An occasional series of people we don’t read no more
Totally, I say totally, unideological dataguy Keith Humphreys explains how his club can’t get the staff, and therefore the young people must get out of their dependency culture>:
I was staying at my club in London and woke up to find that there was neither any electricity or warm water. I washed my face in icy water and shaved by the light of my mobile phone before stumbling down to the breakfast room. There I learnt that all the other members had endured the same unpleasant surprise. The stoves and refrigerator were not working either, meaning that the morning meal was both meager and unappetizing.
If this had been a hotel, everyone would have been angry and demanded a refund from the management. But it was our club, so none of us complained. Indeed the mood at breakfast was rather jocular. The club is us, we are the club. What were we going to do, sue ourselves?
That’s how a whole generation of British people felt about the National Health Service NHS. It wasn’t an alienating system run by outsiders. It was theirs. An elderly friend who passed away recently had his final years made shorter and more painful by an NHS doctor’s medication error. Of course my friend was not pleased, but it never occurred to him to sue the NHS. In his eyes, that would be like suing his own club.Younger Britons see the NHS more as a hotel. It’s a government-run system of which they feel they have no stake.
Younger Briton here. I do not. You do not seem to support this statement. Perhaps it’s the overprivilege inherent in having a gents’ only London club that causes you to talk out of your arse.
Or is it your repeatedly mentioned and no doubt lucrative gig as consultant to the Home Office, dependent on Tory goodwill, that does the work?
The aim is clear, in either case. In his US market, the NHS must be smeared to defend the local arrangements. In his UK market, whatever they come up with must be pushed as new and American.
Also, if Brits sue their GP, they’re not suing the NHS, but rather an independent contractor who supplies it, or in a cynical sense, his or her insurer. This is the meaning of the famous remark of Aneurin Bevan’s that he stuffed their mouths with gold. If you think this bloke knows something about the NHS, you should worry about this.
Fuck off. ***HANGUP***
the other famous remark of AB’s was that if a bedpan was dropped in Merthyr Tydfil, the noise should echo through the corridors of Whitehall – in other words, that the idea that having a lawsuit was the most effective way to complain is itself indicative of moral degeneration.
He didn’t say anything about the transmission mechanism between Merthyr and Whitehall. Perhaps he meant it would go via the local MP…but a lot of old timers will tell you MPs didn’t give a shit back then and their constituency role has only grown.
There always were a lot of regional and local boards, as there are now, but who knows who they are? fewer people than know who the MP is.
Thinking back to the classes on Aristotlean rhetoric that I attended at my immensely superior university, I can’t help thinking that if you are a right-wing pundit writing for a general audience and want to establish pathos in your inventio or exordium then starting with the words “I was staying at my club in London” is probably about the worst possible way to do it.