SAVE TIME ▶ STAY HOME ▶ PROTECT UBER

UBER has won a contract to deliver NHS prescriptions from 1,500 local pharmacies. Patients will be able to order repeat prescriptions and overthecounter medicines using a special app.

Around 750,000 people will get their meds delivered to their doorstep in as little as an hour, rather than wait a couple of days to pick them up from the chemist.

It’s part of the overhaul of NHS services, which will see pharmacists treating common ailments and freeing up GP time for facetoface appointments.

This got me wondering whether it might not be worth handing over the running of the entire, shambolic NHS to Uber. At least your ambulance might turn up on time. Then I started to imagine what Uber would be like if it was organised along the same lines as the health service.

For a start, if you wanted a ride, you’d have to log on at 8am, only to discover there were no cabs available in your area and you were being held in a queue behind 7.7 million other people.

If you did manage to find a car, it wouldn’t be a shiny new hybrid Prius, it would be a clappedout Cortina with a peeling vinyl roof and bald tyres and would be with you six months on Wednesday.

That’s if it wasn’t cancelled at the last minute, just as it was about to turn into your road — because all the drivers had gone on strike again or were working from home.

As for Uber Eats, if it was anything like hospital food, you’d be lucky to get a congealed lump of cold mashed potato and half a dozen tinned spaghetti hoops.

Plus, just like the NHS, you’d have to pay for it — surge pricing and all — whether you used Uber or not.

getting Uber to deliver prescriptions is one thing. letting selfserving NHS bureaucrats run Uber would be a prescription for total disaster as the carsharing app lurched from one crisis to another.

Save Time, Stay Home, Protect Uber.