"it's frightening to be spoken of as an imaginary country"
Food for thought, from a Slacktivist thread on bank fees and check cashing and hidden levies on the poor. A British poster says she's angry about the lies being spread about the NHS. An American responds, and she responds to the response:
When the US crackpots talk about the UK and the NHS, they aren't talking about the actual United Kingdom. That's why Stephen Hawking doesn't live there. They're simply projecting their nightmare fantasies. Sorry they had to besmirch where you live. But, does anyone in the UK actually take theirWhen Brits, even just some Brits, start thinking like this, we're doing something very, very wrong.criticismsinsane ranting seriously?
When they attacked the NHS, the country on the whole rose in fury. A lot of that, I think, was national pride: we like our NHS, and we also don't like having a bunch of Yanks mouthing off about us.
It is pretty insulting to be spoken of as an imaginary country. But more than that, it's frightening to be spoken of as an imaginary country by a nation with that many weapons and that many crazy people. Iraq was equally a fantasy as far as American policy was concerned, but that didn't stop them from declaring war on it. My fear is that the UK's imaginary status in these people's minds won't stop them from moving in on us. After all, a rapist who drags you into the bushes doesn't want the real you, he's using you as a projection of his fantasies - but he's going to fuck and hurt you nonetheless.
At the moment I'm less worried about people over here than over there. America is one scary country from the outside, and I wouldn't at all put it past the extremists to try something in the UK as part of their general expansionism.
5 Comments:
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At 6:32 PM, September 16, 2009
Anonymous had this to say...
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At 11:59 AM, September 17, 2009
Anonymous had this to say...
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At 12:51 PM, September 17, 2009
The Ridger, FCD had this to say...
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At 1:47 PM, September 17, 2009
Anonymous had this to say...
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At 9:43 AM, September 21, 2009
C. L. Hanson had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->When Brits, even just some Brits, start thinking like this, we're doing something very, very wrong.
What too many Americans are doing is shouting nonsense about things of which they know nothing. It's no accident that the rest of the world considers Americans arrogant and ignorant - which is a dismal combination of traits, if you ask me.
The British National Health Service almost killed me, once.
I usually hesistate to tell that story on the Internet these days, for two reasons. One reason is that people with wacky ideas about health care might see it as ammunition, which it isn't, but that wouldn't stop them. The other is that I was a very young child at the time, and the story as I tell it is therefore second-hand and probably not very accurate. But here goes.
It happened during the early eighties when we were living in Scotland. I was sick. The medical establishment subscribed penicillin (I see you're ahead of me). I got sicker - much sicker. My parents contacted the medical establishment to ask what to do about my getting sicker. They were told to keep giving me the penicillin. As I understand it, they were not even given an opportunity to see a doctor, and this advice came from junior staff. Of course, my parents kept giving me the penicillin, as advised.
Then a nurse who was a personal friend of my parents came to our house, took ONE look at me, and IMMEDIATELY recognised an allergic reaction to penicillin.
And that's why I'm still alive, no thanks to the NHS. (You probably have questions. So do I, but I can't remember the story being mentioned more recently than my 21st birthday party, and I'm in my thirties now.)
"No thanks" to the NHS? Like no other doctor could have made that error, and like the NHS didn't pay for whatever your parents ended up treating you with?
That wasn't "the NHS". That was a doctor making a mistake. That he worked for the NHS is irrelevant. You could as easily say "a doctor almost killed me".
I did say that (as I understand it, and I reiterate that I haven't heard the story for a few years), the advice to continue with the prescribed treatment didn't come from a doctor at all, but from junior staff over the telephone or something like that. The way the picture has been painted for me, I get the impression that insufficient access to doctors was a big part of the problem.
None of which is any sort of ammunition for people opposed to public health care in principle. Even if there was a problem with the public health care system in one particular country at one particular time in one particular circumstance, this has no bearing on the merits of health care systems in general. Which is why I'm careful about where I tell the story.
Re: The way the picture has been painted for me, I get the impression that insufficient access to doctors was a big part of the problem.
I would guess that there's room for improvement in the system -- but in the context of this discussion -- keep in mind that it's unlikely that you would have had greater access to a doctor under the U.S. system.
Personally, I've lived in the U.S. for 29 years and I've lived in Europe for 9, and one of the biggest differences in my health care experience in the two places was access to doctors. The difference is dramatic. In France, I could call a doctor any time I needed to (for example, when my son fell and hit his head on a step), and a doctor would come to our house right away and examine him carefully and discuss the accident with us and make sure everything was clear about what happened and what needed to be done. In the U.S., when my other son was throwing up and we didn't know why, we took him in to the local pediatric clinic, after forty-five minutes of negotiating with the administration and having technicians perform a few tests on him, a doctor came in and looked at him for less than five minutes. The doctor barely said a word to us (the parents) before setting off for who-knows-what other more important task he had to perform. And that pathetic excuse for an exam cost us $400.
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