Taken hostage by the NHS

The sentiment applies

Our National Health Service (NHS) is a national treasure sacred cow, many of us owe our lives and health to the amazing professionals who in their qualifications and humanity go the extra mile to attend to ills and ailments that afflict us in life.

Personally, the NHS has served me well from the moment I took my first breath with the alacrity that impressed upon them to immediately find means for me to survive and thrive when I was born just around the end of the second trimester.

Besides, where I meet the NHS for acute health services from the annual influenza vaccinations to the biannual consultations for long-term care, the NHS is an efficiently run outfit with appointments made, patients promptly seen to, and activities executed with despatch.

Another place in time

Much as that selfless service remains, at Accident and Emergency (A&E), the accident of having to visit the hospital is not met with the emergency that one would somewhat expect. The NHS becomes a Never Hurried Situation (NHS) of the immediacy of triage but the interminable wait for consultation with a doctor.

We are kept in the waiting room suffering to varying degrees on seating that should never be used for more than a few minutes for hours on end, expectant and hoping for one’s name to be called to see the doctor just as the system works the clock to ensure that the statistical waiting time is at least 6 hours after arrival, though waiting for over 9 hours was the reality.

You are caught in a Necessitated Hostage Setting (NHS) because your need for the service provided by the A&E compels you to exercise patience as a patient, you cannot leave before you are seen to and if you leave you lose your place and are left unsure of the reason why you sought the service in the first place.

Invariably, you are a hostage of circumstances beyond your control as the medical review you require is not one acquired through self-help even if you were a medical practitioner.

Help is needed

Is there any wonder that when I looked at the board of operational efficiency figures of the said hospital, only one out of the 12 or so indicators met the required standard and yet, someone with a great sense of humour had posters put up in the waiting room asking for our feedback. How likely are you to recommend our services to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment? Surely, you are kidding me.

Poster in the A&E waiting room at Manchester Royal Infirmary 

Yet, we should be grateful for small and great mercies, we left assured that all is well. A few adjustments are required but nothing to fear, our NHS creaks, yet still delivers. It could be way better, it is the kind of experience you rarely ever want to relive, if you could help it.

In embassies of embarrassment

Done without a fuss

This morning, I had an appointment at the British Consulate in Cape Town for 9:00AM. It was just a kilometre from our apartment and with a brisk walk, I was at the reception with 10 minutes to spare. The wait to get registered was exacerbated by people ahead of me who appeared to be unsure of why they were in the building and then by staff at the consulate itself acting like Pinky and Perky trying to discover my name from the appointment sheet.

Once I was let in, I filled in the CoVID-19 monitoring sheet along with my mobile phone number in a space that was not designated for that information but had to be entered by their instruction. Next, I rang the bell at the service counter and a very pleasant and friendly lady appeared, asked for what I was after, took a pre-typed form from the tray signed it and stamped it. My official purpose was done.

She wished me well as we had a little chat about my getting married, I was out of the building at 9:05 AM.

Moribund systems of angst

My consulate experience was easy, quick, and efficient. Then I learnt of another involving the US Consulate that required a payment for which there were no electronic payment systems that the person had to make a 10-hour round-trip to Cape Town just to make that payment. Bureaucracies can be completely insufferable and frustrating.

Just to the North of South Africa is Zimbabwe, and one would expect with a consulate in Cape Town, no one will suggest you must return to Zimbabwe to obtain a document you need for an activity in South Africa. That assumption was shot to bits when an official did say a document should first be obtained from the country and then brought to the consulate for certification.

There is no logical sense to this and apparently, no recourse to any alternative arrangements as it seems, the bureaucratic systems bequeathed to many Commonwealth states by the British have become beacons of red tape inertia, completely impervious to improvement or progress.

My experiences indicate

It reminds me of when I visited India in 2011 and the visa acquisition process was so fraught that my European or British citizenship almost counted for nothing that the pertinent information, they required related to that of my parents and I was already in my forties. Whilst it was eventually sorted out in 5 days, there was a likelihood of an 8-week processing time and I paid the processing fee a Nigerian would have paid, even though my passport was British.

However, in my experience, British consulates have been helpful and efficient. I would presume my status and standing gives me those privileges. Even in Nigeria over 30 years ago, it was a breeze for me when it might have been an ordeal for others. I knew why I was there, I had everything needed to request what I wanted, formalities were quickly dispensed with and we settled into banter and small talk with raucous laughter. It could be better for others too.

Nigeria: My last flight from the motherland

Last view of Nigeria

We arrived almost 6 hours behind schedule, that was my last direct experience of Nigeria after our flight to London Heathrow was delayed for just about the length of time it would have taken for our flight to be entering the French airspace and for each hour of delay no one could clearly state when we were going to depart.

The Murtala Muhammed International Airport was probably a different place, and Nigeria Airways was probably one of the safest airlines in the world, though from the vantage point of my residence; just a wall separated us from the runway in Shasha-Akowonjo, Lagos we could very well have our finger on the pulse of the country.

A lull in air traffic almost definitely meant there was a military putsch in process, whether it would fail or succeed was another thing. At other times that would bring water to one’s eyes, there was nights of power cuts to the airport, that then was redolent of the systemic malfunctioning environment that Nigeria had become.

Factored in the end

In my somewhat successful professional life as a company director, a desktop publishing expert and trainer, it was rent seekers who always thought they deserved a share of my invoices even though they were well paid for doing their jobs.

A few days before my departure, I was sat in a police station for almost 6 hours trying to get my staff out on bail because my bumbling business partner felt he had the power to wield with impunity whilst lacking the courtesy to inform me of why my staff had been corralled with others on the false accusation of theft.

When I finally gained the release of my staff, I had parted with 500 Naira and signed a legal document that said nothing of the sort had happened.

A changed Nigeria

The promise of Nigeria of my youth was no longer looking like the dreams we once had, it had become nightmarish and ghoulish, a caricature of itself as it was being mismanaged by yet another military junta that once appeared to be a salvation to Nigerians but was in fact the demise of everything that was good and lovely of our dear motherland.

Other little things I could handle, the lack of attention to detail, poor timekeeping, sometimes supercilious buffoons who had come into money and power, not to talk of the pretences that were exhibited in hedonism and ostentation, but that is typically Nigerian.

An alien to many

However, one thing always stood out in my almost 19 year Nigerian experience, I was never really accepted as one of the many, even though my accent which had a West Midlands sound had softened to a non-descript mishmash of experiences in England and Northern Nigeria, it still betrayed an otherness that people immediately picked up on and used to either castigate or excuse me.

To many, even close relations, I was always going to be the boy born abroad, no matter how adapted to Nigeria I was, though on the matter of integration, there were just some customs I was never going to absorb.

Maybe we had a brashness, a boldness, a precociousness, a forwardness, a sometimes lack of reverence, definitely an absence of obsequiousness and much else that annoyed a few as it won recognition from others, something set us apart.

Honesty still the best policy

Having visited England just over a month before after an interesting visa interview that left the consulate officer quite surprised that I was not driven to abscond, but return to what I enjoyed doing in Nigeria, our discussion became one of sharing experiences of the penchant of certain Nigerians to lie at interviews and lie again to cover other lies that the interviewer is literally embarrassed for both the Nigerian and themselves.

Yet, it was an eye-opener that showed that there was a place where I could belong, feel at ease and even thrive without the inconveniences that were the Nigerian narrative.

When I returned to the embassy a month later, it was a breeze to get the Entitlement to the Right of Abode because the queue for getting a British passport in Nigeria was a good 18 months long - I had no time for that.

Disillusioned at home

However, this amongst many other things became how along with many of my generation, we left Nigeria disillusioned young people to build our lives elsewhere - the sad thing is that of the many that left, probably most have never returned.

That was 24 years ago today for me, but it has not diminished my desire for Nigeria to be a better place, to be better run, for the people to have better opportunities and a great pride in a Nigeria we once knew worked, in a fashion.

Long live Nigeria and may it be liberated from the grip of an unconscionable kakistocracy that has no desire for a great future beyond what it does for their bellies.

Thought Picnic: Living without an identity for 4 hours

I’m impressed

Despite the sometimes negative reports about tardy and inefficient passport processing activities at the government establishment that has gone through too many name changes for me to be bothered anymore, my three visits to the Home Office – Identity & Passport Service (IPS) have left me with no reason to complain.

In fact, the first was not a visit but it was when I changed my Nigerian passport for a British passport decades ago.

Time and cost

I decided against getting a British passport in Nigeria because the waiting time was 18 months though it would have cost me less than a fifth of what it costs to get the Entitlement to the Right of Abode (ERA) in my Nigerian passport but a waiting time of 3 weeks – I was planning on leaving Nigerian in 4 weeks.

For a few years, I got by with using my Nigerian passport in the UK until when returning from a visit to the Netherlands, the two of us Nigerian ERA passports became vectors of abuse because at the French customs held onto our passports for 90 minutes whilst they wondered if we were British enough to return home or not – that did it for me.

Quick and efficient

After a bit of procrastination, I filled in the forms and posted all the documents required on a Tuesday in London, by Saturday the letter dropped through my letterbox with a British passport – no interviews, no delays just efficiency – I was both shocked and surprised whilst glad I did not have to visit every embassy on God’s own earth to travel.

10 years later, I was living in the Netherlands and we are supposed to carry some form of identification with us at all times, though in the almost 13 years that I lived in the Netherlands, I never once was stopped in the streets to show my papers.

In fact, after 5 years of living in the Netherlands, you do have the option to chuck in whatever passport you have for a Dutch one. In my case, having a British passport does get you into more countries by default than any other passport.

Away from home

Again, I filled in the forms, visited the consular office in Amsterdam and was advised to return to pick up the new passport in 3 days despite the fact that old one had expired for weeks.

The only difference with this passport was that it had a Dutch issuing office but that seemed to faze one Dutch immigration clerk and I was left aghast at his ignorance.

In any case, my passport was to expire in November, but because of my travels, certain visas require I have at least 6 months left to run on my passport.

Time and cost again

I thought it best to consider renewing my passport before the summer holiday season when the passport office seems to be swamped with applications from travellers who have left it too late to get a passport with their holidays at the risk of being forfeited – I cannot live with that kind of stress.

The passport office offers a number of services for passport renewal, Premium 1-day service (4-hour turn-around), the Fast Track 1-week service or the normal service which could take up to 3 weeks or more.

You can trust that I weighed the consequences of time and cost like I did decades ago in Nigeria and I went for the Premium 1-day, which came to a fraction less than the cost of the normal service.

Village photographs on city forms

Whereas the normal service can be done through the post with some post offices offering and check-and-send service, the other two services require you visit a regional Identity & Passport Service office – working in North Wales, the nearest for my convenience was Liverpool.

What surprised me was my local post office in North Wales did not stock the passport forms, I had to visit a major city to pick up the forms, the first of which I made a mistake on, the second was wrongly guillotined and I finally decided on getting two forms and filling them separately at different times to minimise error.

Then for regulation photographs to go with my passport, the Chinese photographer who took the first set of pictures had me looking the palest shade of sick, I needed to try another photographer; that set was more vibrant in colour and after getting a few opinions, I decided on that set.

The essence of presence

I booked an appointment for a week in advance for 10:00AM in Liverpool and made sure my hotel was as close to the office as I could get.

We were not to arrive at the IPS office earlier than 10 minutes to the appointed time, I was there on-time, passed through security, checked-in at the reception and my ticket was called with 5 minutes – the checks took less than 5 minutes, I paid for the service and was asked to return in 4 hours for the new passport.

The collection time as set as 14:05 from the counter and that was to coincide with 4 hours from the moment payment was made.

New passport

I did return at a few minutes past 2:00PM and the security personnel observed that I had changed from a red tie to a white-speckled black day cravat – my passport was ready.

I was only without an identity document for 4 hours, it makes you wish other agencies like this for other countries were just as efficient, maybe I should resist the temptation of mentioning Nigeria – Sorry, I did.

I forgot to mention, the months left to run on my old passport were added to my new 10-year passport, you are allowed up to 9 months.

Incredible India: Tasks, Buttons and Fashion Suicides

Many to the few

Going into town yesterday, I once again saw a reaffirmation of my earlier observation of the Indian workforce where there seems to be men for tasks rather than jobs.

I walked into a gentlemen’s outfitters and asked if they had day cravats, an assistant was immediately available and before I knew it, there were 30 cravats laid out before me from the garish to the demure – I tend towards the latter.

Then I wanted matching pocket squares and it became evident that a man’s distinction and discrimination of colour hues is not as developed as that of the female species. We settled for nearness rather than exactness, that was fine by me.

Hand to hand to hand

After I had agreed on what I wanted, we walked up to the cashier; well, I thought it was one cashier but there were two men sat behind the desk.

The first scanned the items and totted up the figures announcing it to his counterpart; I then counted out the money, handed it to the assistant who handed it to the first cashier and this was passed on to the second cashier.

The second cashier first checked the money under the ultra-violet light then counted the money, wrote out a receipt and then counted out the change.

