Campaigning for Health

I was going to post a Christmas carol here for the season. Then I came across this and just had to post it. Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year..

It wasn't going to last. Just a couple of weeks after UKIP was riding high on a wave of sympathy, following the removal of a child from a UKIP voting couple, they have come crashing to the ground because of one Geoffrey Clark, who thinks we should bring in compulsory abortion for Down's Syndrome and spina bifida to reduce the national debt. He also thinks that free euthanasia advice should be offered to over-80's. UKIP tried to back him at first and then ditched him, in the face of shocked protests from Mencap and the media in general. Someone in Labour or Conservative HQ will be watching in silent satisfaction at this mess - I have no doubt that since UKIP's resurgence, the party nerds will have been trawling UKIP websites looking for someone foolish enough to catch out in this fashion. And Geoffrey Clark has been well and truly caught.

On the surface, I agree with that shock and indigation at his views. It's especially depressing after a wonderful summer of the Paralympics that we're back to auld claes and porridge as far as the disabled are concerned. Another part of me is feeling profoundly uncomfortable with the whole scenario.

It's this. The abortion rate for  DS in the UK is round about 92%. Apart from the fact that this means that Geoffrey Clark's master plan to reduce the national debt would be a failure, it also means that the only difference between Geoffrey Clark's views and the general public's, is compulsion. It is not Geoffrey Clark's values that are really being questioned; it is the fact that he would make a common choice, mandatory.

 What is the actual choice for someone carrying a child with DS? There's abortion. Or, if they choose to have the child, years of fighting with the state for help and support. A piss poor amount of money going into research for the condition and bleak employment prospects. A choice has been made, but it's been made by our society, not by the parent of the child. The choice that they are offered, is in reality, just short of compulsion.

Again, take the dismantling of the NHS. On what pretext was that done? Why, choice. The right to choose a GP, a hospital, a private provider. In reality the government has chosen to bomb the NHS and we will shortly have to chose which health care insurer that we are going with, because it shure ain't going to be the government. And don't expect your National Insurance contributions to go down correspondingly.

Chesterton once said, ' To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose'. In saying this he identified what has become a growing phenomenon; the idea that choice trumps all. It's a good tactic for shutting down debate by branding those who question the values behind a choice as intolerant, and it's a good tool in government for shunting people in a direction they might not otherwise take, by portraying it as a choice.

I do not disagree with those who slam Geoffrey Clark on mandatory abortion. I am just so disappointed that the debate went no further. So much went unsaid this week, and an opportunity was missed to examine our own values with regard to those with DS. If we had done, maybe we would have realised how shockingly close our own views are to his. And maybe we would have made an informed, responsible choice to turn away from them.

I came across this picture of a poignant message left on a lamppost at the NHS protests from March.

Says it all, really.

Here is some of John Hemming's speech from the Child Exploitation debate in Parliament today. For the full debate, click here.

Came across this video on Guido Fawkes. I still can't quite believe the brazeness of it. When is something going to be done about this?

See this link for a summary of the forensic findings in Haut de la Guarenne.

The SNP conference is on just now and some controversy was generated when Salmond referred to being run by Lord Snootys. As the above video shows, this is completely and totally unjustifed..

I reproduce without comment, this entry from Hansard. The date of the debate is Thurs 18th Sept, just two days before the Jimmy Savile allegations came out. You can find out who Andrew Marolia is from this link.

18 Sep 2012 : Column 859
There is a country where there are allegations that crimes by powerful people are not being investigated and prosecuted. A journalist has been refused entry to stop reporting about an issue. The chief of police has been suspended to stop him investigating crimes. Bloggers are being threatened to stop them talking about people. Decisions by the state not to prosecute cannot be challenged, nor is private prosecution allowed. The country is Jersey. The journalist is Leah McGrath Goodman, who is an American. The chief of police was Graham Power. Furthermore, Andrew Marolia, David Minty, David Wherry and Jonathan Sharrock Haworth have, with the assistance of the Jersey Government, obtained a super-injunction against ex-Senator Stuart Syvret—under the Data Protection Act of all things—to prevent from him saying things about them on his blog that are true. Mr Syvret has evidence that criminal offences are being swept under the carpet, but nothing is being done.

A lay judge—known as a jurat—called John le Breton has been allowed to sit as a jurat, even though he was vice-principal of Victoria college when he wrote to the governors in support of Andrew Jervis-Dykes, who ended up getting a jail sentence. Mr le Breton was appointed to judge on a case even though he is a personal friend of a director of the defendant—this is a defamation case where the local politician, Trevor Pitman, has been taking legal action against the local newspaper. The end result in Jersey is that part of these events has been struck from the state’s version of Hansard, and the culture of cover-up continues. Jersey is an independent country, but the UK Government have a responsibility for ensuring good governance in Jersey. The UK is not doing its job properly.

