Monday 15 June 2009

Public Or Private? Make Your Minds Up


Remember that smoking ban, where privately owned premises were deemed to be public?

Well, the rules have just changed (because it suited the NHS).

Now, publicly-owned NHS premises are deemed to be private property. And they will take you to court or withhold treatment if you disagree.

Blackpool NHS

Wouldn't it be nice, in a supposedly free country, if a business owner were to be able to ignore the law and dictate his own rules as to what he allows on premises he has paid for, like the NHS are apparently able to do with premises which WE have paid for?

Their contempt for you is stunning.




12 comments:

Freedom fighter said...

Who are these people that think that they are above the Law ?
I thought that WE as taxpayers paid their wages and there they work for us.
They have no right to tell members of the public what they can or can't do in the grounds of hospitals that the public own.
It seems that the goalposts have changed and we will soon be told what we can do in our own homes (that we thought that we owned)
This must be halted before it gets out of control. Or is it too late ??

Helen said...

The NHS are full of wonderful 'carers' - like the stupid NHS woman the other day who said that people should 'just die then'.

The NHS are not our law-makers. The NHS are there as a so-called 'caring profession', with a so-called 'code of conduct'.

How low can our public services stoop to make their own laws and tell people that they should 'just die then'.

This country just makes things up as it goes along - and this weak government just allows it and gets snow-balled every time.

Let's face it - Labour are in charge of our public services, so they must then agree that the NHS Trusts can make the laws of the land as they see fit!

TheFatBigot said...

I'm intrigued by the assertion that a Trust can institute "a criminal prosecution" for someone defying a ban imposed by a Trust in its capacity as owner of the land.

That's not to say it can't be done, there are so many new crimes it's impossible to keep up, but it seems wrong in principle.

And I'm not so sure about we little people having "an open invitation to be there for legitimate purposes". We have a right to be there because we have the right to use NHS facilities (I won't quibble with the "legitimate purposes" bit but defy them to define the term with any degree of precision), a right that is not in the Trust's gift and does not arise by way of invitation.

Unknown said...

And a lot of these NHS administrators got honours too!

Anonymous said...

The NHS stopped being caring when it began to act as the mouthpiece for HMG. It now apes the authoritarianism of its masters.

It might be the legal owner of the land but, since it wouldn't exist without our money, it wouldn't be inappropriate if it were less heavy-handed. I wonder how they'd respond to a letter of complaint from a visitor who'd just lost a relative but was ticked off for lighting up in the grounds? And I wonder what the attitude is of the private health sector?

Jay

Anonymous said...

This just has to be defied.
Personally, I would let them go for their private prosecution.
It's kind of hard to prosecute Mr D. Duck of Hollywoodland.


BHJ

Sue said...

Seen this?

Light up or get sick?

Unknown said...

Doesn’t this crap make your blood boil!

Aidan Kehoe, acting chief executive of Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals, is a small-minded BOLLOCK!

Let’s get this straight. They operate a voluntary smoking ban on their hospital trust land and saying he is not operating ‘Ultra-Vires’, I must be missing something in this story.

His insensitive letter explains, ‘the Trust can require people to leave if they do not obey the non-smoking ban’. How so?

Kehoe says that the ban is a voluntary code/policy, i.e. you choose whether to volunteer to follow it or not. Because someone chooses not to follow this code does not give him the right to remove anyone…doesn’t that mean that there is no voluntary participation about it? Since he can’t legally enforce a ban outside (which those cunts want to do) they then resort to bullying.

It’s a pity that someone with deep pockets can’t test this in a court of law. I wish Sir James Goldsmith were alive today…he’d rip a hole through all this shit…and with his charisma, he’d also make sure the whole world knew about it!

I’m sure right now he’s enjoying another big cigar and wishing he were right here with us!

By the way…perhaps the hospitality trade can extend the very same courtesy to this knacker-bag Kehoe when he next visits a local pub or restaurant…just escort him off the premises with his head so far up his arse that he can see what he had for breakfast!

PS How many of your staff smoke...don't tell us that none of your staff smoke. If any do, then how many have been escorted from the site?

Dick Puddlecote said...

Great rant, Chris. :-)

Sue, that aspect of in-flight air purity came up in a study a few years ago. It was yet another story on smoking which didn't turn up in any newspaper. Only certain health articles make it, the righteous ones, natch.

Anonymous said...

I fucking hate this country, i really really have had enough now,unless i can convince my missus that its abroad for us i dont know what im going to do ive just gotta get out, if i wanted to live in 1970s East Germany id have bought a fucking Tardis.

BTS said...

Fuck me.. no, wait, they already are..

I'm slightly disturbed that a chief executive doesn't appear to know when to use 'forbidden' instead of 'forbidding' though..

Anonymous said...

BTS - given our current standards of education the chief executive of the future won't even know that the word exists - he'll probably just used the word 'banned'.

Jay