Prevention Better Than Cure

 

I am not Old Holborn

I don't often make a habit out of reading newspapers, I generally get my news online via the various news outlets, why spend money on the crap they spew? Yes, every so often newspapers come up with the goods but hardly worth buying a whole paper for really.

I commute most days, and on the odd occasion I pick up a London Evening Standard, simply because it's free and it gives me something to do while the train operating company I use tries to spunk our taxes away by trying not to provide a service. I don't spend a lot of time reading the paper, it's just something to do really. I generally just sit and turn page after page until a story catches my eye.

Today was one of those days where not only did I pick up a paper, but a story poked it's fetid head out at me too. It took two reads before what I'd read actually dawned over me. The red mist descended quickly.

Britain isn't so much becoming a police state, it's becoming a state of spies, something akin to Nazi Germany and subsequently East Germany.

Look!

Earlier today Holby wrote about how the government is going to start regulating the clothes our children wear. That pales in comparison to this. In my opinion anyway. In the end they'll have everyone spying on everyone else, perpetuating fear because of that new “Boogey Man” terrorism.

HOSPITALS will be told to identify patients and staff who could be engaged in extremism, under a new government counter-terrorism blueprint to be unveiled tomorrow. The "Prevent" strategy, drawn up by Home Secretary Theresa May, will tell doctors and NHS bosses that they have an ethical duty to alert police if they suspect radicalism.

Emphasis mine. Since when did doctors, nurse and orderlies become part of the security forces? And why?

I have many problems with the NHS, and this is a gross generalisation, but fair I believe, the NHS is a cluster-fuck, it is over managed and it often under performs. If they can't get THAT right how the bloody hell are we to expect them to get this right? A doctor's first priority is the health of his or her patient. It certainly is NOT to determine whether the poor bastard who is pissing blood out of his eyeballs is an extremist.

I suppose though that I shouldn't be surprised that they've gone down this avenue. Anyone who has spent a night in A&E will have dealt with the triage nurse before seeing a doctor, the triage nurse determines which cases get priority, sometimes, they get it wrong. What I'm trying to get across here is that they have to make a quick decision based on what they think. I have absolutely no confidence in them getting this right. At all.

One aim is to ensure patients whose mental health problems lead them to adopt extremist ideas are stopped before they commit acts of violence.

Emphasis mine again. I find that paragraph scary. Am I the only one?

The new approach follows the involvement of Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla in the failed bomb attacks on Tiger Tiger nightclub in London and Glasgow airport in 2007. He was jailed for life the next year for conspiracy to murder and cause explosions.

So this extreme measure is because of the actions of one person. The old addage and title of this post is: “Prevention is Better than Cure”.

I have a message for Theresa May:

You can prevent this from happening without becoming a quasi Soviet state in one simple step.

Don't let the fuckers in, in the first place!

Sir Olly

http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2011/06/prevention-better-than-cure.html