.
top of page
Search
Under the new strategic plan for the NHS – “Saving Money, Lives Optional” – penicillin will be phased out in favour of a vegetable oil-based substitute.
‘Most people can’t tell if they’re taking real penicillin so why waste money?’ a government spokesman said. ‘The cash we save can be spent on better cancer prevention services’, he added before clutching his belly and rocking back and forth with laughter. ‘Or maternity services!’ spluttered another spokesman, his face red with suppressed mirth. After a few minutes they composed themselves and stopped corpsing long enough to resume speech.
‘If we’re going to make this thing profitable . . . ‘ one said, before being kicked by the other. ‘What I meant to say was, if we’re to achieve the efficiencies we need from the NHS prior to the IPO, we need to cut unnecessary fat from its budgets. For example head injuries have been treated for centuries with a dab of butter . . .’
‘Butter?’ I ask. ‘You’re proposing rubbing butter on head injuries?’
‘Not Lurpak’, he clarified. ‘Danepak or margarine work just as well. Far cheaper than scanners and neurosurgery. It’s all there, peer reviewed in JOWMA’
I look at him blankly. ‘JOWMA?’
‘Journal of the Old Wives Medical Association’ he replied with a weary sigh. ‘I thought you were the medical correspondent? Their vaccine supplement is excellent. Who knew they caused cancer?’
I asked which companies would be supplying the penicillin substitutes and the spokesmen became evasive. One muttered something about the Prime Minister’s wife and the other hastily added that ‘everything will be declared, just as soon as it’s rumbled’.
So that’s that. Don’t get an infection, or if you do, become a merchant banker first so you can afford the good stuff. I’m off to buy some Danepak for the first aid kit.
First published 20 April 2023
If you enjoyed this archive item, why not buy thousands of archive stories found in our eBooks, paperbacks and hardbacks?
 |  |  |  |
Junior doctors will be expected to routinely travel through time and will work until they are at least 1500 years old, Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced today. The policy announcement comes after Barclay uncovered a successful regeneration scheme for medical staff, codenamed Doctor Who, running since 1963, at the Gallifrey NHS Foundation Trust near Liverpool.
'The abilities to distort time, communicate via telepathy, and to transform into a spanking new doctor when you reach the age of around 750 is vital to our goal of providing a full-service, competitive 21st century health service', announced Barclay. 'Project TimeLord will just formalise practices which we already impose on our junior doctors - the expectation that they can be in two places at once as a result of huge staff shortages, for example’.
‘The poor sods will be too busy with crippling workloads, complex, multi-layered plot lines and chasing down Daleks that they won’t notice the 25% real pay cut we've imposed on them over the last decade. Our patient data shows incredibly high satisfaction with all 13 time-travelling doctors to date…with the exception, of course, of Sylvester McCoy’ said Barclay.
Barclay is thought to be particularly impressed with the Doctors' physical characteristic of having 2 hearts, which compensates for him being a heartless b@*tard himself.
Previously published 26 March 2023
If you enjoyed this archive item, why not buy thousands of archive stories found in our eBooks, paperbacks and hardbacks?
| | | |
bottom of page