One day in January 2015 at around midnight I awoke in extreme pain, such that I could barely breathe. Within 2 minutes of a 999 call the paramedics arrived and blue lighted me to A&E. I was given a pain killer suppository which was definitely the best pain killer ever. Bliss! From that point memory gets hazy, but at 3 am I was given a 7 hour emergency operation to remove my appendix with life threatening complications for which I was thankfully out cold.
The several days I spent in hospital recovering were unpleasant for no other reason than my acute social phobia, however I was given the best drugs I’ve ever taken and spent an unknown period of time tripping my brains out. The ward turned in to a digital matrix in which I could see and experience every pixel. I thought the operation had changed how my mind worked and that I would henceforth live my life with this new ability to see the matrix. Sadly it was not to be. The climactic event of the whole thing was when, in response to the drugs, my arse exploded and I shat myself as no righteous human being deserves to shit.
I was eventually released to spend the next 3 months recovering, I had survived something that came extremely close to killing me. That, my friends, is down to science, our incredible NHS and human skill for which I am understandably incredibly grateful. Now, here’s the thing. If you want to know what life was like before the NHS, do read Harry Leslie Smith’s book, ‘Don’t Let My Past Be Your Future’ [1]. The medical care we so take for granted today simply didn’t exist prior to WWII, especially for poor people, and I would certainly have died. Post war Labour founded the Welfare State, the NHS and built more than a million homes, 80% of which were council houses.
Back then, people from all walks of life lived and thrived in social housing. Opposite the house we moved into when I was 2 or 3 was a dental technician with his own business and my childhood friend Ian. We used to occasionally accompany Ian’s dad to work and mess about with pink plastic. Whilst we, my family, were dirt poor, council houses then were for all, without prejudice or favour, they didn’t become exclusive to poor people until Margaret Thatcher. [2]
The Conservatives opposed Labour’s plans and only reluctantly got on board in what was called the post war consensus. It ended with Thatcher, since when the long plan to privatise everything has steadily and stealthily advanced into the madness of the decade of 2010 – 2020 under David Cameron, Theresa May and now Boris Johnson, which has seen poor and vulnerable people prematurely dying in droves. 50’s women robbed of their pensions and disabled people targeted with obscene cuts to their financial and physical support. [3]
A little discussed, in general, problem is that under the welfare state and with the advances in science and medicine, more and more people who would have died without our world class health system, survived to have a chance at this brief journey (miracle) we call life. Just as the NHS was there for everyone, so was the Welfare State, the cost burden shared by everyone, to use the well known expression of the Musketeers, ‘All for one and one for all’. This did not sit well with Conservatives, right-wing ideologues and eugenicists who firmly believe the gene pool is being polluted or watered down by poor genetic stock.
In their survival of the fittest ideology, unprofitable lives, poor, ill and disabled people (useless eaters) should be allowed and enabled to die. All the human advances and achievements we have worked for are the enemy of right wing progress and private profit and in the last decade we have seen and experienced the destruction of state provision and the advancing erosion of social support for those not worthy, in their eyes, of life. In that world view, the NHS, prior to the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, was the enemy of those who consider poor, ill and disabled people have no right to live if they are economically unprofitable and a drain on society. As difficult as it is, for someone like me and all decent people, to accept, they have not just thought the unthinkable, they have implemented policies that Hitler would have recognised all too well and been proud of. “While Thatcher boldly declared at the Conservative party conference in 1982 that the NHS was “safe with us”, the Iron Lady and her then chancellor Geoffrey Howe were seriously considering proposals for dismantling the welfare state, which would have included “the end of the National Health Service”.” [4] However, at that time she didn’t dare take on the sacred cows of the NHS and the Welfare State. The plans were hidden, but not abandoned, until David (pre-election pledges -“No frontline cuts”, “no top-down NHS reorganisations”, “no VAT rise”) Cameron set about doing all that and more under the guise of Austerity.
For a blow by blow analysis of the Cameron years, may I recommend my ‘Letter a Day to Number 10, detailing, over four and a half years, the catastrophic betrayal and lies of Cameron and his government as they tore Britain apart, softening us up for the further lies and betrayals under May and Johnson into what amounts to a genocide of the weakest and most vulnerable people in Britain. [5] The greatest lie of all is that some people are not worthy of life. The greatest betrayal was in the demolition of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Tories, the hidden mechanisms of state and the media threw everything at him and won and working class hopes died. The Johnson government, not worthy of the name, is the most obscene, callous, uncaring, brutal, lying, cheating, stealing government in modern post war history. For the Tories, the Corvid-19 pandemic has presented them with a licence to kill with impunity. Even the Telegraph, amazingly, has described the handling of the pandemic as ‘Government’s handling of Covid-19 is a very British disaster’ [6]. They got that wrong though, it has been an enormous success, if your agenda is murder. They have left Britain open to become the highest death toll in the world, lagging only behind the USA, in an opaque fog of lies and deceit and it ain’t over yet. [7]
Under the endless lies, they have done the bare minimum to appease the masses whilst enabling the death toll to rocket like a space shuttle on launch, or crack, take your pick. [8] Nothing in Britain will be right until we find a way to remove the wrong that is the Conservative and Unionist Party from power, who have caused such irreparable harm and loss to millions of ordinary people and our way of life.
I am 69 and I never imagined I’d ever see such a vicious, brutal, petty, predatory dictatorship in the UK and I have never before experienced such prolonged rage and grief. The Tories are a crime against life.
Keith Ordinary Guy
13 May 2020.
[1] https://www.waterstones.com/book/dont-let-my-past-be-your-future/harry-leslie-smith/9781472123473
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/thatcherism_01.shtml
[3] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-welfare-cuts-hammered-disabled-13479252
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/margaret-thatcher-government-1982-papers
[5] http://www.keithordinaryguy.org.uk/
[6] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/05/12/governments-handling-covid-19-british-disaster/
[7] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-06/uk-has-second-highest-coronavirus-death-toll-worldwide/12217924 [8] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/12/uk-coronavirus-death-toll-passes-40000-official-figures-say
