I was enjoying the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics last night –the word “unconventional” popped into my head several times to describe the goings-on — and then I saw something that really threw me.
They wheeled in a bunch of hospital beds into the center of the stadium with little kids on them and people dressed as doctors and nurses, and they proceeded to celebrate …get this… a government program? “Are you kidding me?” I asked.
From a view from up top, you could see the letters “NHS” spelled out in the middle of the arena, for National Healthcare Service. It’s England’s government-run healthcare system and is billed as “the largest and oldest single-payer healthcare system in the world.”
I was floored. Was this a sign that the people of England actually like their socialist, government-run, single-payer healthcare program?
Thank God we live in the U.S.A., where people actually have some sophistication. Can you imagine, if we ever host the Olympics again, that we would celebrate any type of government-run program in our opening ceremonies, much less a socialist scheme like single-payer healthcare? It’s inconceivable, I hope. We all know that government only exists to suck up our hard-earned taxpayer dollars and is full of mindless bureaucrats and hacks, and let’s face it, left-leaning Occupy-Wall-Street types.
A national healthcare program? How could anybody want something that smacks of WITT (We’re in This Together)-style socialism, when we all know that to be truly American is to acknowledge that YOYO (You’re On Your Own)? When we do host the Olympics again, I hope we celebrate something truly worthwhile, like the disappearance of the middle class.
I now realize that the British people have lost their minds. How…un-American!
Those were actual NHS nurses who volunteered for the event!
Dr. Gabriel Scally, who resigned in April, also talks of “a very deliberate policy across all of the public sector to roll back the achievements that have been made in this country since the second world war,” and “a systematic downgrading, if not destruction, of civil society in England” by the Tory-led coalition government, as well as speaking about “the circling birds of prey of the private sector seeking to make big profits out of healthcare.”
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/07/06/nhs-chief-quits-calls-austerity-a-weapon-to-dismantle-the-state/
If you notice, these “celebrations” of the wonders of life’s continuing pageant tend to be more like Irish wakes, mourning a loss with toasts and cheers just before the first shovelful is thrown in the hole. The British people will have to fight hard to maintain this entitlement.
I can’t tell. Are you being sarcastic?
The last paragraph especially should be evidence of that.
While I actually thought a lot of that ceremony, including the NHS portion, was ham handed and tacky (not nearly as bad as the Janey loves Freddy piece which made ZERO sense), I did appreciate the irony that such an event could never happen here without a ton of controversy. One Tory MP had a cheeky tweet about it, but otherwise Britons of both parties accept that this system is needed and makes sense. Churchill carried the Disraeli tradition of one nation conservatism (we are all in this together) and was actually the first to propose such a system after the war in spite of his Tory affiliation.
It was Thatcher who then said there is ‘no such thing as society’, and sadly in spite of all his ‘Big Society’ talk Cameron’s government has been a massive disappointment in this regard and seems to hold the Thatcher view. Phillip Blond, one of my favorite political theorists, tried to revive communitarian conservatism in the Tory party has given up and joined Labour. Ed Milliband is really excited about Blond’s and other ‘red’ Tories helping to craft a more ‘blue’ Labour and he has been talking the talk on this front. My hope is that he can take charge, and it seems that once the Lib Dems jettison Clegg who really made a terrible miscalculation joining Cameron, than maybe Labour can make a comeback. Its dumped the Blair baggage and hopefully can move away from neoliberalism and back towards social liberalism once again.
Don’t the British know they are supposed to treat their sick and poor like garbage. How very Un-Angol-Saxon of them. Did they make fun of the British Dentists while they were at it?
that appears in parades and is composed of library aides.
It doesn’t really make me feel anything.