In view of my recent (and ongoing experience) with the NHS (National Health
Service) (taking 10 months to diagnose and treat early-stage prostate
cancer), an FW subscriber has suggested to me that I write a short essay on
the organisation.
I'm not able to do this at present because of lack of time. All I would say
at this stage is that, like Education, Prisons, Social Services*,
Agriculture and Transport -- all heavily centralised -- the NHS is now at
the point of total collapse with no well-defined policies whatsoever.
All I'll report at this stage is that the Labour MP, Frank Field, who was
Minister for Welfare Reform in 1997-98 (and initially a partisan),
acknowledged to be as expert as any in the whole subject of the welfare
state, having devoted a great deal of time to it, has reluctantly come to
the conclusion that any sort of centralised direction has failed. In a
recent article he has written:
"Only recent users [of the NHS] know how close this vast and bureaucratic
organisation is to implosion".
*To divert, I'll mention that two of the most poignant problems of modern
times -- child prostitution** and wife battering -- each involving scores
of thousands of individuals at any one time, are areas which the Social
Services, centrally and locally, avoid like the plague, hardly
acknowledging their existence. And I have never yet heard any politician
talk on either problem, never mind there being any government policy, or
mention in political manifestoes. Both of these problems are having to be
tackled by private charities without any public funding whatsoever.
**And enlarging this subject just a little further, and on which more
reliable figures are available, out of an estimated 500,000+ prostitutes in
the country there are about 70,000 who are totally enslaved by mafia gangs
which illegally import girls from poverty-struck central European countries
on a variety of pretexts and then trap them permanently by threatening to
kill members of their families back home. Yet again, this is another area
which government policy and the police totally ignore, even though the
location of these sorts of brothels are fully known.
>From the intemperate comments of some FWers who choose to consider me a
rabid right-winger (which I am certainly not, never having voted Tory in my
life), the plain fact of the matter is that, apart from humdrum
standardised procedures, the welfare state cannot cope with those things
for which, considering all its apparent resources and expertise, it could
be reasonably expected.
And I haven't mentioned the fact which is more apposite to this List --
that at least 500,000 young people in the country are totally alienated by
our standardised state education system. (50,000 a day truanting, 20,000
permanently excluded from schools for violence -- and both figures
growing.) There is no hope of their ever having decent jobs.
Keith Hudson
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Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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