Friday, 24 October 2008

Shit I would do if I ran the place: Part one of a series

Screw you, Stephen.
I'm in charge now.

Imagine a beautiful world...one where I raised a standing army of over ten thousand people and stormed the capital. We ran amok on the Hill. We smashed busts of old dead guys. We defaced portraits. We littered. We were not very gentle with spines of the books in Library.
And then we knocked very politely on Stephen's door, very politely tied him up, and very politely dropped him out of the window.
Everybody else ran and screamed. My generals and lieutenants are now installed in the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And myself? I am in charge of this great nation. Please follow along with me over the next few weeks as I solve all of the world's problems, rise to ultimate conquest, and settle down in the French countryside with a flock of chickens and a high-speed Internet connection.

PROBLEM ONE: WE NEED MORE DOCTORS
This may sound crazy, but I'm going to HIRE MORE DOCTORS. How? By making sure that more doctors come out of medical school. Currently, only about one in twenty applicants to Canadian medical schools are accepted. Just lowering that number to one in eighteen or one in seventeen will give no drop in quality but give us an extra few hundred prospective doctors per year. You can't increase output without increasing input.
And, this may also sound crazy, but I'm going to LET PEOPLE WHO ARE DOCTORS BE DOCTORS. As Number 2 put it during House's mad selection process in Season Four, "Schools in my country suffer from not being from this country".
Doctors train all over the world. No one who wants to practice medicine here was trained in Igor's basement lab. They have REAL DEGREES from REAL SCHOOLS. Sure, maybe they need some training to get them acclimated to Canadian health care priorities and exactly how our system works, but they shouldn't need to be driving taxis for four years while they are retaught about the common cold. Training of immigrant doctors will be done on a rotation basis by the chiefs of medicine at major hospitals across the country, and it will take three months. Not three years.
LOOK! C'EST MAGIC! FAMILY DOCTORS FOR EVERYONE! AND WE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO SUBSIDIZE THEIR EDUCATION BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL HERE!

PROBLEM TWO: THE BRITISH IN NORTHERN IRELAND
I know I'm just the prime minister. But seriously. Everyone will listen to me.
Listen up, British individuals. The reason you are in Ireland is because one of your people stirred up shit during the Jacobean era. Seventeen eras later, you're still hanging around. I know there's been peace talks and truces and ceasefires and whatever, but let's not forget that just two decades ago, people were bombing the shit out of each other on account of this centuries-old war. This is a tenuous peace at best, and you know what? Continually occupying Ireland isn't making anyone any happier. So scram. Pack up, move on back to the Motherland, where you can be hailed as a hero who kept those drunken Irish from progressing towards freedom or unity.
Your family has been there for decades, you say? Generations, even? That's fine. Stay there. Write the Irish citizenship test, become a functional member of society, and for heaven's sake, PUT THAT DAMN GUN AWAY.

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