21 March 2006

Socialist Britain protecting who

A couple of minor gripes:
1. My girlfriend injured her shoulder over the weekend, tried to find a doctor - "oh there isn't an appointment for 2 weeks", "you need three forms of ID including photo ID", "oh we can't see you till April". That's the precious NHS - because you see, GPs are "free" in the UK, so you can't see one when you are injured or sick - she was better off ringing an ambulance (for what is probably a bruised muscle) and going to accident and emergency - except she DID ring the hospital and was told it would be around 4 hours before she was seen. 4 hours!! This is what the Labour Party is so frigging proud of, a system that costs a fortune in taxes, which doesn't deliver when you need it. Where you can't find a private GP easily (they aren't allowed to advertise and the NHS helpline wont tell you who they are) , and the public ones treat you like you're applying for a Swiss passport or have you queuing up for weeks because it's not convenient that you're sick or injured today. I had the same thing happen with a chest infection last year, rang one NHS doctor to find I could be seen in about 10 days, rang another who wasn't there and rang a third who had a even longer waiting list because the masses were getting flu jabs.
2. Health and safety nazis stop a girl with a cut finger getting a plaster because "some kids might be allergic to them" part of the wisdom of council safety guidelines in Somerset - YET, this morning at my local tube station, because the exit side of the lift doors are closed (due to footpath maintenance outside the building), people at peak times are entering and exiting from the same doors. The doors are only open for enough time for one of those movements so as people go in they keep closing on your shoulders - fine for me, but if I was a child or elderly then I'd get whacked by them while some irritating school-ma'amish South Asian voice says "doors closing stand clear". Braindead fucking tube company - how about reprogramming the doors to stay open for longer, or how about the stupid council NOT undertaking footpath maintenance in peak times.
Please stop reading if you get upset at strong language, then click here.
.
.
.
.
.
FUCK this stupid egalitarian socialist system. How fucking long do you have to be off work and ill before you can get service. How fucking long does someone work 2.2 days a week to pay taxes and "national insurance" and find it doesn't deliver unless you plan to be sick at a certain time or have a heart attack or accident. How many people in this country are ill because they can't be arsed wasting their time on waiting lists and how many people are seeing doctors because they have a snotty nose? All I know is this - in New Zealand, which is not exactly the land of free market medicine - the GPs are all private. People on low incomes or the elderly or children of the rich and poor get subsidised treatment, but I can usually get a doctor's appointment within 24 hours. Yes I would pay the equivalent of around £15 for the visit - but it did the trick. I also swapped doctors and lo and behold, I didn't have to take my passport, driver's licence or anything else to prove I'm not trying to steal from the system I am forced to pay for.
.
The NHS is a frigging joke unless it is emergency time - wake up Britain - give up this fantasy that having all healthcare for free is working. Why don't you free GPs from the shackles of state control and let them charge you - pay for it - it will be better.
.
and yes I know I can leave.

20 March 2006

It's for the children - state surveillance is only to protect them

How ridiculous it is to oppose doing something that is good for children, stupid hysterical idiots bringing up nonsense of privacy when it is childrens' lives at stake and how best to help them.
.
So the Commissar for the Next Generation Cindy Kiro has her little fascist bureaucrat eyes on a single ID for all children - so that she can put her maternal loving arms around your kids, because - you see- you're not competent enough to know what's best. You see we apparently have the third highest child homicide rate in the developed world - and that means your kids need to lose their privacy for life.
.
"Oh, but these issues can be managed". Of course, who wouldn't trust education, health, justice authorities to use data collected fairly - nothing wrong with them all knowing about your kids, after all "you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide". That, of course, justifies random searches of people's homes without warrants, or any state invasion of privacy.
.
So how is this meant to protect your kids from abuse? Well you see, Police and CYFS seem incapable of identifying children at risk of abuse - odd really, since the worst cases mostly appear to be committed by convicted criminals as it is. Odd further that the people who do so are often welfare beneficiaries, who the state should be checking up on to see if they are looking for work and trying to get out of the rut they are in. I am not saying it is an easy job, but giving all kids a national ID is a bit like saying we should fingerprint everyone, because we might then be able to match a few crimes to suspects we don't know yet. It is presuming that every child is at risk, which is nonsense - most parents do a perfectly reasonable job of raising their kids - certainly better than the state does when it holds them in its custody.
.
Kiro says ""If there is glue ear, or major issues about safety at home, then people do not learn properly. All the little bits need to come together." So glue ear means the kids are being abused does it? How do you know about "major issues about safety at home", unless the state has released convicted rapists, child abusers and murderers out and allowed them to live with children again. What is most disturbing is the phrase "all the little bits need to come together" as if bureaucrats can piece together what is about to happen. When they get it wrong it can be devastating - consider when families are split up because some busybody social worker thought that a child was being abused, and the parents (usually fathers) were guilty till proven innocent. The state rarely compensates for getting that wrong.
.
You pay for Kiro and your pay for more of the incompetent abusive parents than you'd like to, and you pay for David Benson Pope, who is "seeking advice on how to set up such a scheme", not even evaluating the merits.
.
Before even contemplating treating everyone's children at risk, the state might think about offering judges the option of sentencing murderers, rapists, child molesters and other serious violent criminals to be denied custody of children for life. In other words, you have lost your right to be a parent when you acted violently against another.
.
For all of the allegations of DBP bullying, this is far more disturbing than any of that - because it means a national ID system for the whole country, in due course. You see all you need is to implement it for immigrants (you know those suspicious aliens who might change jobs without informing the authorities - deport them!) and within a generation, you all have a national ID - like Malaysia, Belarus, North Korea.
.

Fly from Iran to relocated cities in Asia


Go here and check out the airline that flies to Delhi in Tibet, Shanghai in Japan, Bangkok on the Cambodian/Vietnamese border, Damascus in Turkey and Bahrain Saudi Arabia. Now it might be a perfectly good airline, and presumably its pilot don't get lost, no thanks to the IT department.

Paris riots not political - just thugs

The leftie bloggers who might think the Paris riots are some sort of youth proletarian fight against capitalism. Well, one word... bollocks.
.
The report this morning on the BBC World Service was from a journalist who was there, who said that he noticed the element of troublemakers who quietly were gathering while most protestors peacefully opposed the new youth employment law. Reuters reports much the same with "a few dozen youth" causing havoc. The riots were caused by teenagers out wanting to confront Police and wreck cars, vandalise and loot - many protestors distanced themselves from them - I doubt if most of the rioters even understood what they were getting involved in. That doesn't match with the romanticised leftist view of French political activism though.

Call for state funding of UK political parties

This is due to the scandal of loans given by rich Labour supporters in exchange for peerages. No doubt this happened with the Tories too. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott wants state funding for political parties, no doubt meaning most should go to Labour and the Tories. Political parties should be able to be funded by whoever wants to fund them – but that does not mean the state. The state would never fund new parties and will always be set up to primarily fund those already dominant. It is fundamentally undemocratic and corporatist – the status quo funding parties supporting primarily variations on the status quo. State funding of political parties will be resisted by many, and hopefully will be buried as a ridiculous socialist fantasy. If people wont voluntarily fund a political party, why should they be forced to pay for it campaigning to run their lives? If the British Labour Party struggles to get money (which seems unlikely), it might want to look at itself - maybe it doesn't deserve the campaign its power hungry MPs wish it to have?