Britain's National Health Service throws away confidential medical information

And then blames the medical student who had to take out the trash:

A data protection gaffe affecting the UK's NHS is being pinned on a medical student who placed too much trust in their bin bags.

An investigation was launched following the discovery of confidential medical data sprawled across a back alley in Jesmond, a pricier suburb of Newcastle in the North East of England.

The medical student is thought to have thrown the documents into their domestic waste, which was placed outside for collection, but through one means or another, the documents escaped to the freedom of an alleyway off Lonsdale Terrace only to be found by a passerby.

So what can we say about the NHS from this?  Well, they have a terrible process for sensitive waste disposal.  They may actually not have any process at all.  Certainly the evidence does not suggest rigorous training and enforcement.

Also, we see Yet Another circling of the wagons, with a hopelessly weak excuse that blames the lowest guy on the totem pole.  That does not suggest that their process will be improved next week, or next month, or next year.  Remember, the Organs of the State do not self-correct.

But socialized medicine is awesome, amirite?

 

This is getting out of hand

Someone is going to die if this keeps up:

England's NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has issued an urgent call to O Positive and O Negative blood donors to book appointments and donate after last week’s cyberattack on pathology provider Synnovis impacted multiple hospitals in London.

On June 4, operations at multiple large NHS hospitals in London were disrupted by the ransomware attack that the Russian cybercrime group Qilin (a.k.a. Agenda) launched on Synnovis.

The incident impacted blood transfusions, with many non-urgent procedures being canceled or redirected.

 And so for the lack of adequate backups, Blighty is running out of blood.

A plague of politicians

It's a deadly plague and the media is using the Ukraine crisis to sweep it under the carpet.  From the UK.Gov:

The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms deaths are rising dramatically among the triple vaccinated population whilst declining steadily among the not-vaccinated population in England.

With the most recent figures showing the fully vaccinated accounted for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over the past month; and the triple vaccinated accounted for 4 in every 5 of them.

This is a very interesting and information-rich post, and you should take the time to read it all - including the tables of data from the UK.Gov.  This is pretty damning:

Neither The Queen Of The World nor I have been vaccinated as I have been skeptical for some time as to whether the vaccines are effective (they are pretty clearly not, as the repeated moving the goalposts demonstrates).  I've also wondered whether they are safe - and quite frankly this has been the key determinant for us.  I mean, if they're safe then why did Congress prohibit lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies for adverse effects?  The graph above suggests pretty strongly that the vax is neither safe nor effective.

Don't listen to what the politicians say.  Watch what they do.

Now I'm pretty nasty and suspicious but Peter lays out the problem with blood clots after the vax.  It's a big problem, one that isn't being reported.  Just like the problem of professional soccer players dropping dead.  Or High School students dropping dead or needing heart transplants.

Why Government should never be allowed to control your Health care

Hospitals in Germany, UK, and Israel refuse life saving transplant to 3 year old because his parents had not been vaccinated.

Politico EU reports that a 3-year-old Cypriot boy was denied a heart transplant by a hospital in Germany allegedly because his parents weren't "fully vaccinated".

And it wasn't just Germany. The boy was turned away by hospitals in the UK and Israel for the same reason. Finally, a Greek hospital was found to do the transplant, but the story is going viral anyway as the latest example of COVID restrictions run amok.

Remember what the lefties like to say: Government is just the set of things that we all agree to do together.

[spit]

Why do you need an assault rifle?  Because some governmental flunky might want to tell you that your kid is going to die because you committed crimethink.

Hey, Canadians are nicer than us Yanks, amirite?

Canadian town bans marriage between non-vacinated couples.

And a quick note for you hosers from the Great White North: before yammering on about how awful our (private) healthcare system is, please explain the following:

Charlie Gard

Alfie Evans

Oliver Cameron

Ashya King

Nota bene: these cases are from Britain, the Mother Country.  The Canadian health system (whatever it is called) is explicitly modeled on Britains National Health System (NHS) which has assumed almost cult-like status in Britain.

