Amongst the stresses of yesterday, there were some moments that were both enjoyable and worth sharing.
Having got very used to the question, “Are you allergic to anything?” over the last few days, I modified my response. Having made clear that, in medical terms, I'm allergic to nothing, I then added, “But I am to Nigel Farage”, which seemed to be quite popular with an NHS audience, where my estimate is that at least 70% of my carers, of whatever grade they might have been, would be in the category subject to deliberate abuse from both Reform and Rupert Lowe's Restore Party.
The second event happened in the cab on the way home, because Jacqueline had reached the point of being too fatigued to safely drive me, but still accompanied me. We were talking about the care I had enjoyed, and how the NHS would be totally incapacitated by the policies of Farage and Lowe. Our taxi driver was curious and tentatively sought our opinion. He told us that he has many people as passengers who are strong supporters of the far-right parties. He then added, “What these people don't realise is that they are the ones who're going to pay the price for what Farage wants, and there's no way you can persuade them Farage is out to screw them.”
He was right.
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He is right because unfortunately we have to accept that whenever and whatever epoch one lives in, a certain number of our fellow human beings will be susceptible to being enamoured with death, especially when given the chance to pass it onto someone else – its where Thomas Hobbes meets Hannah Arendt.
My favourite is
‘Intolerances?’
No just Grumpy
One piece of good news regarding Fararage, a court has rejected a case he brought against Hope Not Hate claiming they exceeded the expenses limit in the Makenfiel by-election sending out letters to women regarding the mysogonistic comments made by the Reform candidate.
Self-harm is a very common phenomenon, from our failure to do preventive maintenance on cars, houses, personal finances, relationships, gardens, washing machines, and our own bodies, to deliberately self-destructive acts including addiction, cutting, and suicide.
Including collective acts of self-harm with a pencil, in the privacy of the polling booth.
We’ve just celebrated the 10th anniversary of one of those. A significant number of people were horrified to wake up on Friday 24th June 2016, and discover that so many other people had, like them, also delivered a “protest vote”, that Leave had won. Like David Cameron and Boris Johnson, they never believed Leave would win, nor that the Tories could make such a monumentally incompetent mess of the actual Brexit negotiations. So here we are. (No, I don’t believe “rejoining” is the answer to our current problems – we have more fundamental issues to sort out.)
Prevention of self-harm, is very very difficult, as anyone with personal experience can testify. It invariably involves a lot of listening, and balancing the right of someone to make their own decisions, against the need to protect the vulnerable from exploitation by crooks and grifters and arrogant know-it-alls who claim to know what’s best, without any direct experience of the issues.
So, for me, stopping fascism/Fa***e-Lowe is not the issue. If a neoliberal Labour Party got re-elected in 2029 with a majority, then I would regard that as a serious problem. I am fearful that a lot of others might heave a sigh of relief, and simply dig their snouts back in the trough and perpetuate the neoliberal “status quo” (which is destructive).
For decades, the NHS was looked upon by the rest of the world as one of the most successful state run health services in the world.
The NHS is critically ill. NHS Trusts are sacking staff, closing wards, cancelling operations and refusing patients vital life-saving drugs.
The contracting out of cleaning has resulted in collapsing standards of cleanliness, with around 20,000 patients a year dying of hospital-acquired infections.
“Marketisation,” and particularly the PFI schemes have been a disaster which is saddling Trusts and the taxpayer with enormous debts. I totally reject this attempt to turn the nation’s health service into a private profit centre for giant corporations.
I am wholly committed to a free, fully funded National Health Service for all British citizens.
What do you think?
I absolutely believe in a unified, single NHS by country, and such is its size the need for outsourci9ng is very limited
In a promo for his Saturday morning programme on ABC Radio National earlier today, which includes an interview with Andrew Neil about Andy Burnham, Nick Bryant mentioned that after Brexit immigration into the UK from European countries dropped dramatically. Boris Johnson recognised that this would leave the NHS and other services short of staff and so encouraged an increase in non-European immigration to compensate. The result has been a significant increase in net immigration, the exact opposite of what the pro-Brexiteers thought they were voting for. This has been referred to as ‘The Brexit Paradox’.
Bryant pointed out that Nigel Farage, having made great political capital out of Brexit was now making even more out of claiming he could solve the ‘problem’ he largely helped to create.
I have not yet listened to the interview with Andrew Neil, it is available online (in Australia, but maybe not the UK) from the link below, as is a European Govt report on the paradox.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/saturdayextra/saturday-extra/106770702
https://share.google/M9t98wPSbLXAhepWp
I’ve been asked to be on that Programme in the last week, but for obvious reasons was unable to take part.
Australia’s loss. Hopefully we shall have the benefit of your global fame when you have fully recovered in the near future. I’m not usually out of bed by 7:30am on a Saturday but will make an exception for that.
🙂
That hits the middle of the bullseye. You can tell they have been brainwashed just by the phrases they used – straight out of the Ref**k and their even more extreme cousins’ playbook.
Craig
P.S. Hope you are feeling better, Richard
When co-workers and people I know talk about voting Farage I remind them he wants to privatise the NHS. Then I tell them that under such a system I would be dead. I then tell them that my treatment cost at least £150,000, do they have that kind of money around for if they also get unlucky? What about the premium? Can you afford 5% of £150,000?
I don’t know many people who support Reform now.
On a tangent, I put to bed an argument someone made recently about MMT. They claimed “Why is it only academics, politicians, and people beyond centre left believe in MMT?”
My response: “Do you know who believes in Keynesian, neoliberal and classical economics? The exact same people you mentioned with different political alignments per theory.”
He’s stopped using that as an attack line finally. Good to hear you’re on your way home now.
🙂