The first cashier having seen that the transaction was completed, gave the assistant a bag in which to carry the goods and there ended my shopping experience in that store.

The division of labour that allows for jobs to be broken into tasks does not make for efficiency whilst it might compensate for the conspiracy of honesty in an impoverished environment.

The snobbery of buttons

I decided to stroll around Connaught Place which is a circular shopping area with the Central Park in the middle. There was a shop that did mostly shirts but when I noticed that the mannequin bedecked in a suit had all the buttons on the jacket done up my tendency to the facetious was too heightened to contemplate stepping in if the pretensions to high fashion left out the minor detail proper fashion sense.

I cannot seem to forget the saying reputedly of the late dressmaker to the Queen, Sir Hardy Amies; “Never trust a man with all his buttons done up.” There are times I have purposefully asked the fully buttoned up to undo the last button but it is an unhealthy snobbish inclination to judge a man by his clothes and to feel less of him by reason of doing up all his buttons; as for those who allow their trousers to sag; if I have much else to say to them, it would be, “Pull up your trousers, young man.”

Fashion victims can be rescued, fashion suicides are beyond salvation – the former can undo their buttons, the latter showing their cack-ridden underwear with their dawdle walk, you can only wonder.

The Mark of the Beast

Vorsprung durch Technik

We all got familiar with the German punch line Vorsprung durch Technik in the Audi adverts of the early nineties – whilst it means Progress Through Technology, it has also become representative of German efficiency.

This weekend, I witnessed two perspectives of this generalisation that has been contestable and can be easily debunked by views of other people, but I stand my ground.

Yesterday afternoon in the Kreuzberg district, there was a whole parade of floats representing all countries contesting in the World Cup.

Sweep them away

Even cynics have to agree that the German do have a word for fun – spass – and they do have fun, flag waving, load chants, friendliness and camaraderie.

Unfortunately, this about to be destroyed by another poorer sight of Germany – adherents of National Socialism who in their quest for racial purity, take civilisation and civility out of humanity and send the human race back to Gorillas in the midst. Regrettable!

Anyway, I walked up the road towards the tail-end of this procession and there, people were sweeping, cleaning as road sweepers moved in tandem clearing up after the procession.

Basically, behind those trucks it was like nothing had ever happened before. I had seen this activity once before as I watched a pride procession of floats disappear towards the East, now, I know that it is all part of the arrangements for street parades. That is efficient.

Leaving on a train again

So, on my way back from Berlin, I got to my seat just in time, which was occupied by a couple who should have been in an entirely different part of the train, but as the doors had closed, and there was no interconnecting link between the joined-up trains, they had to wait till the next stop.

I tried as much as I could to find them alternative seating arrangements, but in the end, they walked the length of this end of the train to bring them into proximity of the other to be able switch trains at the next stop.

There are probably 8 or so stops between Berlin and my change-over station Duisburg. However, in a journey of the duration of just about 4 hours, it is reasonable to have ones tickets checked twice.

But just as we approached Duisburg and we were quite close, because announcements for the station had been made and everyone stopping off had already moved towards the exits, along comes a third conductor.

Miffed with Jobsworthy

I remonstrated, I have already shown my ticket twice from Berlin, but he insisted on seeing them regardless, I could have just refused and had him get off with me at Duisburg, but I could not be bothered anymore, so I opened my bag retrieved my ticket and had it stamped again by Conductor Jobsworthy.

Suffice it to say, I was quite miffed, but this not my idea of efficiency nor is it the right way to go about massaging employment figures. Well that is another side of German efficiency.

Convenience is what I need

However, it then struck me that I would prefer to have a situation when my ticket was checked once and soon after that, any subsequent conductor just knows it has been done.

The convenience of not being bothered by anyone and ensuring everything is just so, like, walk into a shop, purchase whatever you want, the till is your exit with the tags on your goods charged to the account read from the chip embedded in you.

Instant identification for the ultimate convenience and computers churn away in global data warehouses linking your whereabouts to your lifestyle, your purchases to your purchasing capability and your life risk ratio is computed against your health data to ascertain your comprehensive insurance premium automatically charged at the computer’s discretion.

The global Patriot Act

Who you meet; what you say and wherever you do is private; until you hit an inconvenience threshold. That brings on the scrutiny of eyes bigger than Jupiter.

The product is complete convenience driven by unsurpassed efficiency, everyone wants it, not knowing that the Mark of the Beast it the hallmark of convenience – we are not far from that day.