General practitioner « Dr Alf's Blog

English: NHS logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The answer to Dr Alf’ question is ‘yes’ and Mrs May’s Government must do it by first merging Adult Social Care and the NHS within a new structure, modelled on German and Singaporean lines.

Then malingers in GP surgeries need to be given their marching orders and the same needs to happen to pensioners abusing the NHS A & E departments when there is nothing wrong with them.

If this is not done, there will be no NHS and local authorities responsible for Adult Social Care will implode financially, and no amount of financial engineering, delivered by younger versions of Dr Alf will be enough to save them.

John Gelmini

English: More crowds on Brick Lane (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The truth is that you cannot “tackle ethnic segregation” because people live where they choose to live which is typically amongst their own. People with money gravitate to prosperous and leafy areas and to expensive areas of London and major cities. This means that unless you close the income and wealth gaps considerably no-one else can live in these areas leaving the poor and dispossessed to fester in run down slums,old council housing and properties owned by private landlords.

Closing the income gap means raising the rate of export led job creation and raising productivity of workers. Bosses seem rather too reluctant to get out of comfortable boardrooms and sell things and too many Britons are lazy,obese and unproductive. Until this changes ethnic segregation will remain and it will remain because of hiring prejudice against promoting people who are different to executive positions.

Mrs May’s “Hail fellow well met ” ,”I’m a Parson’s daughter routine” is not going to do the job -stern conversations, calling in bosses and giving them some very frank home truths, unpopular legislation, the end of rewards for failure and the end of the moratorium on calling British workers lazy and unproductive is just the start and would take a generation of bruising encounters to fix.

Mrs Thatcher made a start but much of her good work was undone by Blair, Brown and Cameron all of whom shied away from telling difficult truths.

As a non betting man I think Mrs May has good intentions but lacks time and the “stones” to deal effectively with the bigger question that underlies the one that Dr Alf has posed.

Ethnic segregation like Lord Sugar’s search for his ideal apprentice and the quest for the “Pink Unicorn” are set to continue until long after the Almighty has “retired ” Dr Alf and myself to perpetual retirement.

John Gelmini