ME awareness day

May 12 is the awareness day for chronic fatigue syndrome/ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis).

I was diagnosed with a form of chronic fatigue syndrome, post-viral fatigue syndrome after a bout of severe and reoccurring glandular fever caused by Epstein-Barr virus when I was 15.

I can account firsthand of how much of a debilitating, dreadful and one hundred percent real condition it is. On one occasion I had what can certainly be described as a near-death experience, in which mild heart failure and poorly oxygenated conditions resulted in me collapsing and needing to be resuscitated. It disturbs me to consider what the reality could be had circumstances had been slightly different.

What I was afflicted by in the years afterward was appalling psychical sickness, neropathic pain exhaustion, dysfunctional sleeping patterns, and vicious reciprocation with my mental health problems, which essentially tore apart my life's stability. I have only just truly begun to recover, and the symptoms still tend to randomly manifest.

The first accounted death from CFS was that of Sophia Mirza, who died in 2005 the age of 32  from renal failure after suffering from CFS for six years; she had no other underlying medical pathologies.

The prevalent denialism and outright discrimination surrounding CFS is essentially a cause of torturous gibing for its victims.

 

UKIP's Godfrey Bloom attacks the National Health Service

The UK Independence Party is currently the midst of a shambolic turmoil relating to the rather unpalatable remarks and views of its unvetted local election candidates, including attachments to the fascist British National Party and English Defence League, eugenicist ableism, misogyny, homophobia, racism, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. UKIP have keenly insisted, however, that they repudiate the views of these candidates, and have suspended some of their standings.

The various male chauvinist remarks of UKIP's economic spokesman, MEP Godfrey Bloom, have particularly exemplified reactionary views within the echelons of the party.

Some other remarks by Bloom however, regarding the UK's National Health Service, have gone under the radar to the same extent as UKIP's unvetted absurd and extremist local election candidates.

Bloom made these remarks on the NHS when being interviewed the radio show of American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in December 2009 (before anyone asks me why I was listening to Jones's radio show, my answer is part research and part morbid curiosity):

                                             Starting at around seven minutes


"What you're doing now we did in 1946-1947. We got rid of a perfectly good health system which was based on individuals and individuals' relationships with their own doctors and their own local hospitals, which were based on some part-charitable status part-fee paying status, and they brought in this terrible monolith called the National Health system. And the National Health system...we have bred a monster you wouldn't believe. It's the biggest employer in Europe. It costs literally billions and billions and billions of pounds [Bloom is obviously ignorant to how vastly more cost effective the NHS is when compared to the profit-driven U.S. healthcare system] a year. We've just wasted £8 billion, over $10 billion on a failed IT system. Nothing in the National Health system works. It's a sacred cow over here. 

Bloom continues and decry the "socialist" healthcare reforms of President Barack Obama, and pleads voters to not adopt the same "disaster" he implies Aneurin Bevan's National Health Service to be. This cannot be construed a mere critique of the particular healthcare policies of the Labour government of the time. This is an all-out attack by Bloom on the very concept and existence of the National Health Service.

Though advocating elements of marketisation in the NHS, UKIP's official health policy asserts that a UKIP government would protect and defend the fundamental principle of a universal, free at the point of need, or what Godfrey Bloom would call "socialist", National Health Service: "The NHS is valued by the people of this country, admired and envied by others. The principle of treatment free at the point of delivery is non-negotiable."

This is definitely pandering overwhelming cross-party public support for and satisfaction with the NHS "sacred cow". It is astonishing that senior figure within a political party would be openly and entirely at odds with one of its fundamental manifesto tenants.

Perhaps Bloom should read this comment from Harry Leslie Smith on the virtues of the NHS:  

I am a very old man so I have strong memories of Britain before the NHS. I remember my sister dying of TB in a workhouse infirmary and me almost succumbing to whopping cough b/c we couldn't afford a doctor.
As a small boy, I remember hearing screams coming from a home on our street where a woman was dying of cancer without any medicine to relieve her pain. It was a barbaric world where money decided who lived and who died because that was the formula for medical care.

In fact it wasn't until I was 18 that I saw a physician and that was because World War Two was on and I had volunteered to join the RAF. The people of my generation sacrificed so much during the Great Depression and through the World War. The NHS was our reward, our peace time dividend. It was also our solemn pledge to future generations that we would be a civilized nation that would treat all citizens as worthy of care and compassion.

The NHS is for me as great as Magna Carta because it freed millions from the tyranny of sickness and poverty to move forward and lead productive lives. No one can fool me about these new measures. They are not about making the NHS more efficient, more accessible and more accountable to today's economic situation; its all about profit. Now a small minority of people and corporations are going to get very rich while making Britain a less healthy and vibrant nation. The names of all that voted for these provisions should be cut into a memorial stone to commemorate the death of Britain's greatest achievement the NHS. It was a tide that raised all boats.

The NHS is a sacred cow for a reason. I would certainly opt to preserve this "monolith" than live in the callous, social Darwinist society Bloom and his UKIP ilk would prefer.

