The NHS Bill – Ideological Thuggery

There are few things I am really proud about when it comes to the United Kingdom, we have lived mantle of colonial power and now of an almost Banana Republic without the Bananas – the truth is either nowhere or somewhere between those points of view, to be honest I don’t and I don’t care, but I do know that the National Health Service is the shining jewel in our collective national history, and that is being whittled away until it becomes a publicly funded private health service.

Bevan said a lot of things about ‘our’ National Health Service and we must, like the lost Empire tell ourselves of the stories of the struggle to give birth to this institution and the reasons why it was so desperately.  My late Grandmother was born in 1909 and she saw first hand what it was like to live in poverty and in fear of being ill, she saw the malnutrition of the Depression and survived two Global Conflicts and a Cold War, and she would never use the Health Service, to her dieing day, because it cost money,  Bevan, the founder of the National Health Service knew of the fear caused by the private medicine, to him no cost was too high for him.  He famously said the following, unremitting, honest comments about any opponent of the NHS – normally the Tories:

What should be the glory of the profession is that a doctor should be able to meet his patients with no financial anxiety

We should not be fearful to grow old, to be weak, to fall on hard times, it happens and we must believe in society, but society is an empty word that means little, the final nails of the Thatcherite edifice are being put in place, everything, even our health, has to be subservient to the ‘market’ – for ‘market’ read big business, no longer we people, we are consumers to be exploited but also to further our own aims, and we are no longer our brothers keeper. This is what Thatcher wanted to acheive, and though she did not realise her nightmare utopia she started the long slide into a chaotic self-centred orgy of consumerism, for this I will forever despise her politics of greed, as Bevan said:

No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party… So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

Much of what Bevan said rings like a clarion call of social justice and a critique of life half century of after his death, a prophet if you will, but I still hear his sentiment

The Tories always hold the view that the state is an apparatus for the protection of the swag of the property owners… Christ drove the money changers out of the temple, but you inscribe their title-deed on the altar cloth.

The question has to be, and it has already been answered, what will be the first priority of the private companies providing health care in the future – the shareholders or the patients?

We only have to look at how Cameron is ‘playing the Church’ talking good with the Big Society(read “In the Country of the coalition where the hypocrite is King”) and playing with the fabric of care, society and social responsiblity. To me the greatest fundamental change that has the coalition will make is that it has destroyed the social fabric – the post war settlement between State and Country, as great in many respects to that of the Magna Carta, the National Health Service, the Welfare State, was the settlement, it was the payment for the service to country, it bound us all together, it was the jewel of the United Kingdom.

The ideological thuggery embarked upon is opposed by the people and the Parties voting for it, such a fundamental change in society should be put to a referendum – I believe the National Health Service to be the single most important societal organisation ever, we need it, we cannot afford to take risks, and they will not publish those risks – why?  Yes, it was an act of ideology that bought the NHS into existence opposed by the Tories and rammed through Parliament – but I didnt’ hear of any people marching against it.

The National Health service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so it is not difficult to understand, if you view everything from the angle of a strictly individualistic competitive society. A free health service is pure Socialism and as such it is opposed to the hedonism of capitalist society.”

I have end on a positive note, Bevan said:

“NHS will  last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”

Cameron’s Cross, Crossing the Line

Enslave the liberties of one human being and the liberties of the world are put at peril ~ William Lloyd Garrison

I am not sure if our Prime Minister has not been cloned or replaced by someone from bizarro World to be honest.

The story is this, the British Government is fighting a case in the European Court of Human Rights (which is hated by the Tories as a waste of time) that it is not a part of fundamental freedom of expression to wear a Cross in the workplace.  In the interests of balance the story is that they are not banning wearing crosses at work (or anywhere else at the moment) but this quite a few issues surround this issue which are fundamental to Christians, Muslims, Jews, and the Gay Community - basically it is human rights and freedom of expression. Perhaps the next thing they will ban will be Labour Party badges?

I am sure the antecedent lays in the case of a woman being sacked from British Airways for wearing a cross to work - and I haven’t flown British Airways since.

