These Boots are made for privatising

How ironic that I publicise my beef against the flaky ABC pharmacy group when along comes the BIG financial story of the week.

Anyone who knows that I had a previous life as a pill-pusher will know that I have jaundiced and vocal views of many aspects of my first profession. My arrows of wrath are particularly directed at the retail sector, now known as the ‘community’ sector – that’s yer actual dear little local shops. And if you hadn’t noticed, the independent pharmacy, with its kindly white-coated pharmacist who has knowledge and time to help is more endangered than the polar bear. And why is that? Because the phalanx of cash-rich multiples, who I won’t deign to mention, just come along and buy up the NHS contract of the independent pharmacy and start to crunch numbers and targets for high-tech pharmacists to attain. The result is just a pleasant memory of a kindly white-coated pharmacist with knowledge and time to help.

Just 7 months ago two of these pharmacy giants, Alliance-Unichem and Boots, merged to form a multi-billion pound empire. The architect of that plan, Signor Pissonia, is now plotting with KKK, a private Equity group, to take this fledgling behemoth into private hands.

So, on top of the £1.3bn Pissonia made from the previous merger he would now will make millions more through this leveraged buyout. And let’s not forget Pissonia’s fellow directors who are probably rushing around with stiffies and getting hypertensive at the thought of private equity riches for their already bulging pockets.

Oh, and let’s forget the ‘little’ people who work so hard for Alliance-Boots. Will they benefit from this privatisation? A few might, but most likely there would be store closures and land sell-offs, pensions would be affected and customer services reduced. AND if the company leaves the stock market all of this would carry on in private corners without any public scrutiny whatsoever. Perhaps, I’m being a tad cynical but didn’t this same thing just happen with the AA in 2004.

Thinking back, maybe that explains why I had to wait 7+ hours for the AA to get me home one winter’s night in 2005.

What to do with a pestle

Dear GP,

How kind of you to respond to my letter to your boss, KT, with your recent email – can I say how impressed I was by all the letters after your name and your title, ‘Clinical Governance’, eh? Heavy!
(I presume that KT didn’t reply to me personally as it was her night pole-dancing at Miroslav’s Club in Old Compton Street; I’m so glad it doesn’t clash with her pharmaceutical oath)

I have been searching in my Pharmacopoeial thesaurus for the precise description for the content of your email and I've settled on....Bollocks. In fact, Total bollocks!

But let’s not get emotional this early in our relationship so let me recap on my letter to ABC, the universe’s largest pharmacy group….”because we care…about our share price and not going private”. Essentially, GP, I regress to my erstwhile trade on a very occasional, emergency basis for ABC and, in return……I, and let’s not beat about bushes, ‘others’, do not get paid correctly. Then, after I scream and go red in the nose and flagellate myself, you DO pay me but you never say sorry which, as ES aged 7 says, is awfully bad manners.

As to the total bollocks of your letter I am switching back to my literary hat and suggesting that it was a masterpiece of denial, trivia, obscurantism, deflection and spin not to mention mis-spellings and lousy grammar. And I was so anticipating a reply to my 5 questions. My breath remains baited on the question of that implied, mittyish relationship between ABC and Her Majesty’s Revenue. And surely can it be true that one of your arrogant, officious, patronising, egotistical and incompetent Area Mangers had a spell at HM’s Pleasure!?

So, are we any further forward? I do hope so.
Except……you say you are handing me some of my cash from my hard work for your company, yet you’re redesignating it as a “goodwill gesture”. I have to say I’m struggling with that concept.

In closing, GP, let this toughened-up Southerner up North give a softened-up Northerner down South some advice. I worry about your psychological and professional well-being and I diagnose that you have a medical condition known as anal retention. So let me switch professional hats once again and suggest an ice-cold size 28 pestle shoved very solidly up your…CENSORED!!!

Comradely yours,
London Refugee