isn’t it ironic? don’t you think?
It’s well recognised that when it comes to ‘not getting’ irony, there’s one person who comes in head and shoulders above everyone else: Alanis Morissette. After almost three decades, her hit song ‘Ironic’ from the album Jagged Little Pill remains the punch line for scores of irony-related jokes. Having said that, a couple of the detailed scenarios would come close with more context but perhaps Ms Morissette’s smarter than we credit her as, if the song is truly devoid of any irony, then that is ironic, and justifies the entire song from an grammatical standpoint. There you go, she’s had one over on us all this time. Perhaps.
Personally, being painfully literal I do struggle to recognise irony but even I failed to find any in Louis Theroux’s latest TV interview series where, in the first instalment, he spent time with a group of young far-right, extreme white supremacists. Seeking to avoid the connotations of such terms they clothed all their streamed social media pronouncements and ideals as being both humorous and/or ironic. They were neither and, thankfully, even the ever-tolerant Theroux eventually lost patience with them in the end. Dangerous, pure and simple.
No, for real, proper, full-on irony you need to tune into the Beeb’s tremendous adaptation of former obstetrics & gynaecology (brats & tw*ts dontchaknow) junior registrar, Adam Kay’s ‘This is going to Hurt’. The book was a caustic, warts-and-all unflinching diarising of his time within the NHS and, if anything, the TV adaptation brings home the palpable despair even more sharply. The seven-part series is particularly on-point in detailing the medical errors that can, and do, frequently happen. We need to sit-up and take notice of his wit and irony as no amount of pandemic-pot & pan-banging is actually going to change anything. No, the NHS is not free, it’s free at the point of service. It still needs to be paid for and currently, it isn’t being done so.
Adam Kay openly supports the SOS NHS’s National Day of Action, scheduled for this Saturday. Calling for an immediate £20bn down-payment of emergency funding, here’s how they believe the cash should be spent:
- £9.2bn for essential and immediate backlog maintenance.
- £5bn to tackle the most urgent issues that involve demolition and rebuilding.
- £3bn to reinstate the 5000+ beds that we closed in 2020 for social distancing and that remain unused today.
- £8bn for four years’ mental health service provision.
- £340m. Each 1% increase in pay is estimated to cost £340m, but results in over 80% flowing back to the treasury via tax and increased economic activity. What cost a properly paid workforce?
- £18bn needed to ensure the promised ‘new hospitals’ can be built as planned
These costs obviously equate in the long term to much more than the initial £20bn payment but you get the idea (maybe maths ain’t their thing – ed) of the scale of commitment necessary. Which politician is going to be brave enough to tell us how much income tax is going to have to be raised by? A sticking plaster when all you need is a plaster cast? Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?
