The title to this short piece is one of those phrases we use in hindsight as a get-out clause.
Actually if eighteen months ago much that was being touted and pushed as future agendas and narratives, I would have put in the conspiracy theory bin.
The speed with which things have changed and continue to has not only got me starting to believe in the basis of many of these theories but beneath the surface more than just hints are emerging that show there is indeed a movement for change in the western world and it is not for the indigenous peoples' benefit.
As I have said before the Covid virus whether deliberate or not in the way it has been handled worldwide has proven to be a wonderful opportunity to advance other things that if enacted upon are going to make big changes to the way people live and not that far into the future either, if it all happens the great reset comes to pass.
Once again the climate fanatics have a half open door to push against. Eighteen months ago it would have seemed inconceivable what many are now pushing for, and governments have quickly taken the cue to advance much of the same.
The screw on our lifestyles is being turned it appears every day, as items like eating meat that most of us saw as the mad ramblings of the eco nutters is coming up on the rails; focus groups acting on ‘our’ behalf use the healthy eating habit meme to persuade us to save the planet by reducing our meat consumption, while at the same time government committees state that the price of meat will go up to ensure consumption drops.
The same thing is happening with anything transport related. EVs may be the preferred future, but there is no way at present we can power them should the numbers ever get near the government targets, so restrictions will be enforced; firstly the ‘cheap’ to run EVs will become subject to restrictions, many forms have been muted already, pay per mile to make up for the lost fuel revenue, charging to be increased in price to level with fossil fuels, restrictions on usage, i.e. pay more to use during peak times, the banning of all private vehicles from city centres (already happening) and coercion to use public transport.
If I hear 'build back better' again there is a chance something will be lobbed at the TV screen. Everyone everywhere is using the phrase at every opportunity. What does it actually mean? You can repeat something as long and as often as you like but if no one actually explains what it means there is little point, yet on and on they go repeating the mantra. It is easy to think this is something dreamt up and coordinated in some sleazy smoke filled room in Davos; maybe it was and the conspiracy theorists are correct. Or is it simply those at the top in governments world wide are not that bright and have simply latched onto a phrase they all think will work for them in delivering right-on statements. If the latter it shows a total lack of individual thinking ingenuity and shines a light into those who would govern as not being that bright at all.
It is not easy to believe this is someone purporting to run the country; it has to rank as one of the most inane statements in the English language uttered by anyone in recent times and there have been many.
There has been a flood of buzz words in the last eighteen months, most pointless, many misleading and some just stupid, plain English forsaken for a phrase with a very limited life: furlough, tiered, traffic light, self distancing, lock down, bubble, new normal... it goes on and on; long Covid, vaccine (when it isn’t a vaccine), herd immunity (that’s a bovine phrase), Covidiot, flattening the curve etc. etc. etc., all of these have been hijacked or invented to suit an agenda, all replace standard English words that actually explain things in a much more descriptive accurate and simple way. As I have said eighteen months ago anyone using these phrases out of context would have been laughed at.
The NHS eighteen months ago had many flaws and a GP side not fit for purpose. Who could have foreseen the total close down of all services but for treating the virus, most of the NHS staff making Tik Tok videos to relieve boredom and ending with an NHS that is now a basket case, with the potential for thousands more to die from neglect by that organisation than have done from the virus. Eighteen months ago you would have laughed at the suggestion and the stupidity of shutting all else down.
Who could have foreseen the borrowing of money at the highest rate ever in peacetime? £303 billion in one year was spent above income attained leaving us with a debt so large we are totally finished if interest rates go up even 1%; savings will be wiped out by inflation and still they spend and talk of further restrictions on wealth creation in many areas.
Meanwhile the quality of politicians continues to plummet, from a pre Covid poor to post? Covid dire, our Health Secretary manages to make a complete arse of himself by managing to get himself recorded on the office CCTV, that in itself is quite an achievement as the camera was so bloody obvious, but still….
