Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Did you hear the one about the 83-year old Englishwoman banned from the doctor's surgery [what you in the US would call a "medical practice"] she had been attending for thirty years in order to help reduce the size of her "carbon-footprint"?
I particularly like the glorious official letter the poor woman received:
“Our greatest concern is for your health and convenience but also taking into consideration green travelling issues. Re: Carbon footprints and winter weather conditions, we feel it would be advisable for patients to register at surgeries nearer to where they live.
"We would be very grateful if you could make the necessary arrangements to re-register at another practice.”
This is the problem with socialized medicine. It's not just the massive extra cost to the taxpayer that makes it so disastrous; it's also that it gives Big Government carte blanche to extend the tentacles of political correctness ever deeper into the recesses of people's hitherto private lives.
In a free market healthcare system, any doctor's surgery that placed a higher value on Gaia-worship than on its patients' well-being would quite rightly go out of business.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
At least they didn't ask her to make the ultimate reduction in personal carbon-footprint. Not yet.
May '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
I'm so sick of green, I'm green.
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
I've never heard "surgery" used in the way you have it here, James, and the way it's used in the Telegraph piece:
Judging by context, I take it to mean that you Brits use the word "surgery" where Americans would use "medical practice."
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
@etoiledunord Oh that will come. Don't you worry. Soylent Green.
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Thanks Diane. I've put in an explanation. Two nations divided by a common language, etc....
Aug '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Well, gosh, considering that all health care problems have clearly been solved in the UK, why NOT make carbon emissions your #1 priority?
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Part of the pleasure of having a British Contributor on Ricochet is encountering fascinating and unusual diction.
As to the story, I have to confess I didn't believe it when I first read your post. I thought it must be a joke or a parable or something. But no. Don't people get outraged about anything in Britain these days, or is nearly everyone resigned to this type of absurdity?
Jul '11
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Misthiocracy makes a great point. Stateside we are used to watching government programs implode and change direction to hide malfeasance. That's pretty clearly what's happening here.
May '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
How do you defeat a left-wing shibboleth? With another, bigger left-wing shibboleth!
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Give politicians power over anything and decisions get made according to political fashion. Depressing.
Sep '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
James Delingpole: it gives Big Government carte blanche to extend the tentacles of political correctness ever deeper into the recesses of people's hitherto private lives.
Do you think she would have been sent this same letter if she had been seeking a sex change operation?
May '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
This is really just a ploy of the robotics industry. One day, we will all exchange our deplorable carbon-based bodies for silicon, and the world will be safe again.
Jun '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness: Kurtz: "The Horror."
Me, after seeing Delingpole post: "The Horror."
Edited on April 5, 2012 at 7:56pmJan '12
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
Medical Practice verses Surgery. My Medical Practice talks about Surgery hours.
http://www.grovemedicalpractice.nhs.uk/
May '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
All this environmental wacko talk... How do we know it's just not some sort of English pickup line to seduce young American women?
Nov '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
"Our greatest concern is for your health and convenience but also taking into consideration green travelling issues. Re: Carbon footprints and winter weather conditions, we feel it would be advisable for patients to register at surgeries nearer to where they live."
The Orwellian double-speak is disgustingly patent.
Clearly, the NHS's greatest concern is NOT for the lady's health and convenience; yet they assert it is. To finagle the point, they append the ungrammatical clause: "but also taking into consideration green travelling issues". What measured vagueness! Here, "taking into consideration" means "prioritizing over you".
Next come this weird "Re:" business. What faux formality and self-importance the abbreviation implies! At all costs, the NHS avoid saying what they are in fact doing: unreasonably hassling an elderly lady.
Note how they unctuously cite "winter weather conditions"--as if they are acting solicitously on her behalf, when they are giving her no option but to comply with their centrally managed utopian plan.
Then comes the sugar-coated "We feel it would be advisable...". Unsweetened translation: "Do our bidding, or disappear."
The NHS can't bring themselves to call a spade a spade, even when digging someone's grave with it.
Edited on April 5, 2012 at 8:34pmJun '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
E.J.: A new high in the Hill archives.
Dec '10
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
James,
This is what it must have been like to live in Stalin's Russia. Whatever pet theory the semi-literate party was in love with at the moment they enforced on the people mercilessly.
Freedom & Free Markets are essential to life itself.
Regards,
Jim
May '11
Re: Official: In Britain Carbon Emissions Reduction Now More Important Than Healthcare
After reading the article, it seems pretty clear they thought the old biddy was a troublemaker and a pain, and just gave whatever ridiculous reason they thought would make her go and bother someone else. The fact they chose the 'carbon footprint' one is testament to the fact that people will swallow any old environmental line without question.