How else does one describe a paragraph such as this?
Barely 10 weeks into office, the coalition seems to have made it a priority to dismantle key elements of what most doctors thought was a settled consensus on key public health measures. Labour's use of intervention, exhortation and regulation has now been junked in favour of a reliance on individual freedom, personal responsibility and industry behaving itself.And this is a bad thing?
By 'settled consensus', they presumably mean a circular jerk of doctors deciding how best to issue orders to those who pay their wages. All to produce a society where intervention and regulation are considered utopian goals, and - this concept truly baffles me - where individual freedom and personal responsibility are evil qualities which should be eradicated.
Oh, believe me, there's more where that came from. Straw men, absurd comparisons, opinions held up as fact, juvenile hyperbole, you name it.
It's like Orwell never existed.
16 comments:
Orwell is a blueprint Fuckwits
BTW that's them not you Dick P. Sorry I shouldn't drink and comment!!!
S'OK, I understood. :)
If you write for the 'Guardian', a paper that makes its bones by hectoring and manipulation, then yes, it's a very bad thing indeed!
My God that article made me angry.
"Everyone knows." "Settled consensus." "Widespread criticism." "Widespread despair."
According to the Graun everyone wants more nannying from the health fascists. I can scarcely believe that even some prat from the Graun would actually think this, it's so staggeringly out of touch. Are these really popular beliefs? Come off it!
Imagine if the Tories actually were a liberal party. Imagine how much more shrill the shrieking from the Graun and the senior doctors would be. Lesson learned: if you're going to repeal fascist laws, stick your fingers in your ears first, because the fascists are not going to go quietly. They're going to say that you're the fascist for wanting fewer laws. Forward not back, mein fuhrer.
While the coalition have not gone remotely as far as you or I would like, it must be some kind of achievement that they have so decisively rattled the cages of the Guardianistas ;-)
Well, I just hope the Guardian is right that the government is returning individual choice and rsponsibility.
"Settled Consensus" is left-speak for when the non-left have surrendered ideological territory.
But reading that paragraph you quoted I finished with a half-cheer. All sounds like progress! Frightening that they intended it to give the opposite feeling.
You just knew it wouldn’t take long for the scrawny necked scragend ball-sack lefties to start ripping another arsehole for the coalition.
Any reference to ‘individual freedom and personal responsibility’ is total anathema to these meddlesome twats…their heads are only wired up for gonad squeezing control.
Now then…let me get back to my Papier-mâché (French for chewed up paper) doll making – after which I beat them to death with a rolled up…err…Guardian newspaper…well you don’t think I read that fucking rag do you?
PS. Thanks DP for your comment.
"Straw men, absurd comparisons, opinions held up as fact, juvenile hyperbole, you name it".
Thanks - I'll add another one: revisionism. The bit about pubs being the "horribly smoky places of not too distant memory" is a barefaced attempt to rewrite the past and is deeply disturbing as a result - Orwell would have had a field day with it. It is of course opinion-as-fact as well.
Vladimir: I'm beginning to think you and me are the same person via your comments. :)
Mudgie: Yes, there is that. Perhaps that explains the departure from reality in the Observer editorial. Desperate measures?
Frank: Unfortunately, we know that's not the case more's the pity.
Rick S: I wondered how long it would be till someone pointed to that quote. You're correct, it's revisionism and probably fits into all the other categories at the same time.
Above all, this article places the Guardian at the opposite end of the scale to those who believe in human self-determination. Long may they continue to do so ... at least until they go bust, of course.
And of course pubs (or a hell of a lot of them) are now the horribly shut places of current reality.
“Labour's use of intervention, exhortation and regulation”
For a moment I thought that said “extortion”.
It should.
woo-hoo - some good news at last - is the jackboot finally coming off our necks?
But it is Cameron who is threatening to rebrand the NHS as the Public Health Service, whereby the general health of the population will be more important than that of the individual, ie compulsory meds.
@ Banned.
I am not sure what I think about this 'rebranding' of the NHS from ? to 'PUBLIC health'. Sometimes these minor variations in words can have far reaching consequences. I have a vague feeling that what we will see is a growing independence of hospitals. I do not mean privatisation, though that might ultimately be possible. I see hospitals becoming independent entities with the NHS having overall control, but not being 'hands on'. I see the new idea of GPs having the basic budgets as enabling GPs to shop around on behalf of their patients to find the shortest waiting list, for example. Whether or not it will work is yet to be seen.
What they do not tell us is what the ultimate idea is POLITICALLY. It would not surprise me if the ultimate idea was to cut the Health Department down to size.
I doubt that the ultimate idea is to privatise hospitals, although it may be. I just have a feeling that that THE PEOPLE would not put up with that. There would be the most enormous furore.
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