{"id":688149,"date":"2026-07-12T20:13:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T20:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688149\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T20:13:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T20:13:27","slug":"are-you-disabled-and-patronised-welcome-to-my-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688149\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you disabled and patronised? Welcome to my world"},"content":{"rendered":"

On reading the news that the NHS <\/a>is planning to launch a scheme next year which will reward people for taking exercise \u2013 to be precise, walking for 30 minutes a day \u2013 I\u2019m afraid I made a very disrespectful noise.<\/p>\n

The shortcomings of the National Health Service were exposed in recent headlines about the simple business of ensuring as many women as possible aren\u2019t traumatised by having a so called \u201cnatural\u201d birth imposed on them, with the higher mortality rate that has historically gone with it, making this nanny-knows-best babyfication of the adult population seem particularly inappropriate.\u202f<\/p>\n

The \u201cmarathon a month\u201d challenge aims to have people walking 26 miles in that time; the ubiquitous \u201csmart phone\u201d or \u201csmart watch\u201d will apparently be used to offer up yet more information to the authorities about the correctness of our behaviour.<\/p>\n

Defenders of the scheme will doubtless point out that prevention is better than cure, and that encouraging people to take exercise now will save tax-payers a fortune in the future. But this prudence seems highly prejudiced and cheese-paring. The NHS wastes a huge amount of money<\/a>, on everything from a vast bureaucracy (the world\u2019s largest quango, NHS England, is widely believed to have contributed to the longest waiting times<\/a>, lowest patient satisfaction and most expensive NHS in history) to the disposal of masses of single-use equipment, creating 156,000 tonnes of waste produced by the NHS every year in England alone.<\/p>\n

Nobody wants to return to the days when hand-washing on the part of surgeons was thought to be wildly over-fastidious, but the mass disposal of, say, walking aids makes no sense, unless you have a fetish for licking them. Harmonic shears \u2013 surgical devices which seal patients\u2019 wounds using ultrasound waves \u2013 cost more than \u00a3500, but 90 per cent are gaily chucked away after one use. <\/p>\n

All this while basic hygiene is frequently neglected; anyone who has used an NHS ward toilet recently will raise an eyebrow at the idea that hospitals are sparklingly clean, sterile environments. Wes Streeting said it well: \u201cBecause the NHS deals in the billions, too often it doesn\u2019t think about the millions. That has to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

But back to the pets-win-prizes plan. The BBC website seems in two minds about who will be paying the piper, reporting both that, \u201cWhen it comes to funding, the NHS is covering the initial set\u2011up, but the wider plan is to draw in philanthropic backing from major corporates as the scheme rolls out\u201d. \u201cHealth officials say the NHS will not be paying for the rewards. They say the NHS in England will be in partnership with other organisations from public and private sector who will run the scheme.\u201d Call me suspicious-minded, but I\u2019m not crazy about that \u201cinitial set-up\u201d bit.\u202f<\/p>\n

Individuals working for the NHS are the best people I\u2019ve ever met, from the healthcare assistants I was cared for by during six months in hospital to the community nurses who have looked after me<\/a> since I came out. But I find the way the organisation is led to be much less satisfactory.<\/p>\n

The scheme is being developed in partnership with the Olympic medallist Sir Brendan Foster, who sounds a straightforward fellow, to be polite: \u201cI\u2019m known for running, but the ambition here is far simpler. We just want people to walk. Simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not simple. What about my lame brethren, who simply cannot walk for half an hour a day? Those on crutches, walkers and in wheelchairs? Don\u2019t we get a sugar-free biscuit and a pat on the head too? Shame! Still, at least the able-bodied are now getting a taste of how it feels to be patronised the way we cripples are. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On reading the news that the NHS is planning to launch a scheme next year which will reward…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[4226,141822,102,2960,104,6605,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-688149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-disability","tag-disabled","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-nhs","tag-nhs-england","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}