The Labour party goes for the grievance vote by putting up Jo Cox’s sister as a candidate, despite not being a Labour member until a month before being chosen and bending all their own rules on selection, and now the Muslim vote they curry favour for has discovered the fact she is a lesbian; they surely didn’t believe that once found out it would not make a difference with the ROP supporters - naive or stupid? At the same time all political parties involved in the by election show total cowardice in failing to mention the teacher threatened with his life and living in hiding because it might lose them some votes.
And Angela Rayner (crayons) now deputy party leader and former shadow education minister has just put out this statement about Hancock….
"Matt Hancock was in fragrant breach of his own rules"
"A senior minister has a duty to uphold standards, when faced with the opportunity to have an affair he should have reclined"
Amazingly some Labour MPs are pushing her as a replacement for Starmer!
Meanwhile the PM just lies about everything.
Eighteen months ago it was ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’; now, after a large part of the population has had two jabs to save ‘our’ NHS we are told we will need two more in the same year. Just how good is the efficacy of the jabs we have been given, if we now need two more to protect freedoms that have not returned?
Eighteen months ago you could go on holiday anywhere in the world. Now, even if you do escape you will probably be stranded and have to return at great expense and go into quarantine. For the elite nothing has changed in eighteen months, but then they only make the rules, there is no expectation they will ever have to abide by them.
'Staycation', another awful word coined first by another waste of space, one David ‘I am not a quitter’ Cameron, is giving a boost to the local holiday market, well to those who can afford £2500 a week for a one bedroomed cottage in Cornwall; no point in trying to get a room in a hotel, they are either booked solid till 2023 or full of dinghy people as army barracks are not good enough for them despite being good enough for the army.
I read a report by someone who took his wife to A&E for a suspected broken arm in an East London hospital. Upon arrival there was a queue and virtually everyone in it was foreign, many different languages were being spoken; it would appear that the influx of illegal migrants to inner city areas and who have a health problem of any sort rock up to A&E as they can’t register with a GP, thereby clogging up a service we pay for and they don’t and never have. This isn’t new, just worse: I remember when my mother was dying in St Mary’s in London, parking round the back of the hospital meant I had to come in via the A&E; it was striking, the place was packed and I could not see a single white face in the place - a mixed area for sure, but not one. You cannot help but wonder how many were not actually entitled to health care. When I mentioned the fact to a nurse looking after my mum she said the place was a de facto destination point for so many from abroad who want to game the system and there is little they can do. Nothing has changed: with over a million at least of illegal migrants in this country, some reckon at least twice that, the cost must be horrendous for the tax payer, yet the virtue signallers think this is all OK and shows we care as a nation. We do care, as long as they are genuine and have come through the right channels and not the English one.
But our own should come first. They pay for it, and all those virtue signallers in the NHS who are so loose with the services we make possible, or did.
Again the influx of dinghy people has highlighted something that was partially buried or kept under wraps eighteen months ago.
Eighteen months ago if you decided to sell your house and move it was not easy as not that many were putting their properties on the market as the conditions post Brexit made the market a bit unsure of direction. Come the virus and the country bankrupting itself the housing market goes through the roof and the government gives it or the builders a helping hand; who seriously would have bet on that, the economics of the madhouse? It keeps the Daily Mail happy though: “man charged with murdering wife and children, seen here in an earlier photo in front of his luxury £750k house in... a popular area for aspiring rappers.”
Add to that demand for building materials has risen at an unprecedented rate during that period. Timber alone has doubled for many types and much is simply unavailable, so house prices have rocketed and now if you decide not to move but upgrade your old house it will take a lot more money and a lot longer to get the job done. Congratulations to our new chancellor for exacerbating the problem.
