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Dear Pulse Editor, here is my ‘carnival of ideas’

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Dear Pulse Editor (aka editor of Pulse), 

I am answering your clarion call oh brave editor! 

In your recent editor’s blog, dated 5 January 2017, you asked for a ‘carnival of ideas’ to improve the lot of GPs. I have lots of ideas Nigel, my wife says that I have too many of them! So I’d like to share some of them with you just now. 

(Please note that I have numbered my ideas. Being a man of letters I’m assuming you would have preferred an alphabetical listing, but we cant always get what we want can we Nigel!) 

1 (number one)  

Access. Currently demand outstrips supply. So build all general practices on top of very steep hills. Many people cant climb steep hills, they might not be fit enough or they might have a heart condition or they might even be afraid of hills. This building programme will stop lots of people coming and then you’ll have enough money to reward those that do come with a free biscuit.  

2 (number two) 

Ageing population. Invite everyone over the age of 80 for a free chiropody session and a cup of tea. The elderly are obsessed with feet and ‘cuppas’ and so almost all of them will come. When they arrive we’ll round them up (cattle prods are optional) put them in vans and drive them straight into the North Sea (or the Irish Sea depending on our co-ordinates). If you think this is a little harsh we could always load them into an air ship and float them off.  

3 (number three) 

Morbidity. We redefine illness just like the good people of Holland redefined marijuana. At the moment it’s too easy for people to get hypertension or diabetes or obesity, so we change the target and make it harder for them, we raise the bar as it were. I envisage a future in which a chain smoker who wheezes like an asthmatic horse and has the same fat content as a pork scratching will be regarded by medicine as being ‘completely normal’.  

4 (number four) 

Useless body parts. We cut off bits of people’s bodies which serve no apparent function and put them in the bin to prevent them becoming diseased later on. Bits include the appendix, that dangly bit at the back of your throat, toes (when was the last time you actually picked anything up with your toes Nigel?), nipples (men’s only of course), a kidney and perhaps an eye or an ear. I once had to wear an eye patch after getting a dart stuck in my eye, ironically I could do everything I normally could, with the exception of playing darts. 

5 (number five) 

Sharmanza H’mootepth. Bear with me on this one. If you give the green light oh worthy Pulse editor I will summon up the great demagogue Sharmanza H’mootepth. Sharmanza is an ancient dark spirit who despises bureaucrats and sees all new ideas as sacrilege. Whenever one of those bright sparks at the Department of Health dreams up a new idea to improve or integrate things in the NHS, Sharmanza will appear before them and seize them in his terrifying claws. 

So there we go Nigel, just a few ideas off the top of my head. I can make it over to your office as early as 3 this afternoon to discuss things further (unfortunately I’ll have to bring all my cats with me too. And I’ve got rather a lot!)

Yours Sincerely, 

Mr Strugatsky