Some folk just
cannot be positive about anything. Snipe snipe snipe about how Free Schools and
academies are just Westminster’s way of by-passing problems of neglect and
underfunding in the state education system. Moan moan moan about the money
being leeched from local authorities to fund the amateur education have-a-goes.
People have even complained about corruption where school inspectors with links
to Free Schools or academies have (apparently) connived to downgrade local
state schools in order to discredit them and get a foothold.
I, on the other
hand, think Free Schools are such a monumentally fantastically marvellous concept,
I have decided to open a Free Hospital.
My Free Hospital
will specialise in Maternity (on the basis that I have had three children) and
gynaecology (on the basis that I have a fanny). What other qualifications does
a person need? I’ll apply to the government for some of the funding they
currently give to my local health authority and convert my leaky garden shed in
to a birthing pool for those who think delivering a baby into a vat of floating
body effluent is a great idea. I will have a couple of mattresses in my living
room for women who want soap opera type births (you know the ones where the
women sweat a little, groan quietly while the attractive hubby mops their brow
and looks attractively anxious). There will be no mention of episiotomies or haemorrhages
or retained placentas.
The idea that
people have to be properly trained to do a job and maybe work with other people
who are not only trained but experienced is the last word in archaic thinking.
And they are only children for heaven’s sake. Pissing around with their future
every time a new education minister wants to make his mark is bound to work.
It’s particularly gratifying to know that children at many state schools are in
overcrowded classrooms while funding is lavished on Free Schools and while the
people making the policies either have their children at state schools in areas
that aren’t struggling or at private schools.
A young friend of
mine is doing her teacher training in a school where all the teachers wander
round with little toolkits of equipment from scissors to colouring pens because
the school can’t afford to provide them.
The teachers – who can’t deliver the curriculum without the basic
equipment – have to provide their own. I worked in a school last year where
there was a near Spanish Inquisition because I asked for the children I was
working with to be provided with WRITING PAPER. A child was dispatched and the
exact number of sheets I had requested was counted out of a cupboard while the
secretary looked at me as if I had asked for the blood of a unicorn. In both
cases I suspect the school budget had been squandered on non-essentials such as
crumbling buildings and wages.
My new Free
Hospital will be entrepreneurial, probably offering cards and flowers for sale
in the hallway as a sideline and there will be a few benches by the clematis in
the front for a waiting area.
OBVIOUYSLY I won’t
undertake this venture on my own. I’ll employ a woman down the road on minimum
wage. She’s had four kids so she’ll know a thing or two.
Once things are up
and running I will branch out and maybe do something with bones because my
middle daughter has broken a few.
I won’t bother with
dentistry because I don’t like drills.
So – if you are not
happy with your local hospital – don’t bother lobbying your local MP to bloody
well do something about it – come to my house and be the first to experience my
Free Hospital.
Or
I may set up a Free
Air Travel company on the basis that I caught a plane to Bristol about ten
years ago...
***
By popular demand
(about 6 people asked) I will back-reference archived blogs from now on. I haven’t room to
lay out an index as requested, but each week I will recommend an older blog
either as a contrast to the current posting or because there is an interesting
link.
This week – I’ve
chosen a blog with a link so why not check out,
Blog 10.My
One Night Stand with the Ghost of Bill Farrell