Health Service Wildcat by Victoria N. Furmurry and Donald Rooum (Freedom Press) reviewed by Howard Stangroom

Health Service Wildcat is available from Freedom Press, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX for £2.50 (inc. P&P).

The latest in Donald Rooum’s witty and ascerbic anarchist cartoon series, Health Service Wildcat examines, in the words of the cover, “the daft doctrine that people trained in making profits can provide a better health service than people trained in caring for the sick”. To this end, Donald has brought on board as collaborator, “Victoria N. Furmurry”, a health service care worker whose real name has to be withheld for fear of official reprisals�under present regulations, she could be instantly dismissed for “gross misconduct” in “bringing the service into disrepute”—specifically, telling the truth.

This book pushes my buttons more than the previous Wildcat volumes because I, too, was a health service care worker—a psychiatric nurse of ten years’ standing—until I finally gave up the constant struggle against the pressure to become, in the interests of economy, an unsafe practitioner. I admire people who have the determination I didn’t, who stay within a system now designed to humiliate and destroy both workers and patients, and I particularly admire those who can vent their frustrations with humour and perception�backed, in “Furmurry’s” case, by a huge quantity of justifiable outrage.

Much of what “Furmurry” recounts, however unlikely it looks to the reader, is a matter of public record, and what might seem extreme “fictions” (the official who diverts essential money into lavish furnishings for his office) are, if anything, understatements—from my own experience, I can confirm the existence of a Unit General Manager who issued stern memos cutting all department’s budgets by 50% ... coincidentally, just after he’d blown half the hospital’s budget on gin, cocaine, and rent-boys!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  These strips will both tickle your funnybone and raise your blood-pressure. It’s an amusing book, but at the same time chilling as you grasp the enormity of the callousness and malice permeating the upper echelons of health care at present.

I’ve somewhat slighted Donald Rooum’s contribution to this volume, but heck, the dude’s a diva; what else is there to say?

Buy this. It’s easily the scariest “funny book” you’ll read this year.

Back to Top

Main Page

Contents

Email

Subscribe