Tssssssk. Awww. Sheeeeeeesh. Is it time to write a blog AGAIN? Oh, look, do I HAVE to? It’s not like anyone’s going to read it, it’s just me mumbling into cyberspace. What’s the POINT? Look, can’t I just go to bed?
See what I did there? I blogged without enthusiasm. Clever, no? It made you think, yeah, it must be hard being a blogger, I really feel sorry for this guy, I’m going to take more notice of him in future, and – here’s the clincher – I hope he gets a sodding great pension when he comes to hang up his keyboard, because he deserves it.
Bloody effective, wasn’t it? So hats off to those guys at the BMA who are seriously suggesting, as one of a number of industrial action options over the pension furore, that we doctors might consider ‘Working without enthusiasm’. Yeah! That’ll stick it to the suits! First badges, now THIS! All I’ve got to do is turn my ‘Come in Mrs Lard’ tannoy voice setting from ‘Chirpy’ to ‘Don’t give a ‘f**k’, and that noise you hear will be the government crashing down.
Can I just state the bleedin’ obvious for a minute, though? Can I? OK. I work without enthusiasm every day. It’s my default demeanour. Because it’s hard to be bright eyed and bushy tailed about a job that’s constantly being demeaned and dismantled. So no-one will be able to tell the difference. Working WITH enthusiasm: now that would have freaked the punters out. They’d really have known that something was wrong then.
Incredibly, that’s not the dumb-assiest idea the BMA’s come up with, though. Because it has also been suggested that we could ‘protest’ by overwhelming the hospital with referrals. Oh, excellent. That’s mature. Look at what we’d achieve by deliberately opening the referral gates for the day: we’d alienate our hospital colleagues, we’d cause iatrogenic harm to our patients, we’d bump up the waiting times and we’d look like petulant pillocks.
It’s brilliant. No really, it is brilliant. I realise that I’ve just written a column explaining how we’d never strike. But these suggestions from the BMA are so insane and so fury-inducing that I’m now hopping around with such nervous energy and unconsummated anger that I could…I could…yes…I could STRIKE! Which was probably the intention all along!
Genius! We’re in good hands! Brother, ignore my column, lay down your stethoscopes and man the barricades! I’m fired up and ired up! Let’s march! What do we want? Once more, with enthusiasm, please…
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex
