Column
News from nowhere
FUNNY PECULIAR
Here is a tale that circulates on email and entertains doctors.
‘Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road. Suddenly a brand-new Porsche appears, and screeches to a halt beside him. The driver, a woman wearing a Chanel suit, Ray Bans & a Cartier watch, steps out and asks the shepherd: ‘If I can guess how many sheep you have can I keep one?’
The shepherd looks at the large flock and says ‘Okay’.
The woman connects a laptop to a mobile phone fax, enters the NASA website, scans the field using GPS, opens a database linked to 60 Excel files filled with logarithms and pivot tables, then prints out a 150 page report on a high-tech mini-printer. She studies the report and says to the shepherd: ‘You have 1,586 sheep’.
The shepherd replies: ‘That’s correct. You can have the pick of my flock’.
The woman packs away her equipment, looks at the flock and puts one in the boot of her Porsche. As she is about to leave the shepherd says: ‘If I can guess your profession, will you return the animal to me?’ The woman thinks for a moment, then agrees.
The shepherd says: ‘You are an NHS manager’. ‘Correct’, responds the woman, ‘but how did you know?’
The shepherd replies: ‘Simple. First, you came without being invited. Second, you wasted a lot of time telling me something I already knew. Third, you don’t understand anything about the work I do, but interfere anyway. Now, can I have my dog back?’
The punchline is funny enough to obscure the real points of the joke. Managers in the NHS rarely drive Porsches and don’t dress so well, but specialists with lucrative private practices do. (If you do not believe us, loiter in Harley Street for an hour or two.) Doctors love to be thought of as simple rustics tending their flocks, and seem unmoved by the biblical connotations, but citizens rarely welcome the analogy. Managers in the NHS cannot usually rattle off assessments so easily, being pre-occupied with the lengthy process of negotiating with stakeholders. And they can always tell a dog from a sheep, although the gender of this manager may be relevant to the humour. (NfN asks: ‘Was she blonde?’)
FUNNY HA-HA
Real life is funnier. What about the disgruntled clinician whose trust got a slap from the Commission for Health Improvement, so he penned a nasty piece for The Times about hypocrisy and double standards, expecting the reactionary masses to rise in rebellion against the tyranny of regulation.
The normally tabloid medical press decided he was out of order and ignored him, his own organisation distanced itself from his article and CHI’s switchboard clogged up with apologies. NfN says: ‘Timing is everything, for good jokes and bad.’
