C'est l'heure de dire adieu

Last week I was thinking about all the nice things about my job that I will miss. I have not had to wait long for a few things to happen to p*ss me off and make me long for the French fields!

A new government tends to galvanise  inactive civil servants into a spurt of action (in fear of their jobs and pensions no doubt!) I remember it when New Labour came into to power and it is no different with the ConDems. A young girl came from the Department of Health to tell us about how things will change. (I know I am too old when I refer to them all as 'young'). Apparently we are going to see fewer acute hospital beds (no change there, every government has tried to do this but no one has worked out yet that the only people misfortunate enough to stay in hospital are those who can't be anywhere else as they are too ill). We are also going to see more services provided closer to home. (Been tried before and in principal everyone agrees with this except services closer to home are more expensive than centralised services). Students are to be told (by whom? the government? ) that they must challenge practises they see that they think are wrong. "Well look what happened to me when I did that" piped up one student. Of course they should challenge but my experience of that is that it makes them unpopular and then they fail their placements. OK they should do it tactfully but they are STUDENTS and, as the word implies, they are still learning. The final one is this new thing that they are going to focus on called re-enablement; except that it is not new but another word for rehabilitation, which we have been doing since the end of the first world war!