It's been a while since I've written. I think like many bloggers, the passing of the Health and Social Care Bill knocked the stuffing out of me and the will to write. But  a fine article by Oliver Huitson on Open Democracy has prompted me to pick up my keyboard again, if only to signpost you to another site. He details here what we all thought; that the Beeb was pulling its punches on the NHS and in the run up to the final reading of the bill, there was a virtual blackout. One grimly funny detail was that the only report in March of this year on the bill was on the Today Programme. It was two minutes long and other articles that day included a French theme park on Napoleon (four minutes), International Bagpipe Day(six minutes) and the Queen's Jubilee (eight minutes).

I don't mind bagpipes that are minding their own business. In a glen. Forty miles from here. But on the Today Programme? For six minutes? When the NHS is being dismembered? Talk about 'la-la-la' not listening. Or skirl -skirl-skirl..

What better week to announce the closure of four A&Es in London (including Charing Cross hospital) than the week that the nasty doctors went on strike? Talk about the doctors' strike all week, put out the announcement of the closures at the weekend and no one will notice. Until they turn up at the hospital with an emergency, that is..

Oh The Jobs (Debt?) You'll Create! from Marketplace on Vimeo.




A salutory warning from the USA?

Last week the BMA finally decided to go on strike. About time too, many would say. And I would have been one of them. I know what the government are trying to do; basically they are trying to raid a money pot that does not belong to them, to plug gaps elsewhere. I understand that this is wrong and that our junior doctors in particular need supported, because they are going to be carrying much bigger debts than previous medical graduates. I understand. And yet..

I feel let down. Let me explain why. For the past fifteen months, we have been fighting the introduction of the Health and Social Care Bill. I have made my own poor contribution to that; writing letters to Lords, blogging on it, explaining it to punters and alerting my own party to the consequences of the bill if it was passed in England. It is a monstrous bill; a clear and deliberate attempt to turn the NHS into a franchise. It has huge implications for students as well; who is going to do training, terms and conditions in different trusts, possible breakup of the deanery system, closure of hospital departments to shore up funding and so on. And you knew this. And you could not pull together to strike on the bill, at a time when it was really, really needed. Now that the Queen's assent has been given and the damage has been done, you're going to strike about pensions? Are you joking? What possible effect do you think that is going to have now, given that the wholesale destruction of the NHS has been bulldozered through? After all of that has gone through, do you think the government is going to be impressed by a strike about pensions? It's a gift to them. See, that's the greedy doctors that only care about themselves and lining their pockets, they'll shout. Your (valid) argument about pensions is going to to be lost in the shouts of those right now who have no jobs or very poor ones, whose pension funds have already been raided. They look on you as fortunate and they will look on your strike as self-serving in a time of austerity. Had you instead struck on defending the NHS from privateers, you might have got some sympathy. And you might have had a chance of changing things. That time, I fear, has now gone.

Then again, maybe it's just me.

It was Draw Mohammed Day the other day. I thought I would do my own take on it. So here's my pictures of Mohammed.



              Here's Mohammed Ali, one of the most famous heavyweight boxers in history.





                                    Here's a  baby called Mohammed, from Saudi Jeans.




          Here's Mohammed Ismail, the child star from Slumdog Millionaire, formerly from a slum himself.






                     Here is Mohammed Bou Azizi, whose self immolation started the Arab Spring.





                   Here is Mohammed Ramadan, a competitor on Star Academy 7 X Factor.


                              

I could go on. But I did this to make a point. I don't like Draw Mohammed day. I understand that its initial point was to counter fundamentalism and make a stand on freedom of the press. But of all the beliefs of Islam that I would have chosen to oppose, it would not have been this one. Muslims do not believe that Mohammed's image is sacred. It is the opposite. To Muslims, it is wrong to draw Mohammed, because they were afraid that he would be worshipped  if they allowed it. It was to prevent Mohammed becoming an icon that it became blasphemous to draw him. They wanted Mohammed to be regarded as a man, not as God and ironically that is what Muslims have in common with those drawing the cartoons.

But that's not my only objection to this day. Draw Mohammed day has turned into a real hate fest as you will find if you google it. I'm not going to reproduce them here; you can find them for yourself. What bothers me is there is a real reducing and dehumanisation of Muslims creeping in just now and those cartoons reflect it. Perhaps I am more sensitive to this because I have an Irish background and we used to be depicted as pigs in cartoons. The face of Islam and Mohammed is as varied as the faces above. It is complex and we are missing this. We are taking the most extreme of Muslims and making them the face of Islam and in doing so we are playing into the fundamentalists' hands. They want their face to be the only face of Islam. They do not want the faces of children, of pop stars, of boxers, of babies to represent them. Ordinary Muslims do want this, but we have turned the camera away from them.

