Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on funding the NHS, upskirting hysteria and a cure for sweaty armpits - a new car

We live in silly, hysterical times.

Published
The ultimate arm-pit cure

I AM a fan of state medicine. It fixed my hernia, mended my broken leg, safely delivered my daughter and, by regular checks, reduces the chance of me and millions like me suffering the strokes and heart attacks that devastated earlier generations of our families. But the trouble with free health care is that it is insatiable. It always expands to consume every penny we chuck at it.

THE NHS, founded with the simple aim of improving the nation's health, now deals with all sorts of conditions, from tattoo-removal and obesity to alcohol abuse and relationship issues. A report by Citizens Advice in 2015 found that GPs were spending nearly a fifth of their consultation time dealing with non-medical issues.

ON the very day that Theresa May announced more NHS funding, the World Health Organisation added computer-game addiction to its ever-growing list of conditions qualifying for free treatment. And once the computer-addiction clinics are opened, you can bet today's trickle of teenage patients will turn into a flood, especially if the treatment means you can bunk off school. What the NHS needs is not more 21st century syndromes but a hard-nosed reassessment of the treatments it offers, starting with the blunt question: Is this really a health issue?

WHILE most of us treat the NHS responsibly, some do not. In response to the Citizens Advice survey, an anonymous GP wrote of a patient who "attended with sweaty armpits then asked for a letter to say that his mobility car should be upgraded to climate control."

PS: The Guardian reports that in a question-and-answer session at the Labour Live "Jezfest," a former councillor candidate called for "specific mental-health resources for people who have stood in elections and failed to win." Another syndrome is born.

I AM not convinced that upskirting is a great national scourge, nor that a new law is necessary to deal with it. No-one I know has suffered from it and, over the past 40-odd years I can't recall the issue ever being raised by a single reader. But if I am wrong, so be it - on condition that any new law is properly considered. The danger of private member's bills, nodded through the Commons on a quiet afternoon, is that you may end up with a far worse scandal than you set out to cure - in this case people being jailed under laws which have never been discussed by Parliament. Does anybody really want that?

WE live in silly, hysterical times and it was so easy for MPs to display their right-on cred by howling-down the Tory MP and former judge Christopher Chope who halted the upskirt-bill reading by exclaiming "Object!" But Chope, who actually supports the bill, has merely delayed it, not scuppered it. A brief pause for thought will do no harm.

SCOTLAND already has an upskirting law. I can only assume this is because, for obvious reasons, there are twice as many opportunities to commit this offence in Scotland.