The 999 staff are there for you – just don’t expect an ambulance! CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV
Ambulance
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Amputating Alice
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The five most vacuous and insincere words in the language are, ‘I’ll be there for you.’
It’s all the more disturbing that, as Ambulance (BBC1) returned for an 11th series, they appear to have become the unofficial motto of the NHS.
Filmed during strikes by emergency services earlier this year, Ambulance opened with the voice of a mother pleading for help. Her six-year-old daughter had impaled her arm on a spike. The wound was agony but didn’t seem to be immediately life-threatening. And that meant no ambulance. ‘Are you going to make your own way to hospital?’ the call handler asked.
‘There’s no taxis available,’ the mother begged, before a passing samaritan offered to drive them. The 999 call had achieved nothing but to waste vital minutes for the injured child. Moments later, another desperate caller was being fobbed off: ‘You’ve got no other way of getting to the hospital?’
The five most vacuous and insincere words in the language are, ‘I’ll be there for you.’ It’s all the more disturbing that, as Ambulance (BBC1) returned for an 11th series, they appear to have become the unofficial motto of the NHS
Filmed during strikes by emergency services earlier this year, Ambulance opened with the voice of a mother pleading for help
In this case, a neighbour with a car stepped in. When the patient apologised for calling on a strike day – actually apologised for being so ill that he had to dial 999 — the handler replied blithely: ‘We are absolutely here for everybody. So never think that you can’t call us.’
Don’t hesitate to call. They’ll be there for you. They won’t send an ambulance, but, if you can struggle in unaided, there they will be.
One paramedic claimed that the strike was done to help the patients, not leave them in the lurch. ‘Nobody wants to put patients at risk,’ he said. ‘But the reason for striking is to expose that there are not enough crews, not enough staff. At what point do we say we have to do something?’
There’s an obvious answer to that: don’t ‘do something’ selfish and heartless that makes the situation worse.
Nobody disagrees that the ambulance service is stretched to breaking point. But withdrawing that service altogether is an irresponsible and callous way to highlight the problems – one that appears calculated to exert a political stranglehold on the government at the expense of individuals left to suffer or even die.
Bacon bake off of the night
Jane Asher, judging the Chelsea buns on The Royal Borough (Ch5), bit into one to find olive, tomato, anchovy… and bacon.
Well, she did ask for ‘exciting and different’ with ‘a vague resemblance’ to the classic bun.
That’s very vague.
Another worker admitted that pay was really the issue. ‘Everyone’s going on strike because no one can afford to live,’ he said.
That’s a shocking statement, when one of the chief factors for the cost of living crisis is inflation in the aftermath of lockdown. All Britain shut down to ‘save the NHS’ – and the health service workers repay us by going on strike for more money.
The reality is that many in the NHS detest the strikes, but dare not say so for fear of being denounced as ‘scabs’ by union militants. Certainly no one in this episode spoke against industrial action, or even hinted there could be other ways to bring pressure to bear.
For Paralympic swimmer and multiple gold medallist Alice Tai, a night of karaoke ended with an ambulance call-out in the sports documentary Amputating Alice (Ch4).
Alice, 24, had just undergone an operation to remove her deformed and arthritic right leg below the knee, when she slipped and injured her stump.
For Paralympic swimmer and multiple gold medallist Alice Tai, a night of karaoke ended with an ambulance call-out in the sports documentary Amputating Alice (Ch4)
Photos of the open wound were gruesome, but this one-off film didn’t dwell on the trauma and neither did Alice. She had wanted to be rid of the troublesome appendage since her early teens, she said, and when doctors finally agreed it was better to operate, she threw a ‘bye-bye leg party’.
Stoic and determined, she hurled herself back into training as soon as possible, aiming for the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
In a charming finale, we watched Alice triumph both from the poolside and at home with her family, her gran cheering at the television. What a lift for the spirits.
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