Since eighteen months ago, the press have become the mouthpiece of the government: any dissenting or challenging statements are ignored completely or those uttering such mischievous items of fact are now de-platformed, cancelled or declared nutters. Marches are only reported if of the correct type - BLM and XR are on the approved list - anything else even if hundreds of thousands attend are totally ignored, all in the name of having a united front in tackling the virus (despite all this togetherness they have still made an utter cods of large areas of the fight against the disease.) The BBC of course have no trouble taking this stance as they have been doing this as the new normal for years now.
It is also difficult to believe we would have a border in the middle of the Irish sea separating us from another part of the United Kingdom. Eighteen months ago if that had been suggested as a solution to a problem we would have laughed at it, but that along with all the other nonsense is an indication of how we have progressed or not, and the nots win.
Finally an advert in the Times today, the 1st of July by the Co-op:
“Your goodbye wishes matter
"Plan your funeral with us and choose now how you want to be remembered. We’ll make it personal, every step of the way.
"Buy a CO OP plan before the 30th of June and get up to £50 back to spend at the CO OP.”
Not taking any chances, are they?
12 comments:
I am not generally fond of conspiracy theories.
However, the steady erosion of funding for the NHS by the Tories copies the model the the GOP have used to cripple Medicare and Medicaid in the US.
Some senior members of the party have even said that average people don't deserve health care (or pensions, for that matter).
"the steady erosion of funding for the NHS by the Tories"
That'll be the funding that rose from 126bn in 2009/10 (last year of the last Labour government) to £150bn for 2019/20 (last year before covid, budgets have gone wild since then)? A rise of nearly 20% in a decade, in real terms no less, thats a 20% rise AFTER inflation. How exactly is a significant rise in real terms an 'erosion of funding'?
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget
As Sobers says about funding , the same with staff numbers as I showed have gone up nearly five per cent each of the last two years.
Where the money goes and where the staff are placed or what sort of staff is a question never answered.
Meanwhile consultants are threatening to strike, as they are exhausted by working through the virus period, are these the same consultants like the one I am going to have operating on me soon that have time to work in the private area alongside their NHS commitments despite the enormous back log, he couldn't wait to tell me when he said there was a two year wait that if I went private contact him direct!
@Sobers - If it's anything like here, the additional money doesn't go to patient care, but rather to administrators. Out of interest, how many hospitals have a 'Diversity Tsar'?
" If it's anything like here, the additional money doesn't go to patient care, but rather to administrators. Out of interest, how many hospitals have a 'Diversity Tsar'?"
Well thats not the point is it? You alleged that 'the Tories' had 'eroded' the NHS funding, and it just not true. They have shovelled more money in real terms into the NHS year after year, as Tory governments have since the NHS was created, and it just disappears into the maw of paying for higher staff salaries and more admin jobs, and very little if any of it benefits the patient.
Such is the nature of the pure socialist NHS - it ends up run for the benefit of the producers not the consumers, because the consumers have no power, the producers can do as they please because the consumer can't go elsewhere and take their funding with them, as they can with private sector businesses.
@Sobers - the claims of defunding were what I was indeed reading from afar, and it reminded me of what the GOP have done to the Veteran's Administration here.
As for 'taking your money' and getting what you want or deserve, I would be cautious.
Here in the US, there are tens of millions with no health coverage at all, most avoiding periodic check-ups because they simply cannot afford them. Tens of millions more have coverage in name only, due to really terrible insurance.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/01/conservatives-underfunding-nhs-made-crisis-inevitable
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/11/nhs-national-health-service-tory-conservative-party-privatization-privatisation
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/boris-johnson-conservatives-nhs-funding
To correct Paddington, probably 150 million people in the US don't have health care because they don't want to pay for it. A cell phone or new car or a vacation are more important than health care.
People won't even save for retirement, that's why Social Security was forced on the masses. Look at government run operations like the Post Office, The Department of Motor Vehicles, VA health care and Medicare; the government does a lousy job, they don't have to show a profit.
There is a reason government doesn't make hand grenades, a lack of quality in their work.
