Bloggers choice: Today I had two things to potentially write about on here...
1) a light fluff piece gently mocking the N.H.S 'brand' proposals... based around an image that I find amusing
B) A strongly researched and controversial polemic about providing assisted suicide facilities to the physically healthy, but mentally shattered... this would not be a light read. It would be uncomfortable and heavy, like receiving a mercury enema in a gravity well...
Luckily, number 1 wins... fluff rules the day, it's easier to be flippant than to bother with serious research in this humidity to be honest... but stick around for that other one... it will appear eventually... and it'll be a 'Laff Riot' akin to Leigh Francis doing all of his 'character' at you... in a locked room... forever.
So instead of that I bring you fluff... and Fluff that will only deal in boundless positivity...
...and that might be tricky, because I'm planning a fluff piece about changes to the N.H.S... A subject that usually gets all sides in the political spectrum frothing incoherently... much like the 'pro-life debate' for the U.S, it is as divisive as it is obvious who is in the right.
Today the idea was floated to make the N.H.S a global health brand... a provider to the world, probably on the back of that very subtle advert Danny Boyle snuck into that Olympic Shindig... with Brand N.H.S's stock being so high it is no surprise that the world is crying out for merchandise: Bieber fans are throwing away posters of their hero and instead putting up N.H.S issue, 'standardised patient assessment sheets' whilst Lady Gaga was seen wrapping herself in N.H.S issue surgical bandage and saying: "Healthcare... I am a snake... the snake is art and my little monsters are provided free at the point of delivery... woop... I have a new single you know"
A phrase which 'Pop Linguistic' experts theorise may 'have something to do with the N.H.S... perhaps'
But how do you sell this idea back home. You could use 'numbers'... blather a load of statistics: 'if we blah blah in overseas markets blee blah blah we could improve investment in Bibble bibble Blee Blah and...'
Of course everyone in Britain knows that any number issued by an authority figure is likely to be utter nonsense... so... you have to appeal to something foreign and strange... something new to the national psyche, in order to get slip it under the conscious radar and sneak it around the layer of cynicism that makes up 80% of the national character.
You have to appeal to 'National Pride'
Before the Olympics, the only thing Britain was honestly proud of was our self-depracation. Now... well... if Bradley Wiggins had asked for a peasants revolt... well, let's just say Westminster would have a row of head on spikes, the country would be renamed 'Team GB' and we would have our first, for life, genuine 'God-King'... and he would be a cyclist...
...and it is in this spirit that the Government needs to market this latest N.H.S change if they want us to really 'go for it'...
This isn't the old N.H.S, sitting around and waiting for illness to come to it, this is Team G.B.N.H.S and its going to chase down bad health, regardless of which country it's skulking in, catch it and kick it's putrid face off, before planting a Union flag in the glistening raw head flesh and singing a rousing rendition of 'Hey ]ude'...
Eventually we'd have Giant Robot Hospitals roaming the world on arachnid-style legs, firing anti-retroviral drugs into mouths of grateful H.I.V sufferers who weep and wave the new flag of the I.H.S, a clenched fist, clutching a syringe, punching a virus in the throat... however that might look.
On the horizon, a great flotilla of giant 'destroyer class' hospitals would rule the waves, surrounding a territory before bombarding it with sexual health advice pamphlets, prescriptions and quality assured surgical implements.
The commandos of this elite I.H.S could invade sovereign nations, bringing healthy foods and forcing a regime of cardio exercise onto people who are, in all honesty, slightly less appreciative than the H.I.V sufferers were.
But still, under the flag of the Great British N.H.S (Brand) they would be welcomed around the world.
The job, to make you healthy, even if they have to fuck you up to do it...
In fact people would be so joyous and grateful that they would spontaneously throw money at this I.H.S, so it could do that most implausible of tasks of being free at the point of delivery whilst still, somehow providing funding for the coffers back home...
The People of the U.K would love this new, go getting, health service more than ever... We'd cheer it on like an Olympic boxer that had won a gold despite 'only getting into the sport a few years ago'... we too would start buying the Team G.B.N.H.S merchandise... the 'official' catheter, the repeat prescription, the essential medical procedure...
...and it would all be so exciting that we'd probably even never notice that it was no longer 'National' or 'Free'...
