wtffashionshark

Hallo Readers,

The NHS is sick and Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health, is making it sicker. His smug expression and NHS pin prominently displayed in his lapel certainly make WTF sick. That Hunt has got through a single day of his tenure without someone sticking that pin right where it hurts is a mystery to rival the Bermuda triangle. Now the patient (the NHS, not Hunt) is on life support and the machine is emanating those loud bleeps that bring doctors racing down the corridor shouting “Charlie. bring the crash cart!” 

In the 2015 manifesto, the Tories promised a 7-day NHS. The NHS should provide the same level of services every day, including weekends, because people fall sick 7 days a week, and it is harder to find a consultant or get an operation on weekends. Junior doctors – and that means anyone who is not a consultant – currently get paid a pittance for 5 days and extra for weekends. Hunt’s proposals entail that junior doctors will now spread their shifts over the whole week. This will mean that already understaffed hospital doctors will have to spread their existing workforce across 7 day shifts for less money, further endangering patient care. The proposals will already have a disproportionate effect on those who work part time because they have child care responsibilities or look after disabled or elderly relatives, as they tend to work weekends when it is easier for them to get others to help with their domestic responsibilities. Negotiations brokered a deal in the summer but it was rejected by the membership 58% to 42% on a turnout of 68%. Now doctors are upping the ante and have announced a series of 5 day strikes, one a month until Christmas. Predictably they have been denounced by the right wing press as middle class militants concerned only about the money. Less predictably, Hunt has compared the attacks on himself to those on Nye Bevan who set up in the NHS in 1948 in the teeth of opposition from most of the doctors of the day (but not WTF’s dad, who voted for it). To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle – Jeremy, you’re no Nye Bevan.

Meanwhile, we have the case of Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust which provides mental health services for the leafy shires of Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Hundreds of unexpected patient deaths were not properly investigated between 2011 and 2015. Lucrative contracts were awarded to consultancy firms run by former associates of the CEO, Katrina Percy, in some cases without their having to bid for them. However, those in charge of this shambles are doing nicely. Ms Percy received an annual package worth £240,000. The COO’s and Medical Director’s annual packages were about £350,ooo. The Trust Board’s salaries and benefits rose over the past 2 years by 60% whilst nurses, midwives and health visitors were cut by 30%. 

After an 18 year old man with learning difficulties was found dead in the bath of the unit supposedly caring for  him, a death which was wholly preventable, Ms Percy clung on to office for months but this week she announced that she was leaving her post “due to ongoing media attention”, translated as continuing interest in her outrageous refusal to take responsibility for the Trust she was paid a fortune to run. But will she suffer financially? Of course not. She is taking up a consultancy post in the self-same Trust offering GPs “strategic advice” for the same salary and benefits. So whilst junior doctors are asked to do more for less, Ms Percy is going to do less for the same. But then, as WTF has often pointed out, these people do not do shame. 

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The week’s designer dung is all from the Video Music Awards where horror was in abundance. We start with singer Cassie, wearing a Balmain jacket and Gucci trousers.

The jacket is great. But there needs to be something underneath it. WTF has a marked dislike of trousers with no feet emanating from the bottom of them. Like these ones. Questions also have to be asked about the hair, which seems to have been dipped into a bowl of neon custard.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell, wearing Brandon Maxwell.

Brandon Maxwell is the man who made a fool out of FLOTUS by putting her into a wholly unflattering white shroud.  And now he has conned the ever-lovely Naomi into wearing this creation, so that she seems to be behind a draylon dining chair. And that split! How much vaginal ventilation does a girl need?

Actress Dascha Polanco wearing Yuna Yang.

Dascha is always complaining that designers do not provide her with Red Carpet clothing so she clearly improvised, winding a length of blue satin around her chest and pulling on a pair of jeans. With unsatisfactory results.

Actor Ansel Elgort, wearing who knows what?

Michael Jackson did this better. 30 years ago. Ansel should detach the chain and use it to set about his stylist. No jury on earth would convict.

Singer Bebe Rexha wearing Bryan Hearns.

This is like some glamorised fantasy whiplash – diamanté neck and tit dressings with matching miniskirt. And are those boots or compression bandages? Yurgle.

Model Stella Maxwell wearing Moschino and Jeremy Scott, Moschino’s designer,  wearing himself.

Stella is looking very swirly and WTF cannot abide a conical tit, least of all when it doubles up as an archery board. Jeremy looks like one of those cheap Peruvian rugs and his pose is preposterous, as if squatting over a hole-in-the-floor toilet. He has also, like Cassie, forgotten his shirt.

As you can imagine, there was no shortage of contenders for our new feature, Sheer Tedium.  We start with a regular, singer and new presenter of America’s Next Top Model Rita Ora, wearing Marc Jacobs.

Rita resembles some prehistoric animal that came off worst in a fight with a raptor. She would also do well to recall what happened to Naomi Campbell when she tottered down Vivienne Westwood’s runway in similarly foolish footwear.

Singer Nicki Minaj, wearing Bao Tranchi.

Like a giant ink blot with bosoms. Nicki is right to look stricken. Her expression matches the one on those of appalled onlookers in fear of an imminent Minge Moment. WTF hates a visible groin line almost above all things…. 

Singer Beyoncé, wearing Francesco Scognamilio.

Beyoncé’s head appears to be poking out of a big bird’s bottom and regardless of whether she is wearing panties, she appears not to be, which is bad. Faux-minge is as disturbing as the real thing, sartorially speaking.

Finally, and appallingly, we have YouTube sensation Baddie Winkel aged 88. Mind how you go with this one….

There is body confidence. And there is what the fuck are you doing? This is the latter. Stick sparkle is one thing. Minge sparkle is quite another. As for the orthopaedic wedge booties, WTF prefers not to speak of them.