed and probably trying to sell something and definitely likely to make you want to see a doctor even more. But what is bad is that Google sometimes offers more facts on a given condition or symptom than your average GP. They seem to be terribly ignorant about a lot of things. Medical students have always had a bit of a reputation for hard drinking and partying at UK universities. It's hardly practising what they will later preach, or a good basis for learning all that they need to know. I remember the medics at Newcastle University complaining about the pass rate for their exams being higher than for other subjects. But the point is, none of us want to see a doctor who only knows 40-50% of what they are supposed to. You want them to know a good 80-90%, or ideally 100. But that ain't ever going to happen. Certainly not now, when you are lucky if a doctor even wants to stay in the profession, or the country, after qualification.

GPs have so many patients to see that they have become masters of the fob-off - they will diagnose you with the first thing that comes into their heads so that they can get you out the door and see their next patient on schedule. They'd probably prefer to just speak to you on the phone and not see you at all. There is no time for them to probe any deeper and no budget for tests or referrals if they can possibly avoid them. Ten minutes is often nowhere near enough to get to the root of a problem. Or you just discuss the most pressing issue and have to leave the three niggling other things for another time that never comes. Most of us don't mind a longer wait if it means that the doctor will also not make us feel rushed when it's finally our turn, but GPs are having to meet targets and quotas and this is sometimes what they are pushed to care about more. I did have an excellent local GP who always gave you the impression she would do anything in her power to help you, but she is a rarity and sadly she has been off sick for the past six months (miraculously not with stress). I hope she isn't relying on her own GP or local NHS services to cure her.

Rory Bremner's Election Broadcast

Rory Bremner seems to have been away from television a long time. His regular series, Bremner, Bird and Fortune vanished without explanation from Channel 4 a while back. I am not sure how popular it was - I always enjoyed it, and even went to see it be filmed once, donkeys years ago now. But I know that when I was working as a subtitler on Channel 4's television programmes, the show was generally disliked by my colleagues. This meant I found myself working on it quite often, with everyone else avoiding it. We only ever managed to subtitle the repeat, as the first broadcast was edited too late for us to work on. Otherwise it would have had to be subtitled live, which wouldn't have worked. It was probably a slightly disappointing watch for hard-of-hearing or deaf viewers anyway - all a subtitler could do was write the name of who Rory was doing an impression of at the start of each line, which used up valuable word space and which hardly conveyed his talent for mimicry. But his impersonations do rely on facial tics and body language alongside the verbal mannerisms, so there may still have been something to be gained even without the audio. The John Bird and John Fortune segments were always my favourites anyway, and not reliant on impressions. Just the stunning mockery of government, civil service or big business tomfoolery in the glorious guise of George Parr.

Alas, John Fortune is no longer with us, but it was nice to see John Bird still included in this post-election analysis programme. The show, now on BBC2, had a very similar format to Bremner, Bird And Fortune - stand-up sections in front of an audience interspersed with pre-recorded video footage. But there was an interlude for a performance by another impressionist, which presumably lightened the load of the last-minute rewrites after the unexpected election result. In my view this didn't really add anything as - putting it mildly - he lacked Bremner's subtlety and we had already seen enough (better) impersonations of Cameron and Miliband. It was interesting that Bremner's format hadn't moved on at all from what must have at some point been rejected by Channel 4. But I am not sure how much he could have changed - or how much I would have wanted him to change.

There were Bremner's usual scary, thought-provoking statistics that newscasters hadn't mentioned and which require greater publicity. That more words went into plans to save polar bears in the Tory manifesto than into detailing their proposed brutal welfare cuts. That Cameron won his Tory majority with the same percentage of votes as Labour lost with in 1979. And that UKIP and the Greens only got two seats between them with a share of the vote that was only 10% less than the Tories. Whilst I am mightily relieved at the low number of seats won by UKIP, there is no denying that we have an archaic and biased electoral system that isn't working and isn't reflecting the views of all the British people. We did have a referendum about changing things at the start of the last Parliament, but the question was worded in such a way as to almost guarantee keeping the status quo. And it wasn't even offering proportional representation anyway, which is what the Lib Dems have always wanted. All eight of them that are left.

But it was very hard to laugh at Rory Bremner this week because the election result has left me utterly dejected, if not seriously slash-my-wrists level depressed. None of the polls warned us that a Tory majority was possible. I fully expected another coalition, as did probably everybody. We were in Holland when the result was declared, and I instantly wanted to claim Dutch political asylum on the grounds that my country had plainly gone mad. Who on earth votes for the Conservatives? Who on earth thinks that any of the cuts of the previous Parliament have been beneficial to anybody? Who on earth believes the Tory lies that the budget deficit was because of Labour overspending and not from pumping money into ailing banks which had so mismanaged their lending that they were now in danger of making us lose all our money? Gordon Brown saved, not destroyed, the day. Meanwhile the bankers have got off scotfree and we, the middle and low-income general public reliant on local authority services and free education and health care are being punished for their incompetence. And who on earth sees UKIP as an alternative - a bunch of racist, ignorant scumbags that other parties want to pander to? We have to stay in Europe. Otherwise in five years' time, after Scotland leaves the United Kingdom, we will end up living in an isolated England run by 1% of our landed gentry in an old public schoolboys' club and feudal society straight out of the 18th century. I fear the other 99% of us will be beggars on the streets. With my daughter about to start school and my health on the wane (being 42 hasn't been kind to me) I fear for our education and NHS services more than ever. The welfare state could be coming to an end. And it seems that many of the voters of Britain are too stupid to see this or too selfish to care.

On a positive note, there are some good things to share about the election to those of a left-wing view. We did come home, and thankfully our postal votes contributed to York Central returning a Labour MP and our local ward a Labour, a Green and a fantastic independent councillor who has done so many wonderful things for our neighbourhood in the past few years. One of my friends and one of my cousins are serving as Labour councillors elsewhere. And the biggest news for our family is that my aunt has just been selected to be Leader of Leeds City Council. The first female leader of a city council ever, and one of the biggest in the country at that. I can't imagine a tougher time for her to be doing the job, but I wish her all the very best, and send my heartiest congratulations. But while the Labour and Lib Dems focus all their energies on choosing (hopefully electable) new leaders, the Conservatives are going to busy literally taking away our human rights, and the majority of what is left of our public services. And we can't stop them. Or can we?