In writing We’re British, Innit it was hard to avoid including an entry on the National Health Service, as it is one of the largest employers in the UK (and, indeed, the world), it is a major plank of British society and its nurses provided the inspiration for many a Carry On film. So, the reforms of the NHS announced yesterday are an important turning point for Britain and the healthcare of Brits.

Ostensibly, the changes hand more control to GPs, though in effect the control passes from Primary Care Trusts to groups of GP surgeries. A massive and costly redundancy programme will see strategic planning staff and administrators set up their own businesses or be sucked up by larger businesses that will administer the process of procurement of services by GP surgeries. There is little doubt that this is an ideological move rather than a cost cutting move. The Conservative Party have always been ideologically opposed to the NHS as is. After all, the party includes the likes of Daniel Hannan, who slates the NHS at any opportunity and David Cameron has seen fit to meet with the wingnuts at Nurses For Reform, who see the market as the only solution to sorting out healthcare in the UK.

These changes will enact a process not dissimilar to a cross between rail and power company privatisation, leaving the NHS divided and vulnerable to buy outs from large corporations and overseas investors. Andrew Lansley has promised a ‘no decision about me without me approach’, but when the decisions about drugs and treatment are being made by a US healthcare giant or a business owned by a French investment bank (which can and will buy out the smaller GP consortia) then you can be sure that you will not get the treatment that your National Insurance and Income Tax has been paying for all these years.

Wherever there is a profit motive then public service has to reduce exponentially to meet the need for that profit. It is simple economics. Will those with underlying conditions find their GP spend limited upon moving to a new GP and GP consortia? And will you find those drugs that work for you unexpectedly switched for a slightly less effective generic? Not now, but maybe later. You need only look at healthcare for the poor to lower middle classes in the US for your clues. Even those who pay private health insurance are not guaranteed a decent service. That is preserved for premium customers.

One of the great pleasures (or displeasures, on occasion) of being a writer is meeting and getting to know other writers. This also means you get to plug their books and talk a little about how good they are. It so happens that three such friends have had books published in recent weeks, so here is a little round up.

First, mostly due to the fact I love it and the back cover has a quote from yours truly, is Vic Templar’s Taking Candy From a Dog. This is the part memoir, part fiction tale of a very ordinary boy, living a very ordinary life in a very ordinary part of Kent, yet it is also one of the most touching and hilarious books you could wish to read about life as a child. It is warm without being cloying and funny without being too knowing. It is even printed in loving crafted editions by an independent publisher with an eye for the best new authors. It is a tale of picnics, wasps, summers that last forever, Wimbledon, Fred Perry, the Buzzcocks, Gillingham FC and family life in the 1970s. This is a promo video that Vic made for it.

Talking of promo videos, my friend Stewart Home made what he claims was the first promo video for a book way back in 1993. That was for his book No Pity, which you can see below. You can read a 1999 interview of Stewart by me here.

Stewart’s zillionth book, Blood Rites of the Bourgeoisie has just been published by BookWorks and is a kind of extreme feminist abstract art manifesto brought to you via the medium of spam emails. It is as filthy as it is funny, with Home spamming the lists of art curators, art press and artists that used to spam him, only with twisted interpretations of what they want to hear. Home is one of the few avant garde novelists with staying power in British literature and defies categorisation. You may enjoy his early skinhead-punk-hippie-(anti)anarcho-marxist novels, you may enjoy his cultural theory books, his avant garde essays or simply just read the rude bits. But you will realise that he is something special and unique.

Last but no means least is Ian Vince, who writes about comic matters in his various books, such as his travelogue about a trip on a milk float. His latest book is all about Britain. It is a geological exploration of what lies beneath the land we walk on every day and is entitled The Lie of the Land. Ian has also set up a British Landscape Club for all those who share his interest in making geology more interesting. I have not had a chance to read it yet, but am sure that Ian’s amusing tone and enjoyment of the trivial shines through to make an entertaining read.

Interesting post today on the British Library’s Sound Recordings Blog, which explores the term ‘innit’. Obviously this word is one I have looked into a great deal, mostly during the writing of We’re British, Innit. I first came across it being used by members of the Greek community (immigrants and second generation) in Thanet, where I grew up. Though I do have some memory of it being in use in Cockney and London/Kent English before that, especially as depicted in uses of slang in popular culture.

You can hear it being used by, I think, Keith Moon, in this very odd 1966 Who track. Though there are examples in film going back to the 1950s at least.