Having re-read it I think I should have said “triaged” rather than “treated” They were all seen in the triage room withing minutes of arriving while the rest of us waited up to 2-3Hrs. Wwhere they went after that I don’t know, they weren’t sat in the A&E waiting room with the rest of us. I have no problem with the police (apart from my counties appaling firearms department’s performance and lack of knowledge/training). Frontline policing nowadays is a horrible job and I know several ex-officers who couldn’t put up with the wprking conditions and lack of support any longer.
Thanks for the clarity. If the officers have a ‘troublesome customer’ they are sometimes moved to a side room whilst waiting to be seen, so as not to cause unnecessary worry or risk to members of the public. Whilst those with serious injuries should obviously be given priority (which the triage facility ensures), I personally think that the Police should be given the next priority in A&E so that they can get on with processing the person in custody and move on to another 999 call, especially when a lot of members of the public in A&E shouldn’t be there, but have turned up out of frustration at not being able to get a GP appointment. However, in our policing area they get no priority whatsoever and can waste an entire shift waiting in A&E.
My daughter has had situations where she has arrested a drink driver as her first job on shift, gone to A&E as the airbag was deployed, and waited there so long that she’s had to hand over to other officers at the end of a 10 hour shift as they are still waiting to be seen. Meanwhile, there are incidents elsewhere that require a Police response that cannot be dealt with due to lack of available officers. This is just one of many examples of broken Britain.
As this moves us on to what it’s like living in Britain in 2025, I’d add to that issue;
A broken health service – no shortage of cash thrown at it (in fact I’d say too much) and it encourages inefficiency. A reluctance to change. Too many GPs working part time (IMO the biggest reason why we struggle to get appointments).
Out of control immigration – Starmer said he would fix it and a year in to his premiership it’s got worse and grown to record levels. The rapid growth in our population in recent years has probably been the biggest contributor to broken Britain, as it’s put an unsustainable demand on our health service, welfare system and criminal justice system. The biggest worry is that we will never recover from this and it will adversely affect many generations to come.
Crumbling infrastructure – the degradation of our roads and pothole issue is well documented, but have you noticed all the weeds growing against all the kerbs everywhere? They aren’t sprayed anymore. Years ago, when I went abroad and saw these things, and how scruffy some places looked, it made me feel grateful to live in a country where we cared about such things. Now we don’t. Our village was starting to look so bad that I have taken to spraying the weeds against the kerbs along our whole road, and we now have the only tidy looking road in the village!
Broken Political system – For a democracy to function well you need an effective government and a robust opposition. Sadly, we have neither.
I could go on, but I’m depressing myself writing this, so I’ll end with a positive 😂. The one thing that I really like about living in Britain is the weather! Yes, seriously! I couldn’t live in a country that was always hot or had weather extremes. Our summers are usually bearable. Our winters aren’t problematic, as snowfall is rare and short lived. I like our climate and I’ve never visited another country where I’ve thought “I’d rather live here”!