Beware of caricatures that dehumanise, that mask hatred as humour. Click on the links above and have a look at some ordinary Muslims' blogs. And look at their images, because it is the face that forbids us to kill.


                                             
                                                Syakir and Mohammed at Chinese New Year.

You may or may not (sob) have noticed that I've been quiet for a while. That was because I was running in the local elections as an SNP candidate in Coatbridge. Well, the news is; I got in! For the past couple of weeks I have been attending terrifying sessions on 'how to be a good councillor', I've been juggling more mobile phones than a drugs dealer and trying not to panic at the ability of my doocot to fill up when my back's turned for more than five minutes. But I'm getting there and I'll be returning to blogging shortly. Watch this space..

I reproduce, without comment, a reply from Richard Wellings on possible sources of funding in a free market healthcare model. It is a comment from an article he wrote called 'How to Abolish the NHS.'

Firstly, insurance would only be one option once markets had been freed. Charitable organisations could provide treatment for those unable to afford insurance. Indeed many of Britain's most famous hospitals were founded as charitable/religious institutions in the pre-NHS era, often with money donated by generous philanthropists. Moreover, in the late 19th century a large proportion of the population obtained health cover through mutual organisations such as friendly societies. Numerous options would emerge if voluntary solutions were no longer crowded out by coercive state provision.

Secondly, I don't accept the arguments about the limitations of health insurance. Insurers can lay off risk using reinsurance markets. And there is no good reason why elderly people can't be insured - for example through long-term plans that smooth out premiums over time. Equity release schemes could also be used to fund healthcare premiums for the many asset-rich but cash-poor pensioners.

Finally, it's important to point out that funding problems in general would be diminished by the deregulation advocated in the article. Entrepreneurship and innovation would increase productivity in the health sector, making treatment more affordable.

*facepalm*

I have just received from a reliable source that Richard Branson is spitting teeth about an article printed in the Telegraph on Sunday by Max Pemberton. What Pemberton is saying is fairly unremarkable; it's just what everyone else in health has been saying about what a crock of crap the Health Bill is. What is remarkable is that apparentlyBranson is demanding a half page reply; and that a high court injunction was served on Sunday to try to prevent the article being published. Branson is said to be unhappy too about tweeting on the subject and Max could be facing heavy costs because of this; £90 000 has been mentioned as a ballpark figure.


Now we really can't have this at all. I mean, what has the world come to when we have a potential headline 'Leftie Telegraph in Sue Threat by Branson over NHS'? There's really only one answer to this and that's to go Spartacus on it. Is the battle for the NHS over? No. We have only just begun to fight..

“When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

More years ago than I care to remember, I was given ‘A Man For All Seasons’ by Robert Bolt at school to study for my English Higher. I am an avaricious reader of books, but I seldom read a book more than once. This book was different. It’s not what you would expect – although it’ s about a Catholic saint Sir Thomas More- it’s not a hagiography. What it is, is a study of the maxim ‘Every man has his price’. More was unique, Bolt argues, because there was a part of him that simply was not for sale. Against the backdrop of the Tudors and Henry VIII, Bolt states his case in stark beautiful language. And this week I returned to it. I was prompted both by the circumstances surrounding the Health and Social Care Bill and a post by Dr No, on what course of action we could or should take, now that the HSCB has been passed. Should we continue to resist and disrupt the bill by any means? Or should we accept it, and try to minimise the harm to the patient? To answer that, we have to look at just what exactly has happened to Westminster and how that has affected what has happened this week.

After the Westminster elections in 2010, the Lib Dems joined the Conservatives in a coalition. I was initially shocked by this. I shouldn’t have been. It simply crystallised something which I had been thinking for a while; that there had been a change in the kind of person entering politics at top level in Britain. People are very cynical about politicians and I understand this, because many politicians are self seeking. However, what you also find in politics are many idealists. You find idealists in politics because it is a place where ideals can be given shape, where the plan of a city can become bricks and mortar, where a vision of humanity like the NHS can become a reality. Politics is both a haunt of demons and a cloister of saints. The difference between the self seekers and the idealists in politics is this; self seekers are content simply with the trappings of power. The title, the money and the fancy cars are enough. But an idealist is not interested in these things. To them, the prize is having the power to change things. For a self seeker, the illusion of power is enough. For the idealist, political power is a tool for change.

