Dave's Militant Tendency
Interesting, given David Cameron's efforts last year to identify himself with Obama, that his nauseatingly rightwing henchman Daniel Hannan MEP is busy running round the USA attacking Obama's flagship healthcare reforms.
Personally as someone who has been in hospital for five months receiving a fantastic level of care from the NHS, I cannot begin to express my disgust at this man attacking it and the dedicated people who work in it.
Here's what Hannan has been saying:
- Army & Navy Club, Washington DC: "Ponder our example, and tremble, you see a grizzly picture of your own country's possible future. . .. Do not make the same mistakes we have. I see this massive encroachment of the state... this huge power grab by the state machine... squeezing the private sector, to engorge the state... It is exactly a Marxist system. You are treated as a supplicant and expected to be grateful for what you get."
- On Fox News: "I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of freedom and independence could seriously be thinking of adopting such a system in peace-time".
- Of the number of NHS staff: "That is the electoral block that makes it impossible to get rid of... "
and there was me thinking that it was the millions of patients receiving healthcare free at the point of need that made it impossible to get rid of.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 9:12 pm
8 Comments:
Luke, I'm glad the NHS is helping you, and I'm glad you're getting better, and I support having an NHS, but it's not the whole story.
My leg has been steadily becoming less useable since early this year. My GP, despite me never having run more than half a mile in my life, claims I have marathon-runner injury 'shin splints'.
He told me to rest for a fortnight. When that didn't help I went back and he claimed he meant two months not two weeks. When that didn't help I went back and he said sorry, he meant six months. Well, great, but I live in an upstairs flat and have a job I commute to by bus, I can't really take six months off, even if it would help.
So I had little choice but to pay for a private consultation and MRI scan, and now, despite having evidence of what is actually wrong, I can't get (even were it available) NHS physiotherapy because the consultant who finally saw me is not in the same PCT area as my GP. So I have to pay for that too.
So there we are, after a decade under Labour, the system seems designed to ensure that, if I didn't have savings, I'd have been on incapacity benefit by now. Undoubtedly to sit at home watching Labour Ministers attack me as workshy on daytime TV.
9:41 am, August 11, 2009
What about those of us who could not afford to wait for that healthcare, Luke, despite having paid for it? Those completely failed by the NHS? What right do you have, in your arrogance, to decide that I should have been forced to pay for your healthcare as well as my own, when I was earning well below average wage?
1:14 am, August 12, 2009
John: why didn't you change GP? No matter what system you have, there will always be differences of opinion within medicine.
5:13 pm, August 12, 2009
But he's right about the number of people and their electoral impact.
With 1.5m employees only the Chinese Army, Wal-Mart and the Indian Railways employ more.
Leaving aside the other arugments pro and con the NHS (they didn't do baby P much good) that's a hell of an interest group political parties don't want to annoy.
10:28 am, August 13, 2009
"John: why didn't you change GP?"
How do you do that? This is the GP I was allocated by my PCT after all my local GPs told me they had no space on their rolls.
2:50 pm, August 13, 2009
Hannan also made the point that it is impossible to criticise the NHS without lefties pretending that you are slandering the people working for it.
Which you have just done.
Look Luke, it is daft to sling around terms such as "nauseatingly" and confect insults such as the above. It reduces the debate to name calling and straw men.
Hannan *is* extremely right-wing. He is a die-hard libertarian. His support of local democracy, elected police constables and political primaries are the most radical set of ideas in British politics. He is honest about his views (there's no New Labour style focus group derived dog whistling).
And unlike his counterparts on the extreme left (Benn, Cruddas) he has no history of supporting military dictatorships such as Cuba.
He is just the sort of bloke we need in politics - which is why it is so depressing to witness an informed commentator such as yourself making the egregious error of pretending he was insulting NHS staff.
(I've just noticed you spelt his name Hannam, which suggests you aren't familiar with him. I assure you his blog is well worth a read, if only for his discussions on Shakespeare's relevance to modern politics).
7:43 pm, August 13, 2009
Dave can't control his troops I have just had an Email from Dave saying how much the Tories love the NHS yeah right I remember the the Thatcher Major years now one of his MEPS is slagging off the NHS to Americans!!! He was happy enough for the Republican Macain to endortse him at Tory Party party conference several years back but when Obama is elected they are both progressives despite Obamas health care reforms!! Cameron is a right wing scumbag and dont forget it!! If a band wagon passes Dave will jump on it!!
10:54 pm, August 13, 2009
Hannan also made the point that it is impossible to criticise the NHS without lefties pretending that you are slandering the people working for it.
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10:43 am, August 18, 2009
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