Britain.  You know: the land where Great Britain used to be.

So all you Canuk Hosers can just shut right up about how awesome your "Health Care" system is..  Yeah, ours may still be swirling the drain, but yours was flushed long ago.  After all, we are all still Citizens of the Republic (for now), but you are Subjects of the Crown.

Except for Glen Filthie.  He's reloading and sharpening bayonets.  Glen, come on down to Florida.  The air still smells of Freedom.

This post has the tag "Statist Pricks" because, well, you know.

The End Game of Covid is socialized health care

So what's driving all the insanity behind the Virus From Hell*?

I mean, "Two Weeks to Flatten The Curve and Save Our Health Care System" has turned into doctors and nurses being fired because they haven't been vaccinated.  This, when Covid deaths are down something like 75% from a year ago when NO health care workers were vaccinated (because there was no vaccine).

So what gives?  How can The Powers That Be be so, well, incompetent?

They're not.  None of this is by accident.  Let me expand on a comment I left over at OldNFO's place:

Doctors and nurses are being fired, leading to an unknown (more accurately: unreported) staffing shortage.  The New York National Guard is being called out to fill in.  Interestingly, you have two chances if a NatGuard doc kills your loved one: slim, and none.  You can't sue the NatGuard.  You might have a better lawsuit against a hospital who just fired 30% of their workers right before your Loved One died of neglect.  Call Morgan and Morgan**, who no doubt will be happy to take your case.

So you sue the hospital, and the hospital is run into bankruptcy.  After all, you are only one of many grieving families who lost loved ones to this reckless management decision, amirite?

So riddle me this, Healthcare Man: what happens when 40% of the hospitals in this Republic shut down?  I mean, it will be a crisis, amirite?  Someone with have to do something, amirite?  And who is ready to do something in a crisis?

Yup.  The Fed.Gov.

They'll take over all these "failed Hospitals", and the Fed.Gov will finally have the socialized healthcare that they've always wanted.  And all it will take is thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousand?  millions?) of dead Americans.

The ancient Romans were said to make a land into a desert, and then call it peace.  I mean, there were no more folks opposing their rule after they had killed most of the folks, amirite?

The Fed.Gov will make a desert and then call it "health".  This is the end game.  Don't let a crisis go to waste.

* It's not The Virus From Hell.  You want to see a disease from Hell?  Here you go.

** They are an ambulance chasing Law Firm who carpet bomb the Florida airwaves with their commercials.

But everything will be awesome when the Government runs your health care

 Biden orders HHS to cut of shipments of covid medicine to southern states.  But it's all good with socialized medicine, amirite?

Why government services will always stink

I posted this ten years ago and nothing has changed.  But the persistence of bad ideas is the only truly renewable resource, and with "Medicare for All" being a major campaign theme this year, it's back to the future.

TL;DR: Medicare For All will stink.  I have proof.

Originally posted February 1, 2010:

The definition of insanity ...

... is thinking - despite repeated examples to the contrary - that this time the same thing will give you different results. Don Surber looks at the UK.Gov's National Health Service, and finds them gaming the metrics:

Here is how it works: In order to cut down on waiting time, people are put in the hospital quicker, even though there are not enough beds.
No problem.
“They say the targets put pressure on hospitals to discharge people early to free up beds and have turned the NHS into a ‘revolving door’,” the London Daily Mail reported.
It is the National Health Service Hokey-Pokey. You put your patient in, you take your patient out…
Here’s an idea: Add more beds.
Oh wait, that would cost money.