That was why I was so shocked. The Lib Dems for the first time, had been handed the opportunity to hold the reins of power. To make a difference. They could have done this by playing honest broker and allowing the Conservatives to form a minority government. They could have voted with the things they liked and against the things they didn’t. They could have stopped student fees, the Welfare Reform Bill and of course, the Health and Social Care Bill.

They went into coalition and substituted the reality of power for its illusion. And to myself, the voters and the grassroots members of the Lib Dems and the Tories, this was totally incomprehensible. It could only mean one thing; that Westminster had been completely, utterly subsumed by self seekers. Some have talked of a tri-partite system, but this is not the correct way to understand what has happened. What has happened is that slowly but surely, these three parties have been taken over by the same elite of corporate lobbyists representing the biggest commercial interests in our country and they are now ruling in complete defiance of the wishes of the electorate. They do not listen to us and they do not listen to the grassroots members of the parties they supposedly espouse. There is always tension between the top and bottom of a political party, but the root has now become separated from the branch. They are accountable to no one apart from themselves and this malaise has spread from the second estate to all the others. Think on this week. First of all, government ignored the rule of the courts to print the risk register. They put themselves above the law. Then they sent out riot police to meet a handful of protestors opposing them and abused the proper function of the police. They shut down the BBC on commenting on the passage of the bill. Did you know that we were the first in the world with a police force and a broadcasting company ? Do you have any idea how respected both of these are; our police for being one of the few forces that has doggedly refused to go quasi military and arm itself and the BBC, for being a voice of freedom in countries that have none? And yet in the UK, its voice has been silenced.

So should we resist the change? To me, the answer is clear; we must. There is a time for compromise and there is a time when in truth we are no longer compromised; in truth we are corrupted. We must oppose this, because it isn’t simply about party politics; it’s about who we are and what our values are. I’m going to make a confession now. Last year, after the Lib Dems joined with the Tories, I joined the SNP. I did it because I could see no other way of tackling the toxic mire that Westminster had become. And yet, I have realised something this week. I also did it because I am British. Because I wanted to preserve the things I value about Britain, especially the NHS , in Scotland. And I have never felt so British as I have this week as I have watched our courts, our police, our BBC and our NHS being trashed in such a vulgar and disrespectful way. How sad that in the Queen’s Jubilee Year, when the Queen renews her coronation oath and re-dedicates herself to the preservation of our laws and constitution, that they are trampled underfoot in an unparalleled act of cultural vandalism. It is shameful.

In this week when the Queen renews her oath, I would urge doctors to renew theirs; the oath to first do no harm and to consider if they can truly keep this oath under the law that has just been passed. What it means if they cannot keep that oath. I’ll leave you with More’s/Bolt’s take on it.

When a man takes an oath, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water -and if he opens his fingers then-he needn't hope to find himself again..

Have been looking for footage of just what happened on Saturday. Here's the armed police incident;



Maybe, just maybe, their being there was a coincidence. They should not have got out of their van and threatened people in the manner they did. However, the large numbers of riot police who were there was certainly not a coincidence and was ridiculous for the numbers who were there. Watch the next video right through; it is worth it. It gives you an idea of just how many riot police were deployed during the day and how much the protestors were hassled. Kudos to the doc at 2.30 who told them to go away and stop creating rioting. Just shows you how far a BBC 4 announcer voice can take you. And a gold star to the policeman at the end of the video who seemed to be the only guy there who knew how to police.

I am furious. Absolutely furious.

The picture above, ladies and gentlemen, is from the NHS protest yesterday outside the Ministry of Health. Yes, that is a policeman armed with a machine gun. They're known as the diplomatic cops (ha, ha) and they were called out in case our protestors got frisky. So were the riot police. For more pictures and info on this go to Latent Existence. Don't bother going to the BBC web pages, because they did not report this.

I don't know what I find more disturbing here; the fact that there were armed police at an NHS protest or that it was not reported by the main news channels. I thought democracy was ailing in
Britain. I now realise that I misdiagnosed the patient. It's actually dead.

Pass this on and let everyone know. We owe it to those who turned out for this protest and we owe it to the NHS.

I came across this post by Peter Saunders in my hunt for information about who the members of the Lord Falconer Commission on Assisted Dying were. It's a list of those who were asked to give evidence to the commission and refused. Amongst them are the BMA, the BMA Ethics Committee, Alzheimers UK, most of the royal colleges, Carers UK, MacMillan Cancer Support, the Motor Neurone Disease Association, the Association of British Neurologists, the Huntingdon Disease Association, the Multiple Sclerosis Association and many others. Why did they refuse? Maybe because they knew that the deck was stacked..