A recent report suggests that GP services in London need at least a hundred trillion pounds pumped into them if they’re to continue to provide basic medical services.
The report, published by the London Health Commission earlier this week, has suggested that so much cash is needed because premises will have to be refurbished and that that in all likelihood they’ll have to ‘commandeer a fleet of army helicopters to dump the cash all over London’. The London Mayor has already volunteered to fly one.
‘If you live in London you’re an important citizen,’ said author of the report, ‘if you live north of the M25 then your cash needs are considerably less because you’re less important than the very important people who live in London. I mean, who’s ever ordered a crème de menthe frappe in Darlington?… Exactly!’
In a focus group, one London-based GP said: ‘I’d love some of that funding to come my way. Everyone thinks that working in London is glamorous but for the last ten years I’ve consulted from the top of a multi-storey car park whilst covered in pigeon shit with only a view of BHS’s pebble-dashed wall for company. The nearest I’ve come to Chateau Petrus is when a tramp pissed all over my couch.’
‘You’re lucky,’ huffed another, ‘my receptionist lives in a soggy binliner and I run my clinics from inside an empty packet of Marlboro lights.’
In the report, the author states that the current funding model has failed because it didn’t involve the number nine followed by a long string of noughts and besides you can’t hum it to the tune of Stevie V’s ’90s classic, ‘Dirty Cash’.
‘It’s true that nothing makes someone healthier than lots and lots of lovely cash,’ said the author of the report. ‘Unless you do what a lot of Londoners do with it and spend it all on crack cocaine and prostitutes.’
Dr Kevin Hinkley is a GP in Aberdeen.