At the risk of hurting a bunch of people's feelings, this is precisely what would have been predicted, even by people of marginal intelligence. At least if anyone looked at the decades of experience from places that rejected a market:

My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed that the inefficient Soviet economy did not produce enough shoes, and for that reason, even in the capital, people were forced to line up for hours to buy them. . . . Then I looked up the statistics. I was wrong. The Soviet Union was the largest producer of shoes in the world. It was turning out 800 million pairs of shoes a year--twice as many as Italy, three times as many as the United States, four times as many as China. Production amounted to more than three pairs of shoes per year for every Soviet man, woman, and child.
The problem with shoes, it turned out, was not an absolute shortage. It was a far more subtle malfunction. The comfort, the fit, the design, and the size mix of Soviet shoes were so out of sync with what people needed and wanted that they were willing to stand in line for hours to buy the occasional pair, usually imported, that they liked.
...

At the root of the dysfunction was the state's control of information. Prices are information--the information producers need in order to know what and how much to produce. In a market for a product as varied in material and design as footwear, shifting prices are like sensors taped to the skin of a patient in a medical experiment; they provide a constant flow of information about consumer needs and preferences. When the state controlled prices, it deprived producers of information about demand.

So, we see a system set up to achieve scores on particular metrics, whether or not the end consumer of the service is any good or not. As the post points out, the end consumer isn't the person getting the shoes (or medical care), it's the State. How on earth could you expect shoes that fit, or people being cured of their sickness?

But I'm sure that it will be different here under Obamacare. I mean, this isn't Russia, for crying out loud. Or even Britain (I mean, look at their teeth; srlsy, how can you expect tehm to understand modern medical technolo9gy?). The program here will be much more carefully crafted, with particular attention to what has not worked in the past, and without being gamed by all sorts of politically well-connected special interests.

Oh, wait ...

Killed by Socialized healthcare

Forbes actually publishes a story about the slow-motion collapse that is the UK's National Health Service.  Here's the key graf:

The United Kingdom's National Health Service, which celebrated its 70th anniversary on July 5, is imploding. 

Vacancies for doctor and nurse positions have reached all-time highs. Patients are facing interminable waits for care as a result. This August, a record number of Britons languished more than 12 hours in emergency rooms. In July, the share of cancer patients who waited more than two months to receive treatment soared. 

Yet enthusiasm for government-run, single-payer health care continues to build in the United States. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 70 percent of Americans now support Medicare for All. Virtually all the major candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 have come out in favor of banning private insurance coverage and implementing a single-payer system instead.

I have a whole post category for Killed By Socialized Medicine which goes way, way back.  And this sums the wretched NHS up, for the dim bulbs on these shores who want to replicate it here:

pic.twitter.com/c4tsnCQ7K4

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 28, 2018

Actually, this really does sum up the situation.  The issue isn't healthcare, the issue is control.  Statist pricks want life and death control over the population, the better to keep them in line.

It's not "Socialized Healthcare"

It's "Political Healthcare":

The story of Oliver Cameron, born with a deadly heart condition and saved by surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), is an inspiring testament to the refusal of two parents to accept anything less than state-of-the-art medical treatment for their baby. Yet, if you want to know the details of his amazing recovery, you won’t find them in any major U.S. news outlet. Why not? Oliver’s story highlights the abject failure of socialized medicine and the spectacular success of the best health care system on the planet. In other words, it belies an ongoing propaganda campaign conducted by the media. 

Oliver’s story, which was even ignored by the Boston Globe, must be gleaned from sporadic reports in the British press, a few American news sites like the Daily Wire, social media, and the BCH website: Oliver was born in the UK, on the last day of January 2017, with a condition called cardiac fibroma — a large benign tumor of the heart. The term “benign” is misleading, however, indicating only that the tumor was non-cancerous. It was by no means benign in its effect on Oliver’s health. The condition rendered his heartbeat dangerously erratic, often causing his pulse to race at near lethal speeds. 

