The Heartless NHS

From the BBC

The NHS must stop turning a "blind eye" to smoking and ban it in all hospital grounds in England, according to new guidance.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence said it wanted to see smoking shelters scrapped so patients, visitors and staff could not light up. Staff should also stop helping patients out of their beds to go for a smoke.

And patients who smoke must be identified and offered help to quit, the guidance added. It said nurses, doctors and other staff could give brief advice and then refer smokers on to NHS stopping smoking services.

This is what I despise about the big state, and one of many reasons why I am utterly in favour of privatising the NHS.

When I have a problem with my car, my mechanic fixes it. It might also be that he advises me about things I could do to prolong the life of it, and I appreciate that advice. If my mechanic tried to stop me wearing through brakes, he'd soon find himself no longer my mechanic. It's none of his business.

The NHS is there to fix people's health. Part of its job is also to advise people on what's good for their health. When it steps into trying to stop people doing things, it's not doing its job.

Right now, it can do this, because hospitals have a monopoly. Some elderly guy who's had a hip operation whose one small pleasure in life is his roll-ups can be stopped by an uncaring bully. You're not going to get those people to quit anyway. Most people who quit do so at a younger age. Old people figure something's going to kill them soon anyway.

So, let's imagine a competitive model. The old NHS hospital tells an old man he can't smoke when having his hip done. So, he tells his mate about it. When his mate needs his hip done, he says "no, not going there, I'd like to be able to go out for a smoke". The private hospital that considers what the patient wants, rather that their own opinions get the job. And we put a bunch of fascists out of work, or force them to modify their behaviour.

If I had the spare time, I'd create a service where I drove up to the hospital grounds, drove people off them where they could have a smoke and drive them back on again, just to piss off these bastards.

"Kill me and redistribute resources," expert urges.

From The Guardian:

The world's most renowned eco-fascist has called for a massive reduction in the number of himself and for natural resources to be redistributed from himself to people who aren't quite so irritating.

Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of genocide at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers of pontificating idiots were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.

The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was exactly one professor fewer than whatever number everybody else calculates, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.

"How many self-righteous dickheads you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with a maximum of zero because then you can have big active cities and wilderness without some twat harping on about cities being bad for the environment but living in the wilderness being worse. If you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support in the long term about 40 or 50 billion people. Luckily, we only have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to professor shrinkage.

"The question is: can you shoot me in the head without a disaster, like my blood staining this fancy Persian rug? Probably yes. But if I go on at this pace, there are going to be various forms of disaster. Some maybe slow motion disasters like people ignoring me more and more, or catastrophic disasters because somebody kills innocent bystanders when he blows up my house, there could be a collateral damage, but for humanity as a whole, certainly a price worth paying."

Ehrlich, who was described as alarmist in the 1970s, a boring twat in the 1980s, a fascist in the 1990s, a complete wanker in the Noughties and a total tosspot last week, says none of his predictions have proved correct and admits he was unduly gloomy about humanity's ability to feed over 9 billion people.

"We have 1 billion people hungry now - about a thousand of those are denied the basics because of my own over-consumption. They are going to have to be fed on more marginal land, from water that is purified more or transported further - unless of course somebody throws me off a bridge," he said.

"None of the predictions [in Population Bomb] have proved correct, we're all still here forty years later, aren't we? At that time I wrote about climate change. We did not know then if it was warming or cooling, but we thought f- it, it sounds scary and will help book sales. We thought it was going to be a problem for the end of this century. Now we know it's warming, or possibly it's cooling, or both and a problem for the beginning of the century; we didn't know about the loss of people being left alone. Things have been coming up worse than was predicted. We have the threats now of vast epidemics of government-sponsored bullshit.

"I have a grim view of what is likely to happen to my children and grandchildren. I'd guess that somebody will bump them off as well just in case they have inherited the do-gooding genocidal gene. Politicians can control the financial mess we are in but they don't have control over the systems of the planet that provide me with a platform to spout my tedious, patronising views, those are deteriorating and it will take us a long time to turn it around unless you stab me to death now. It's hard to think of anything that will pop up and save you from my tedious ramblings except the guillotine. I hope something will but it really will be a miracle."

Here we go again...

Headline in DT:

European Union debt crisis: Britain must help rescue eurozone, say Germans

Link here

It strikes me that this is third time in 100 years that we have been asked to rescue Europe from the failure of the German political class and leadership. On the previous two occasionas it cost us (and the Commonwealth) blood and treasure. This time, so far, it has just cost us treasure.

Having lost twice just what part of fuck off do they not understand?

(BTW I do not believe for one moment that that Merkel's view reflects the views of the majority of the German people).

Bloody foreigners up to no good, as per usual.

From the BBC:

Italy's parliament has given final approval to a law criminalising illegal immigration* and allowing citizens' patrols to help the police keep order. The new measures have been strongly criticised by human rights groups and the Vatican. Illegal immigration will be punishable by a hefty fine and those who knowingly house illegal migrants will face up to three years in prison. The law also extends detention periods for illegal migrants to six months...

* Isn't that a tautology? How do you "criminalise" something that's already illegal?

Enviro-Nazis of the week

'Unstoppable' climate change will last 1,000 years

Hmm. Where have I heard that before ..?

"Taxi driver fined £715 for smoking"

In this morning's Metro (article not available online);

"A taxi driver has been handed a £715 fine ... for smoking in his cab. Alan Cross was penalised after council officials saw him lighting up in a place of work. The cabbie was found guilty after failing to appear in court, fined £300 and told to pay costs of £400 plus a £15 victim surcharge. But Mr Cross ... claimed he was not told of the case 'I'm stunned and angry' he added. Thurrock councillor Ben Maney said 'The council takes the protection of residents very seriously'."

There's not much you can add to that ...