NHS choices

Recently, those public-spirited folks at the department of health spent £3.6 million on something dear to all of our hearts.

A new website - NHS choices.

I can only assume from the cost that the project was started in the early 1980s before the internet existed, that they selected fifty or so destitute children at that time to do it, and paid each of them through infancy, childhood, and adulthood so they could eventually be ready for the awesome responsibility of doing things as the government like them to be done.

In this case, that means taking a website which was quite shit already and making it (a) even more shit and (b) about as embarrassing as having your auntie Mabel round for tea and realising your flatmate has scattered hardcore pornography around the livingroom.

I can't decide what my favourite bit is.

First there's the teenage sex advice section, which is hilarious in a sorry-Auntie-they're-nothing-to-do-with-me-yes-that-does-look-sore kind of way:

The test is titled:
"Reckon you have more front than Jordan in the bedroom? Take our seX-rated test to find out how much you know"

Question 1 is "How far would you go on a first date?"
Question 4 is "What would you do if you have a green frothing discharge?"

Way to keep those teenagers sucked in, fellas!

Don't the girls in the photo look a bit - well - young to you? I'm all for sexual education starting young - but for those kids to be finding the NHS choices website, they must be googling "Calum Best gonorrhoea breakfast Flopsy", in which case I would suggest they're beyond help - and know more about sex already than whatever ex-management consultant who believes he's down wit-da-kids wrote this shit.

Almost as entertaining is the "What your GP is reading" link from the same search (no, it didn't involve any of the terms above, particularly not "Calum Best") which comes up with something on family interventions to prevent smoking in children:
"The results are not quite as mixed as the trial designs but the results are not always clear or consistent. However, it is likely that some family based interventions are better than nothing at reducing the risk that a child will become a smoker as they grow older."

Believe me, your GP is not reading that, although they would certainly read it before anything else on NHS choices.

This abomination is all part of the government's drive towards "choice". If you'll bear with me while I go with that metaphor for a while, in this case the driver didn't have to sit a test
(and so believes that other specialised activities can and should be carried out by people not trained to do them) and they'll be long gone by the time you realise they've written off your car.

Buried in the pilot studies which the DoH appear to believe justify this crap (they're stuffed with terms like "building capacity", "leveraging existing capacity", and "positive attitudes towards offering choice") is the telling phrase:
"No effect on the referral pathways was shown, with most patients still opting for their local hospital."

So the government has pressed ahead with three-point-six-million quid of your money for something their own research has shown that you don't care about and won't make any difference to where you opt to go!

Doubles and trebles all round, eh? Oh, sorry - what were you drinking?