Nigel Farage says that nurses working for the NHS should be able to speak English. I agree. What a pity that this is about the most daringly controversial criticism of the NHS we’re likely to hear from almost any politician, of whatever political hue, in the run up to the General Election.
That’s because, though the Conservatives, Labour, UKIP, the Greens and the Lib Dems hold widely divergent views on many of the key issues – from taxation to welfare to defence to education – there is one topic on which they are all in full agreement: the NHS, gawd bless it, is the envy of the world and must be preserved at all costs. Why, as Danny Boyle reminded us at the London Olympics opening ceremony, it’s an achievement far greater than the Industrial Revolution.
And as David Cameron keeps telling us, it’s Our NHS – like a beloved old family pet only much more useful because your cat can’t cure you of cancer or treat you to heart triple by-pass surgery or a gastric band operation if you’re morbidly obese, nor does your dog wait patiently behind a desk in the doctor’s surgery to explain, no actually, it’s no good prescribing you antibiotics for that nasty cold you’ve got because a cold is a viral infection not an bacterial one, but no worries, I’m not charging you for this asinine waste of my time and taxpayers’ money because that’s what we’re here for, we’re this endless source of bounteous freeness…
It’s a brave person indeed who would dispute this rose-tinted assessment of our cherished National Treasure. And for a politician to say so – even one as outspoken as Nigel Farage – it would more or less amount to career suicide.
Don’t you think this state of affairs is rather sinister? I do. It reminds me of that awful period after the death of Princess Diana when, for weeks, you weren’t allowed to say that the national outpouring of untrammelled mawkishness was possibly a bit un-British and overdone. Or, worse, of those standing ovations that you had to give Stalin which went on for hours because the first one to stop clapping feared being taken away and shot.
And there’s one more thing it reminds me of – something I’ve been writing about for quite some time now, so I know whereof I speak. This sacrosanct status the NHS has acquired, where you can’t venture any kind of criticism, no matter how reasonable, for fear – at best – of being told what an awful person you are, and – at worst – of having your reputation publicly trashed and your career destroyed. It’s so painfully redolent of the Establishment omerta about another of the great religions of our time. The Global Warming religion.
My fellow Evil Climate Change Denier (TM) Andrew Montford has noticed the similarities too, in this post at his Bishop Hill site. It’s titled Why Do Good Intentions In The Public Sector Lead To Evil? – which is a question I could have answered by referring him to an aphorism of Christopher Booker’s.
“Evil men don’t get up in the morning saying ‘I’m going to do evil!’. They say: “I’m going to make the world a better place.”
This, of course, is why those working within the NHS have apparently so little compunction about destroying those within their ranks, however eminent and decent, who are not “with the programme.”
For chapter and verse on what happened to one senior NHS practitioner – cancer surgeon Joseph Meirion Thomas – who spoke out, I do recommend you read this excellent article in The Spectator by Freddy Gray.
Meirion Thomas was not afraid to point out numerous problems with the NHS in sundry articles, among them: that the NHS’s overstretched budget is being eroded by “health tourists” from abroad claiming services to which they are not entitled and for which they do not pay; that the politically correct obsession with gender equality is promoting too many female doctors who aren’t pulling their weight; that GPs are an anachronism.
Read the rest – there’s more! – at Breitbart London
Related posts:
- ‘Global warming’: time to get angry
- ‘Global warming? What global warming?’ says High Priest of Gaia Religion
- Global Warming jumps the shark. The week in Climate Stupid.
- Why we can all stop worrying about ‘Global Warming’ for a bit
