After two days of our ten month old son being utterly miserable (but not obviously ill) he developed a very high temperature, so we called NHS Direct. Having dutifully filled in his symptoms (listlessness and a temperature of 38.2 degrees as measured in the armpit) we were advised to contact out out-of-hours GP service, which we did only to be confronted with an endlessly repeating answer-phone message that we should only call during out of hours (at 16:30 on a Sunday afternoon) and no answer. I don’t want to take my son to A&E because I know how much it costs to run the Acutes in Essex, having worked on demand management with PCTs, but I do want some reassurance that he’s just got a sore throat and not meningitis. The appallingly bad service we received is one of the reasons why the acutes continue to have a stranglehold on the NHS, and why it costs us over £100Bn each year to run it.