"the claims of defunding were what I was indeed reading from afar"
Well in future stop reading leftist sources who pander to your own internal biases and do a bit of actual research of your own.
You are obviously US based, and as such your Left will tell you that the NHS is some Golden City on a Hill that the US should aspire to recreate over there. As a UK dweller who has to endure the NHS I can tell you its sh*t. Utterly sh*t with a capital S,H, * and T. I wouldn't wish the NHS on my worst enemy. Its full of lazy, time serving, mendacious, arrogant, incompetent and downright dangerous employees whose main aim in life is to collect their constantly rising salary and index linked pensions. Any healthcare they might provide along the line is entirely accidental. It is an utterly dysfunctional behemoth that chews people up and spits them out as bits. It literally kills tens of thousands of people per year through rank incompetence and nothing is done. If you fall foul of the NHS in the UK you very well may end up dead, and no-one will care. Ask all those thousands of people who lost relatives in the Gosport Hospital scandal (google it). Hundreds died (were murdered in effect) and not one person has ever even been disciplined let along prosecuted for anything related to it.
Its weird, we in the UK are told (by the Left naturally) that the only alternative to the NHS is the US system, which from the outside looks pretty dysfunctional and hardly that enticing a prospect. Indeed its used mostly as a weapon against anyone who wishes to reform the NHS - 'Look, they want to turn the NHS into the US healthcare system, the evil b*stards!'. Meanwhile you in the US are told (by the Left again) that what the US really needs is the NHS. Meanwhile out in the rest of the world they have largely solved the problem of providing universal healthcare that works, no-one in their right minds copies either the UK or the US systems. They have all plumped for various versions of the social insurance model whereby the State is the collector and disperser of money, but keeps its nose mostly out of the actual provision, leaving that to the private sector. Or at least a decent combination of private, public and charitable provision, so that the problem of producer capture is kept to a minimum.
The only people who gain from the portrayal of the UK and US systems as being the only games in town are the Left in those countries (unsurprisingly). Frightening the electorates about how the Right want to destroy healthcare for the poor etc etc is one of their major political weapons - if the problem of healthcare is solved then they lose a massive political raison d'etre. So the last thing they want is either the UK or the US to have functioning healthcare systems based on what works elsewhere in the world. They are actively agitating to make sure healthcare remains as dysfunctional as possible, for their own selfish ends.
@Sobers - the right in the US have solved the problem by saying that the poor don't deserve health care. What's left of the middle class have their benefits tied to their jobs, providing even more power over them by the employers.
My own experience with the NHS were prior to 1978, and entirely satisfactory.
@Jim - it isn't close to 150 million. However, when you are earning on the order of $25,000 per year in a household (the 2nd quintile), paying $1000 or more per month in just unaffordable.
As for the Post Office, the former was deliberately crippled by the GOP, forcing them to prepay all pensions for 70 years. Other than that, they actually make a profit. The VA has had some issues, but every single Vietnam-era and Gulf War I veteran that I know is quite happy with their care here in Ohio.
@Paddington I remember being 18, having one or two roommates and making the minimum wage. My health care costs probably averaged $100 a year for stiches and other doctor visits. I probably spent about $200 on the dentist each year. When I got to age 50 I had acquired wealth and wanted to preserve it, I signed up for health insurance, and never really used it.
I am now 74 still working. I used health insurance to limit my risk of loss. Government health care is an entitlement and it has the appearances of being free. Most will never use it until they are over 55. It is a tax on our youth when they make the least money.
The cost not considered and one I fear, is the cost of rest home care, $60,000 a year. Did your government take out enough in payroll taxes, over your lifetime, to cover that cost for say 3 years?
The medical advances in the last 20 years have progressed to the point that the length of life can be extended if the cost is acceptable. At some point the answer has to be no. But will that answer acceptable, I doubt it.
@Jim - then you are lucky, and should be grateful. I know lots of people who have major health issues at a moderate age.
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