It soon became evident that, for Oliver to have any chance of reaching his first birthday, the tumor had to be removed. At this point Oliver’s parents were horrified to learn that the UK’s socialized medical system, the National Health Service (NHS), doesn’t employ a single surgeon with the expertise to perform that procedure. All they offered Oliver was a place on a purgatorial heart transplant list, but Tim and Lydia Cameron didn’t accept that. They began researching their son’s condition hoping to find some ray of hope. They found it at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Ah, but remember poor little Alfie Evans?  He also had promises of healthcare far from the shores of Her Majesty's scepter'd isle, but the bureaucrats at the National Health Service refused to let him leave, even posting police to prevent his getting foreign care.  So what hope did little Oliver have?

It turns out, the NHS bureaucrats flinched from the bad press they had been receiving:

Caution was indeed a wise policy. The NHS predictably refused the couple’s plea for Oliver to be sent to Boston where competent surgeons could perform the life-saving surgery. Lydia and Tim then asked if the NHS would agree to bring the American surgeons to the UK to perform the procedure. Inevitably, the NHS refused that request also. In desperation, the couple set up a crowd-funding page on GoFundMe in the hope that the NHS would allow Oliver to go to the U.S. if they paid for it themselves. By the middle of August, the Camerons had raised nearly £150,000 of their £200,000 goal.

Meanwhile, the major media all but ignored Oliver’s dilemma. The BBC, for example, ran a whopping 85-word story. Ironically, the media inadvertently aided the couple with its concurrent coverage of the controversial Charlie Gard case. Just as Oliver’s parents began raising money, public pressure on the NHS was steadily intensifying pursuant to its refusal to allow Charlie to go to the U.S., where a hospital had offered to admit him for experimental treatment. Shortly after Charlie died, the NHS suddenly reversed its position. Oliver could go to Boston.

Charlie Gard was another baby that was killed by the NHS, in a dry run for Alfie Evans.  But while it's very unlikely that the bureaucrats had a conscience or a sense of shame, they did have a bureaucrat's finely-tuned sense of self preservation.  And so they let Oliver go to Boston, where American surgeons saved his life.

In other words, the NHS allowed Oliver to get competent treatment in the U.S. primarily as a way of avoiding further bad publicity. And the American “news” media, having inadvertently given socialized medicine a black eye by devoting so much coverage to the Charlie Gard atrocity, remained silent as the tomb regarding the NHS decision to send Oliver Cameron to Boston Children’s Hospital for surgery. And, when that 8-hour procedure proved successful, it was all but blacked out by the media.

The media blackout is passing strange, is it not?  We are drowning in glowing stories about the newly proposed "Medicare for Everyone" plan that would nationalize every doctor in the land.  Why, oh why is the media not covering stories like Oliver's?

There are three obvious lessons here: First, socialism doesn’t work in medicine or any other human enterprise. It removes the incentive to keep up with the times and it invariably puts soulless bureaucrats in charge of your life. These people couldn’t care less if you live or die. Second, capitalism does work in medicine and every other human enterprise. It provides the incentive to remain state-of-the-art, and it puts you in charge of your own life. Third, anyone who says socialism will render U.S. health care more efficient or equitable than our quasi-capitalistic system is an idiot or a liar.

My one gentle criticism of the author is that last sentence: idiot or liar.  Perhaps we can embrace the healing power of "and"?

Anyone who is enamored of socialized medicine might productively read through my posts tagged "Killed by socialized medicine" which go back nine years.  There are lots of examples that the media generally doesn't report.

Socialized Medicine leads to international man hunts

Friend and long time reader libertyman emails a pointer to a Boston Herald column by Michael Graham that's well worth your while.  In it, there was this that led me down a rabbit hole:

Which is why the American right has been so focused on the Alfie Evans story. They believe progressives have been eroding parental rights for years — denying parents the right to opt their children out of some sex-ed courses, or to decide that some books aren’t age appropriate for their own children, for example. They also see the inevitable logic of socialized medicine leads to cases like Alfie’s, and Charlie Gard’s and Ashya King — whose family fled the U.K. and became criminals to get his son experimental treatment in the Czech Republic. 