1) a light fluff piece gently mocking the N.H.S 'brand' proposals... based around an image that I find amusing
B) A strongly researched and controversial polemic about providing assisted suicide facilities to the physically healthy, but mentally shattered... this would not be a light read. It would be uncomfortable and heavy, like receiving a mercury enema in a gravity well...
Luckily, number 1 wins... fluff rules the day, it's easier to be flippant than to bother with serious research in this humidity to be honest... but stick around for that other one... it will appear eventually... and it'll be a 'Laff Riot' akin to Leigh Francis doing all of his 'character' at you... in a locked room... forever.
So instead of that I bring you fluff... and Fluff that will only deal in boundless positivity...
...and that might be tricky, because I'm planning a fluff piece about changes to the N.H.S... A subject that usually gets all sides in the political spectrum frothing incoherently... much like the 'pro-life debate' for the U.S, it is as divisive as it is obvious who is in the right.
Today the idea was floated to make the N.H.S a global health brand... a provider to the world, probably on the back of that very subtle advert Danny Boyle snuck into that Olympic Shindig... with Brand N.H.S's stock being so high it is no surprise that the world is crying out for merchandise: Bieber fans are throwing away posters of their hero and instead putting up N.H.S issue, 'standardised patient assessment sheets' whilst Lady Gaga was seen wrapping herself in N.H.S issue surgical bandage and saying: "Healthcare... I am a snake... the snake is art and my little monsters are provided free at the point of delivery... woop... I have a new single you know"
A phrase which 'Pop Linguistic' experts theorise may 'have something to do with the N.H.S... perhaps'
But how do you sell this idea back home. You could use 'numbers'... blather a load of statistics: 'if we blah blah in overseas markets blee blah blah we could improve investment in Bibble bibble Blee Blah and...'
Of course everyone in Britain knows that any number issued by an authority figure is likely to be utter nonsense... so... you have to appeal to something foreign and strange... something new to the national psyche, in order to get slip it under the conscious radar and sneak it around the layer of cynicism that makes up 80% of the national character.
You have to appeal to 'National Pride'
Before the Olympics, the only thing Britain was honestly proud of was our self-depracation. Now... well... if Bradley Wiggins had asked for a peasants revolt... well, let's just say Westminster would have a row of head on spikes, the country would be renamed 'Team GB' and we would have our first, for life, genuine 'God-King'... and he would be a cyclist...
...and it is in this spirit that the Government needs to market this latest N.H.S change if they want us to really 'go for it'...
This isn't the old N.H.S, sitting around and waiting for illness to come to it, this is Team G.B.N.H.S and its going to chase down bad health, regardless of which country it's skulking in, catch it and kick it's putrid face off, before planting a Union flag in the glistening raw head flesh and singing a rousing rendition of 'Hey ]ude'...
Eventually we'd have Giant Robot Hospitals roaming the world on arachnid-style legs, firing anti-retroviral drugs into mouths of grateful H.I.V sufferers who weep and wave the new flag of the I.H.S, a clenched fist, clutching a syringe, punching a virus in the throat... however that might look.
On the horizon, a great flotilla of giant 'destroyer class' hospitals would rule the waves, surrounding a territory before bombarding it with sexual health advice pamphlets, prescriptions and quality assured surgical implements.
The commandos of this elite I.H.S could invade sovereign nations, bringing healthy foods and forcing a regime of cardio exercise onto people who are, in all honesty, slightly less appreciative than the H.I.V sufferers were.
But still, under the flag of the Great British N.H.S (Brand) they would be welcomed around the world.
The job, to make you healthy, even if they have to fuck you up to do it...
In fact people would be so joyous and grateful that they would spontaneously throw money at this I.H.S, so it could do that most implausible of tasks of being free at the point of delivery whilst still, somehow providing funding for the coffers back home...
The People of the U.K would love this new, go getting, health service more than ever... We'd cheer it on like an Olympic boxer that had won a gold despite 'only getting into the sport a few years ago'... we too would start buying the Team G.B.N.H.S merchandise... the 'official' catheter, the repeat prescription, the essential medical procedure...
...and it would all be so exciting that we'd probably even never notice that it was no longer 'National' or 'Free'...
