Funding the Health Service, Careless Minister

 We learned many vital lessons due to Captain Sir Tom Moore's good works, but the one the Government wants us to take away is that the correct and proper way to fund the Health Service is not the outdated and cumbersome practice of taxation. Instead, it's much fairer and more efficient to get 99-year olds to run round the garden.

Head of an Old Woman
Percy Bigland (1858-1926)
Photo Credit: Walker Art Gallery [CC BY-NC]

In years to come, there will be no more bureaucratic national insurance and accountants working out how much each of us has to pay. That will be replaced by lines of the elderly charging round parks, while personal trainers bark: "Don't be a QUITTER, Mavis, you can CRAWL if you have to, we're short of X-ray machines so MOVE IT.

It's no wonder they insisted on vaccinating the over-80s first if they're relying on them to fund the NHS for the next ten years.

Eventually everything will be funded like this. Rishi Sunak will announce in his budget: "I am pleased to announce a boost for education. From the start of the next economic year, we will provide no fewer than 500 90-year-olds to hula hoop all day in Wembley Stadium, to fund school books and fix the busted toilets.

"Furthermore, I can reveal we will provide the fire service with a 50 per cent increase of 94-year-olds, who will bungee jump for a hosepipe each. And I can announce they will be led by Sir David Attenborough, who will describe the starlings he passes on the way down...

(Mark Steel, The i, 2021)

(See NHS Budget, May 15,2020)

Careless Minister

"Is it your claim," Justin Webb asked care minister Helen Whatley on Monday's Today programme, "that everyone in care homes has been visited and offered a vaccine? Because that's not what we're hearing." 

"Yup absolutely," the minister replied. "What I would say to anyone listening who says they haven't been contacted - just let me know, I will personally follow up."

Webb: "So if people do want to get in touch what should they do?"

Whatley: "They can contact me, and I can be contacted on my ministerial email address."

Most reassuring. But anyone who then went to Whatley's website to find her ministerial email was confronted with this message: "If you are not a constituent and your enquiry relates to Helen's ministerial role, please contact your local MP in the first instance."

(Private Eye, No 1540)