Ashya is still alive today, but only because he escaped the “health care” system of Great Britain.

I've posted a lot recently about Alfie Evans, and a year ago about Charlie Gard - both intentionally killed by Britain's National Health Service.  But I'd totally missed the story of Ashya King.  A quick Wikiwander led me to his story.

In short, the kid had brain cancer, the NHS didn't provide Proton Therapy, hospitals on the Continent did, and his parents took him over on a ferry.  The Wikipedia article writes about what happened next:

On 28 August 2014, an international manhunt for King and his parents commenced.[4] On 30 August, King and his parents were found in Velez Malaga, Spain. King's parents were arrested and their son was sent to a local hospital for urgent treatment.[5] They were held in prison for more than 24 hours and released when the request to extradite them to the United Kingdom was withdrawn.

Get that: his parents were imprisoned because they sought better health care for their child.  They were imprisoned.  I don't see how anyone can describe Britain as a free country.

Yesterday's post about the 1989 removal of the border fence between Hungary and Austria is a parable on the futility of trying to keep your population confined against their will.  But we see Britain doing this repeatedly.  The difference between Alfie and Ashya was that Ashya's parents didn't ask a Court, they just headed for a seaport and a ferryboat.  At that point the fury of the NHS was mitigated by cooler heads in the Foreign Ministry who hesitated to cause an international incident over this.

To this day, Ashya is cancer free, because his parents are jail birds.

It's long been a question as to why Leftist Institutions always devour those whom they are nominally charged with helping, but we see this in full flower in Britain's NHS today.

William Blake (verse) and Sir Hubert Parry (score), Jerusalem

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

- William Blake, Jerusalem

William Blake was a revolutionary, a supporter of the French revolution, and was actually tried (and acquitted) of High Treason and Sedition in 1804 England.  Considered borderline mad by his contemporaries, he became highly regarded in later years.  His writings became a core of the Fabian Socialists, and this hymn (put to music in 1916 by Sir Hubert Parry) became a favorite with working class socialists.

And still is today.  Socialist Review opens their article on the hymn with this:

For Danny Boyle, on the left, Jerusalem created the opportunity to include industrial workers in the Olympic opening ceremony. For David Cameron, on the right, Jerusalem is an expression of distinctively English nationhood. For many ordinary people Jerusalem offers a welcome alternative to the depressing, jingoist dirge of God Save the Queen.

Jerusalem is open to many interpretations. William Blake was a complex character and his works can be difficult to read - but one thing Blake was not was a nationalist of any kind. He was a revolutionary.

This hymn is more complicated for today's left to swallow because of the Nationalist themes.  In contrast, Beethoven's annexation of Schiller's Ode To Joy in his Ninth Symphony is universalist and so is acceptable to socialist organizations like the Olympics or the European Union, both of which have adopted it as their anthem.  International organizations must needs adopt universalist symbols.

But in Britain, no such constraints are felt, and since the triumph of socialism in that land is complete, this hymn remains popular.  It touches a deep nerve, and the words fail describe the never sleeping mania of the Left:

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Scientists and experts would plan, and workers would compete with zeal, until the New Jerusalem stood in England's green and pleasant land.  That was the ideal.

The reality is, if not quite as grotesque as the other socialist experiments behind the Iron Curtain and elsewhere, plenty grotesque.  A bumbling National Health Service is revered by the populace as it intentionally kills their children.  Attempts by desperate parents to seek care outside England's green and pleasant land are blocked by police; the Sword indeed does not sleep in their hand.  It's not enough that the NHS doesn't provide care, no others must be allowed to either.

And so the New Jerusalem is indeed built, but it is a ruin.  It is perhaps best described by another English poet who lived a century after Blake.  In The Wasteland, T. S. Eliot painted a very different vision of England's future.  It's a little uncanny how the opening line is extra poignant today:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

But he is only warming up.  Here is his vision of the New Jerusalem that was being built, even as he wrote:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

The NHS remains quite popular despite the furious sacrifice of toddlers on Socialism's altar.  The national propaganda effort has borne fruit, although like propaganda in all mature socialist societies it is very strange:

Theodore Dalrymple explained this well.

