Two parents at the final parade of their son who is finishing as an army officer at Sandhurst.
Mum: "Oooh look, Bill, they're marching by"
Dad: "Yes, they're all out of step except our Johnnie"
It is becoming clearer, by the day, that the opposition to the latest Health Bill is growing. The official backers of the Government's position are disappearing.
98% of General Practitioners in a recent Poll are against the Bill.
The Royal College of GPs is.
The Royal College of Nursing is.
The Royal College of Midwives is.
The British Medical Association is.
The Consultants' Committee is.
The Health Unions are.
That is a degree of unanimity that is hard to get over any subject. I find it difficult to understand why this opposition to a fundamental piece of legislation isn't all over the media. We are seeing the slow dismantling of an essential part of the fabric of our way of life.
It is as if Messrs Cameron and Lansley are at the parade ground, and saying that everyone is out of step except them.
7 comments:
Just seen Lansley on TV. Still in denial.
Lansley had the nerve on 5live to say that the nurses objection to the bill was to do with their pensions - he is a total disgrace
Totally agree. I've tweeted your post.
Let us not forget, JD, that reactionary doctors like young and indeed the whole of the medical establishment has always resisted change. They resisted the introduction the introduction of family planning clinics they even, goddammit it, fought tooth and nail to stop the introduction of the NHS. Time to retire, JD, and let the next generation take over. Meanwhile, have a read through this:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
Not sure what that poem was about, but I am mighty fed-up with the old chestnut of how doctors were against the setting up of the NHS. That was many many years ago and doctors are now very different. We have all grown up living with an NHS and are probably from a much more varied background than doctors pre-NHS. So just give it a rest. Most of us believe in an NHS free to all, which this bill may lose
Oh! Teresa, obviously so young and innocent. The JD will explain what the "poem" is about; he may sing it to you if you ask nicely. Doctors and nurses are the most reasctionary people in the country. They only consider industrial action when their wallets are threatened. They only agreed to the NHS after the goverment stuffed their wallets with gold. Now doctors - particular GPs - feel their overinfalted salaries, and their disproprotionatley high gold plated pensions, are being threatened and so are considering industrial action. Champagne socialists like the JD may wring their hands in anguish about patient care, but that's not the real agenda in this brouhaha. Doctors did not strike during the Blair/Brown governments not because they liked government policy - they didn't - but because they had huge and repeated (and pensionable) pay rises. The NHS was damaged by New Labour. Something has to be done. Or are you, like the JD, going to conveniently forget all the problems and pretend that all was well until the Coalition took over. An NHS free to all would be wonderful. We don't have it now. We have never had it. Something has to be done. If you don't like this governments proposals - that's fine - but come up with something better, rather than sitting in the corner sipping champagne with the JD and slagging off indiscriminently (and, particularly disappointingly, doing so on an ad hominen basis) all the proposed changes.
I'm certainly old enough to remember ol' Bob and the times have changed an awful lot since then! Many times. i think what cracked up JD and the others (and maybe me) perhaps started with dear old fatso Clark and his "wallet" jibe while the iron lady was romancing greed.
Between them they unwittingly trashed the goodwill on which a lot of the NHS depended. Which was a bit daft really. Though we knew a lot of it was to do with an extreme envy of the respect for the medical & nursing professions, and a calculated take-down, which has carried on right through to MMC
They are reaping what they sowed.
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