UPDATE

I have emailed Godfrey Bloom regarding his views on the NHS: 

Dear Mr. Bloom, 

I am emailing you regarding some comments you made about Britain's National Health Service on Alex Jones' radio show in December 2009. The particular remarks, you made which I have transcribed from a YouTube video of the interview: 

[above transcription]

I understand that, in context, you may have been making critical remarks regarding the health policy of the Labour government of the time. But it seems to me that you are attacking the very concept of the National Health Service itself. Your description of it as a monstrous "socialist" monolith certainly seems to conflict with UKIP's own health policy; the website page for which describes the NHS as an "envy of the world". It seems peculiar to me that the views one of UKIP's most senior figures seems to conflict with his own party's policy position, which does advocate elements of marketisation, but nevertheless commits to protecting a free at the point of delivery single-payer healthcare system in the UK.

Have I interpreted your remarks wrongly? Please contact me, if you are able, so I can set the record straight publicly. 

Might I get a response?

UPDATE - 7 May 2013

I have received this response from Godfrey Bloom:

"Dear Mr Richardson

I think the fact that we have a system employing 1.3 million people, over half of whom have no medical qualifications of any sort, the waste on the IT programme, horrific reports from Staffordshire and other hospitals. Significant numbers of people in the system earning over £100,000 per annum, yet highly trained theatre nurses earn no more than the average wage shows how drastically the system needs reform.

Let me say my wife worked as a physiotherapist in the NHS for many years, a significant number of friends still do they all tell me without drastic reform the system will collapse. We may look at the French model of national health which seems based on a much better foundation.

All political parties now have accepted reform is essential, the real question is what sort of reform, clearly as I said the socialist/monolith system of 1948 is now completely out of date.

Our NHS policy is under review, it is not within my remit nor do I claim my views represent UKIP on this issue.

Kind regards

Godfrey Bloom"

He does make decent points regarding longstanding problems within the NHS, though I would primarily attribute them to marketisation policy enacted under the New Labour government rather than 'monolithic socialism'.

When fascist ducks quack

Nick Griffin, the leader of the far-right British National Party, often claims to be an "ethic nationalist" as opposed to a racist. Why then did he post this tweet earlier this month, seemingly condoning or making light of epithets used against particular ethnic minorities?:

Looking at Ukip's billboard & local chap saw me. His response to their 'Stop EU immigration' slogan: "Poles No, Pakis Yes! F*ck that!"
— Nick Griffin MEP (@nickgriffinmep) April 7, 2013

I doubt anyone is surprised.

The Thatcherite necrocracy

I may be wrong, but I believe that Margaret Thatcher would have expected celebrations of her death. She was certainly a narcissist, but she wasn't not self-aware. She may have even found the jubilation amusing to a certain degree.

The response from her apologists to said jubilation is that it affirms that Thatcher "won". Well, she definitely was victorious in numerous ways. She succeeded in destroying thousands of lives in systematically dismantling Britain's industrial base. She privatised basic public utilities, resulting in the parasitic corporate extortion that impacts us (particularly the thousands of impoverished elderly people killed by fuel poverty every year) to this day. She succeeded in aiding and abetting thousands of cases of murder, rape, torture and political suppression by the totalitarian and dictatorial regimes she supported across the world. Her Section 28 legislation ingrained homophobic hatred which remains, albeit in a waning state, to this day.

I could go on about her triumphs.

The original title of Thatcher's autobiography was Undefeated. Her most profound, undying victory is her hegemonic ideological monopoly of the UK's political establishment. She described Tony Blair, the self-described Son of Thatcher, and his transformation of the Labour Party into adhering to a rigid and opportunistic neoliberal administration, which implemented privatisation and financial deregulations nor she or John Major managed to, as among her proudest achievements. And Tony Blair did her proud her this week, in his attack on Ed Miliband's leadership for not accepting the Cameron coalition government's brutal welfare cuts, or tabloid propaganda rhetoric about "benefit scroungers", with sufficient uniformity. Iain Duncan Smith, the main technocratic architect of economic assault on the poor and vulnerable like the bedroom tax, has described Thatcher as the reason he entered politics.

Thatcher is not dead. She lived in pitiful and frail half-death for the remaining years of her life, but her presence was not necessary. She lives on as the almost holographic iconography of the increasingly malignant neoliberalism that pervades our society and lives. The neoliberal policies that are being imposed in the present are even more brutal and transformational than anything she managed, but they are in her spirit and within the foundations she set. The likes of Cameron, Blair and IDS are merely her vessels and minions.

Despite being literally dead, Thatcher is the closest thing Britain has to any of the dictators she supported. And similar to the Eternal Presidency of deceased Kim Il-Sung in North Korea, she is the figurehead of the dominating ideology of Thatcherism.

We only have the right to celebrate when we figuratively impale the stake through her undead black heart.