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to," he wrote.

Yet another English author, C. S. Lewis explains the poisoned fruit of the Fabian Socialists who now rule the realm and who direct the NHS:

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

But at least the public holds the NHS in high esteem.  England is screwed.  The English people are screwed, but at least they seem to like it.  Pretty music, though, and nice pictures of a land now lost.  Pictures from an England that is in the place that Great Britain used to be.

Rest in peace, Alfie Evans

Killed by socialized medicine.

You want a vision of the future?  Imagine a police line preventing people from taking toddlers to get health care, until they die.

pic.twitter.com/c4tsnCQ7K4

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 28, 2018

Orwell is spinning in his grave.  We're told that the dark night of fascism is always falling on America, and yet there is in in Britain.

You know Britain, right?  It's in the place where Great Britain used to br.

Socialized medicine is not fair or compassionate to the poor

Proof:

pic.twitter.com/TjbbdeGcBJ

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 28, 2018

At this point can anyone who ever talked about how awesome national health would be just shut up and sit down in the back of the room?  Grown ups are talking.

Render unto Caesar

Everyone knows this quote from the Gospels: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's.  So what belongs to Caesar, and what belongs to God?

In Britain, the lives of the Subjects of the Crown belong to Caesar.  This is recognized throughout the land, to the extent that the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool has thrown in the towel:

The Archbishop of Liverpool has backed Alder Hey hospital’s handling of the Alfie Evans case, saying doctors have done everything “humanly possible” to help the child.

Everything humanly possible?  The Italian government would beg to differ with the Most Reverend McMahon.  They made Alfie a citizen, eligible for treatment there.  Rome’s Bambino Gesù hospital stands ready to treat him, and airplanes and helicopters stand ready to take little Alfie and his parents to treatment.

The Catholic Bishops in the United States disagrees with him.

We urge all Catholics to join the Holy Father in praying for #AlfieEvans and his family and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted. May the dignity of Alfie’s life and all human life, especially those who are most vulnerable, be respected and upheld. https://t.co/gA4RhU7nL0

— US Catholic Bishops (@USCCB) April 25, 2018

The Pope disagrees with him.

Moved by the prayers and immense solidarity shown little Alfie Evans, I renew my appeal that the suffering of his parents may be heard and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) April 23, 2018

So His Grace clearly does not think that a person's life belongs to them, or to God.  Or at the very least, he does not think that Alfie Evans' life belongs to Alfie, or to God.  Rather, His Grace believes that Alfie's life belongs to the Crown.  After all, he tells us that everything “humanly possible” has been done to help the child, ignoring that the Police hold him hostage in a hospital that intends to starve him to death.  Police that turned away a German Air Ambulance come to take him for treatment far from the shores of Her Majesty's Scepter'd Isle.

The Crown's motivation is clear: with socialized health care, they're on the hook for Alfie's health care costs for the rest of his life.  The bean counters in the NHS have obviously realized that the cost/benefit payout of Alfie's life says they should shorten that life as much as they can.  That's quite ugly, but rational in a purely utilitarian sense.

But the Crown pays them for that sort of thinking.  The Crown (presumably) does not pay His Grace. So what's his excuse?  Why does he bow his head and tug his forelock to the green eyeshade crew at the NHS?  Why does he differ so completely and so (it must be said) violently from the Revealed teaching of his fellow Bishops?  Of his Pontif?

One suspects that the reason is that His Grace is a fully paid up member in the Ruling Elite of that sad land.  No doubt with a membership card and secret handshake and everything.  He certainly won't lift a finger to protect his flock from them.  The Shepherd is in cahoots with the wolves.  He worships at the altar of Ba'al.

