Our wonderful NHS

I'm sitting with my wife at the doctor's surgery. Her appointment was for 3 10. It's now 4, with no sign that she's anywhere near being seen.

The whole point of this post is that this casual contempt with which patients are treated is not remotely out of the ordinary. No one blinks an eyelid at an hour's delay; the receptionist certainly doesn't even think it worth mentioning, let alone apologising.

Let it be said again - it can never be said too often: the NHS is not merely grotesquely inefficient and the most ridiculous anachronism. It is also fundamentally immoral. Were we to have gone to my usual, private, GP, we'd have been treated not as a burden on the smooth running of the practice but as a customer who needs and deserves to be treated with respect. The time has long since come when everyone should be given the power of the purse string, and the NHS rebalanced to give power not to the doctor but the patient.