Including Totally Optional Prompts and Three Word Wednesday.
Have you had a go yet?
The beauty of British healthcare is that it is free at the point of use, and paid fairly by everyone through national insurance contributions. No need for private insurance at all. But it also means there are the occasional problems. And this usually comes regarding expensive drugs required to keep patients alive.
Everyone gets treatment as required.
But it is often a cheaper form of a particular drug, and not as effective. Now, the health watchdog has spoken out against the huge profits of pharmaceutical companies. And I couldn’t agree more. It’s a disgrace.
But there is another problem. Recent social engineering has meant that the health service now funds all forms of treatment to do with ‘lifestyle’ rather than basic health. Which is all very good, IF it can be afforded.
Whilst a person’s choices are his own business prior to illness, for people to die due to others’ lifestyle treatment is wrong.
A report has said that a third of over 55s face financial hardship.
And we’re not talking because of the recession. Rather, encouraged to live an affluent life on credit throughout their youth, they now have thousands of pounds of debt.
Basically, they’ve lived the dream. Now welcome to the nightmare. And whilst those words may seem harsh, reality often is. For the simple fact is, there never was the wealth to live the dream as portrayed by Big Biz. And the situation is bound to get much worse as more and more credit dreamers age.
It is only after the first generation has passed through a new social system that we begin to see its effects. Hopefully it will be enough to pull the younger generations up before they, too, succumb to the delusion.
© Anthony North, August 2008
POE-M
In the gutter he died,
after days on a ride,
drunken stupor his game,
his fame unproclaimed,
his mind in a mess,
forever distressed,
his lover apart,
Oh, his damned tell-tale heart!
He was not very mature,
his burial so premature,
Dupin would have swooned,
he was really a baboon,
for deep in his mind,
William Wilson you’d find,
causing epileptic fit,
a pendulum from the pit!
A genius to enthrall,
as the House of Usher did fall,
during a literary assignation,
no better creation,
of horrors untold,
imagination so bold,
stories never so honed,
as Annabel Lee would have known!
In the gutter he died,
after days on a ride,
where a black cat licked his face,
and the raven
flew his soul
into space
(c) Anthony North, August 2008
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SPIRIT OF THE TIMES – Fiction
It’s a big house. Too big. It’s a big family. Too big. Too busy. Always doing this, always doing that, no time to get bored, no time to settle into anything, their habits always chaotic.
I’m a member of the family. I live in the house. But I move around and no one notices me. I can stand over any one of them, doing something, and no one notices. It’s as if I’m not there.
I’m the quiet one of the family, almost insubstantial, it seems to me. I never do anything interesting, never do anything to be noticed. Never do anything ….
‘Listen to me!!!’ I wail, but not a single head is turned. No one notices me at all. It is as if I am but a ghost, a simple spirit wandering through the rooms.
I pass through the wall to yet another room. Spy another member of the family. ‘Look at me!!!!’ I wail, but not even a twitch of recognition.
I return to my bedroom, see my body lying still. Dead three weeks and undiscovered.
‘Will someone please remember me!!!’
© Anthony North, August 2008
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