Of what use, then, is a British Roman Catholic church?  The World wonders.

No doubt His Grace is familiar with Matthew 25: 40-45:

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Here on these shores, we seemingly still have a Roman Catholic church that understands this.  We also have our own holy scripture, a secular one:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

Life.  We hold it to be an unalienable right.  Not granted by the government, or the NHS, but endowed by our Creator.

And abolish the old form of Government we did.  We are no longer subjects of the British Crown and have not been these centuries.  The reason is one that His Grace should recognize, but probably refuses to:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Weep for the Catholic church in Britain, adrift with no leadership that deserves the name.  And weep for Britain. It used to he Great.

This post sports the tag "Statist Pricks" because the Most Reverend McMahon is most assuredly one.

NHS Death Watch, Day 3

pic.twitter.com/lFtGMiOoBW

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 26, 2018

Why do you need an AR-15

pic.twitter.com/ECeJ9zEXfm

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 25, 2018

The sacrifice of the children

There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus [Ba'al] extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.

- Diodorus Siculus (1st Century BC)

Ancient Carthage was founded by Phoenicians, who brought their religion of Ba'al with them.  You may be more familiar with their Canaanite cousins: Beelzebub from the Bible is the Hebrew's view of the same deity, and they roundly condemned its worship.  In particular, they wrote of the practice of sacrificing infant children to the god.  The Carthaginians continued this practice, seemingly even after their conquest by Rome.

In addition to many ancient written sources that discussed this sacrifice, there is archaeological evidence.  The site of Carthage has cemeteries full of urns.  The urns contain the charred bones of infant children, and even children as old as two years.

Image via El Wik

Tertullian, writing around 200 AD tells of how a Roman governor had priests of Ba'al crucified for continuing this practice.  Even as ruthless and stoic a people as they blanched at this ritual slaughter of the innocent.

Oh, for modern-day governors cut from that same cloth.  Children are still being sacrificed on the alter today, only this time it is the altar of socialized medicine:

Alfie Evans, the severely ill toddler whose life support machine was switched off on Monday, could immediately be flown to a children’s hospital in Rome for treatment if a last-ditch appeal succeeds, a solicitor involved in the case has said.

The child’s parents were granted an emergency hearing before a high court judge on Tuesday afternoon after they said the 23-month-old boy had been breathing unassisted since his life support was removed.

His father later said that water and oxygen had been restored.

Read that last sentence again, if you have the stomach to.  His father later said that water and oxygen had been restored.

Doctors cut off water from a baby.  How could that have happened?

The religion of socialized medicine rules the land that used to be Great Britain.  That religion has a priesthood, trained in the Universities and ruthless in their demand to be appeased.  They control the purse strings of the hospitals, and therefore the doctors.  Their sacred writ (the "Liverpool Pathway") is enforced - and they pay cash money for sacrifices, to the tune of millions of pounds sterling each year.

The priesthood's rule is so complete that the parents were forbidden to take their baby out of the country, even though there were other countries willing to take him.  Italy made Alfie a citizen, entitling him to healthcare in that land.  The Pope himself offered free hospital care, and appealed personally to the priesthood in the British Isles.

We shall see how this plays out.  It played out badly last year for little Charlie Gard, a baby in the same locale who met a bitter fate on the altar of Ba'al the NHS.  Because that god is a cruel one, with an unending appetite for human sacrifice.  How very odd that Progressives think they're inventing new and better paradigms, when they are merely reverting to the old and discredited.

Remember, these people look down on you as incompletely civilized.  With me, the feeling is mutual.

He [Cato] never gave his opinion in the Senate on any other point whatsoever, without adding these words "And in my opinion, Carthage should be utterly destroyed". [Delenda est Carthago]

- Plutarch, Lives of the Noble Romans

UPDATE 24 April 2018 19:05: Word:

pic.twitter.com/dhZzSdTXee

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 24, 2018

Rest In Peace, Charlie Gard

Via Lawrence, we learn this sad news:

The parents of a terminally-ill British infant that has captured global attention on Friday said he has died. 