#cameronhasbloodonhishands

 “I can think of nothing more alarming than the statement that ‘Cameron has blood on his hands.’”, claimed a judge at Oxford Magistrates' Court who prosecuted Bethan Titchborne for causing "harassment, alarm and distress" for engaging in a lone protest against Prime Minister David Cameron in November 2012, when she was brutally assaulted by police officers for asserting her democratic human rights. 

Bethan explains her rationale for demonstrating as follows: 

30 people have died as a direct result of the government’s ‘welfare reforms’. Thousands have died after being found ‘fit for work’. Over the long term, as more and more is taken away there will be increasing harm and death, including many hidden ones. The fine and costs come to more than I earn in a month, the judge said that on a whole £700 a month of course I’d have no trouble paying it back. After rent, travel to work, food and paying off loans I don’t have money left at the end of the month, and my salary is going down soon, so I’m not sure what will happen next. Except that I’m going to keep saying that Cameron has blood on his hands.

The estimation of thirty people dying from welfare cuts and sanctions derives from Calums List, a website collating media stories on individuals cited to have been killed as a direct of consequence of said welfare "reforms". There is no way of knowing how many more dozens may have died already; and we can assume there will certainly be dozens of cases in the future.

According to the Department of Work and Pensions itself, in response to a Freedom of Information request, at least 10,600  severely disabled and sick people died within 6 weeks of having their Employment and Support Allowance withdrawn by the DWP, after undergoing an Atos 'Work Capability Assessment', and being deemed 'fit for work'.

Steve Bell - May 2011

The mass death caused by this industrialised medical malpractice backed by state culpability is not necessarily genocide, as it is not strictly a deliberate killing of a group of persons (in this case disabled and unwell) driven by political power. The political scientist Rudolph Rummell, however, describes democide as the following: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.

Rummell further elaborates: Democide is meant to define the killing by government as the concept of murder does individual killing in domestic society. Here intentionality (premeditation) is critical. This also includes practical intentionality. If a government causes deaths through a reckless and depraved indifference to human life, the deaths were as though intended. If through neglect a mother lets her baby die of malnutrition, this is murder. If we imprison a girl in our home, force her to do exhausting work throughout the day, not even minimally feed and clothe her, and watch her gradually die a little each day without helping her, then her inevitable death is not only our fault, but our practical intention. It is murder.

I believe that the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of disabled and sick people in the UK, directly caused by the collusion between the Department and Work Pensions and Atos in the Work Capability Assessment system, and the reckless and depraved ethos justifying it, constitutes democidal mass murder by proxy (at the very least manslaughter) by David Cameron's government. It is why Bethan Titchbourne was right to say that CAMERON HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS.

We can respond to this flagrantly politicised assault on our freedom of expression by the legal system in the following way:

• Join the #cameronhasbloodonhishands Twitter hashtag campaign. Use the hashtag when possible when discussing the UK's disability welfare and human rights issues.
• Say "Cameron has blood on his hands" at anti-government and anti-cuts demonstrations. Chant it. Brandish signs with the slogan on it. If in the circumstance you encounter or see David Cameron in public (I emphasise public), be sure to make him hear how drenched in blood his hands are. 

We will not tolerate the state's democide, and its attempts to suppress dissent against it, laying down.

Cameron's big money

At Prime Minister's Questions on 13 March 2013, David Cameron attacked Ed Miliband for the Labour Party's acceptance of donations from trade unions in 2012: the GMB, USDAW, ASLEF, the TSSA, UCATT—£2.7 million, dinosaur after dinosaur, dinner after dinner. They pay the money, they get the policies, but the country would end up paying the price.

It's somewhat inaccurate for Cameron to say that the trade unions inform Labour Party policy, given that in so many instances, Labour remains entirely uniform to the cause of neoliberal austerity cuts. But, in view of the unions, Labour are the most effective vehicle for democratic socialism and social democracy, despite the sometimes contemptible positioning of its leadership (which is another issue entirely).

Ed Miliband does deserve credit (and it is something he should emphasise when responding to Cameron's swivel-eyed anti-union jibes) that in April 2012, he advocated a £5,000 cap on donations to political parties from any individual or organisation. 

David Cameron and the Conservative Party rejected this, despite their supposed outrage over large monetary support for the Labour Party from 'union barons'. 

Why?

It is perhaps because, unlike the Labour Party which receives donations from unions that are the cumulative contributions of thousands of low to relatively modest payed workers, 50% of Tory Party funding comes from bankers and financial firms in the City of London. £42 million has been given to the party from the City since Cameron became its leader in 2007. To put this into perspective, this is £12 million more than the insufficient "discretionary" fund for the poor and disabled victims of his bedroom tax.

No wonder Cameron's government is so driven to implement an agenda which transfers the expense of the financial system's crisis onto the social fabric.

Almost exactly year before attacking Ed Miliband for having "dinner after dinner" with the leaders of trade union donors, Cameron was forced disclosed the private dinners he had with large corporate donors to the Conservative Party.

His raving, self-evident hypocrisy confirms that he has no real moral objection to a politics based upon his bribery and corruption; his motive is only to attack the trade union movement which attempts to cooperatively organise a modest opposition to it.