Germany – and I am going to link back to the issue of the Cross, honestly – recently deliberated on whether a far right activist could be refused accommodation by a Hotel, the German Federal Court decided that the hotel could refuse accommodation to the National Democratic Party or the NDP as they are known.  This disturbs me because even though I think I would find the policies of the NDP totally reprehensible, when a court decides that one group of people can be excluded from society it opens the door to exclusion of the other people, it is a chink in democracy.  Winston Churchill was quoted as saying:

I detest what you have to say, but I will fight for your right to say it

this has to be test of a democratic society towards individuals who are operating within the structure of the law.  Joseph Locke, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America argued that all individuals are free, but we sacrifice some of our freedom – the freedom to murder of instance – in return for the protection of the State, once the contract has been broken – for example by inciting hatred and violence – we forfeit the right of the State’s protection, and the State has a right to withdraw certain freedoms  such as liberty; as long as a political group is operating within the law then it is has to enjoy all the freedoms of society, or else we have do not have rights we have privileges that can be withdrawn arbitrarily. Whilst I detest the British National Party  I have to defend its rights for free speech to ensure my own.  This is what wrong with democracy.

Wearing Cross at work, or wherever does not impinge on anyone elses human rights, it is a lawful expression of faith, and as such when I saw Sikhs wearing Turbans I respect this as a part of their religious faith, and even though wearing a cross is not a requisite of faith in Christ, it is still an expression.  I have to oppose this action my Cameron because it someone expressing their personal beliefs as much as wearing a Rainbow Badge to express my group identification.  It is a pointless attack on liberty.

My other concern is that at the end of last year Cameron made a big play about Christian values - and now he seems to be attacking the Church on an issue of faith, and using the European Court of Human Rights to further his cause – if this dicta had arrived from the EU then they would have been righteous indignation from the Tory Party, The Daily Express and Daily Mail, Theresa May would have been dispatched with a Water Cannon to Strasbourg.

Why is Cameron making these attacks on the Church, through an organisation he despises and why isn’t the Church making pronouncements on this rather than Gay Marriage?

I have answers, but it sounds too much like a Machiavellian plot, but whatever the reason, this attack is wrong and is an attack on all.

1967 Supreme Court Ruling on Marriage

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man’, fundamental to
our very existence and survival. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

this is the start and end of my arguments for Gay Marriage

The Church: Defining (Gay) Discrimination

People who don’t know me, or haven’t read my blogs etc need to aware of one thing, I am Gay, I say this to be open and admit full disclosure.

I really shouldn’t write blogs when I am angry, because the punctuation and spelling goes totally to pot, but I am beyond angry now, I was angry when someone like the Archbishop of Edinburgh starts appropriating marriage for the Church, and being in the sole purview of the Church who can define it as it wishes. One of the things that I find grotesque about the Cardinal’s outrage against Gay Marriage is that he does see two major points in his argument – firstly living a life of celibacy and being technically married to the church he seeks to deny a loving and fulfilling relationship with another person, this is the true perversion of the argument against gay marriage it is that a group of people are set on denying another group of people those rights which they enjoy (or in the case of the good Archbishop, doesn’t through his choice).

According to the Archbishop:

The natural law teaching of what marriage is quite simple. It is natural for a man and woman to be together for the procreation and education of children and for their own mutual love.

I’ve got some news for the Archbishop, his view of marriage is limiting and excludes a lot of legally married couples who, through choice or circumstance, are childless, and some wish to remain childless. Whilst I appreciate the Catholic view of marriage is of a sacrament this is not the argument, but in a sense it is a sacrament that should be enjoyed by all, equally, without discrimination.

It is not that I am arguing for special rights, I am arguing for equality, that’s all the argument is about, equality.

It says a lot about the Church – and from the people I know it’s not the church it is the church politic that objects to gay marriage – to say that marriage is a natural institution I have to ask the Cardinal, since when? I find no reference to God saying ‘you should get married’ (OK, Jesus went to a wedding, but I can find no juncture to ‘get married with exclusions’) and even if we could how could we fold in the story of other faiths having a marriage ceremony? Marriage is a natural joining together of two people, who want to publicly commit their love and devotion to each other – it has nothing to do with the church, it has nothing to do with christianity and has something to do with the State because it is the State, and thus society, that defines the legality of the marriage.

The arguments against gay marriage are those that were used for interracial marriage in the America’s not to long ago, and I imagine upheld by the Catholic Church then.

What the Cardinal is talking about is not some God ordained state that exists in perpetuity, not an institution ordained under God – if it is ordained under God could someone tell me why atheists and agnostics can get married - and not the cornerstone of our society, all the Cardinal is talking about is discrimination, pure and simple, and it does not have a place in democratic societies.

The Government is accused of redefining reality, when it reality it has the been the church that has redefined reality for the past 2,000 – and this does not include the good people in the church, but the church politic. I will not take seriously an institution that can bless a Battleship or bloody war but cannot bless two people wishing to share their lives.

I have respect for a lot of people in the church, I really do, but it is leaders like O Brien that are running it into the ground.