Connie Yates and Chris Gard said that Charlie Gard’s life had ended at eleven months old after battling a rare genetic disease.

This poor child's life became a political football, and while I have my own strong opinions it's unseemly to use him as a ventriloquist's dummy for scoring political points.

Instead, let us hope that the fullness of time will dull his parent's pain and all but their happy memories fade.  Rest in peace, little Charlie.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

- Psalm 139: 13-16

Johnny Cash - I Hung My Head

Americans have a pretty blandly friendly view of The Netherlands: boring landscape, friendly people.  We mostly don't know the dark side of the Dutch:

A Dutch woman doctor who drugged an elderly woman and then asked her family to hold her down as she fought desperately not to be killed did not break the law, according to medical experts citing the country's euthanasia legislation.

Euthanasia is not just legal, but seems to be enthusiastically embraced.  I posted on this once before, in a surprisingly gentle rant about a similar situation in Belgium.  This case is much worse.  It's horrifying:

The doctor secretly placed a soporific in her coffee to calm her, and then had started to give her a lethal injection. 

Yet while injecting the woman she woke up, and fought the doctor. The paperwork showed that the only way the doctor could complete the injection was by getting family members to help restrain her. 

It also revealed that the patient said several times 'I don't want to die' in the days before she was put to death, and that the doctor had not spoken to her about what was planned because she did not want to cause unnecessary extra distress. She also did not tell her about what was in her coffee as it was also likely to cause further disruptions to the planned euthanasia process. 

The Review Committee concluded that the doctor 'has crossed the line' by giving her the first sleeping medicine, and also should have stopped when the woman resisted.

There's simply no way to look at this as other than pre-meditated murder encouraged by the State.  A bureaucratic committee issued a bland "mistakes were made" statement, but it's clear from reading the article that nobody is really very sorry.

I don't want to die.

As I wrote in my gentle rant:

The mentally ill are terribly, terribly vulnerable.  That illness is a scourge on them, and on their families.  I can understand why some would be willing to take drastic measures to put an end to that scourge, even desperate measures.  But there's only one word that describes a State that would not just stand by and let that happen, but which would officially sanction it.

Evil.

On this side of The Pond, I like to think that people would still have a sense of shame.  Johnny Cash sings of this, a man who regrets an impulsive murder that had consequences in a society that still had a sense of justice.



I Hung My Head (Songwriter: Gordon Sumner, aka Sting):

Early one morning
With time to kill
I borrowed Jebb's rifle
And sat on a hill
I saw a lone rider
Crossing the plain
I drew a bead on him
To practice my aim 

My brother's rifle
Went off in my hand
A shot rang out
Across the land
The horse, he kept running
The rider was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head 

I set off running
To wake from the dream
My brother's rifle
Went into the sheen
I kept on running
Into the south lands
That's where they found me
My head in my hands 

The sheriff he asked me
Why had I run
And then it come to me
Just what I had done
And all for no reason
Just one piece of lead
I hung my head
I hung my head 

Here in the court house
The whole town was there
I see the judge
High up in the chair
Explain to the court room
What went through your mind
And we'll ask the jury
What verdict they find 

I felt the power
Of death over life
I orphaned his children
I widowed his wife
I begged their forgiveness
I wish I was dead
I hung my head
I hung my head 

I hung my head
I hung my head 

Early one morning
With time to kill
I see the gallows
Up on a hill
And out in the distance
A trick of the brain
I see a lone rider
Crossing the plain 

And he'd come to fetch me
To see what they'd done
And we'll ride together
To kingdom come
I prayed for God's mercy
'Cause soon I'd be dead
I hung my head
I hung my head 

I hung my head
I hung my head

Hat tip to American Digest for finding this whole disgraceful story.