Yet again we find the American media gripped by a non-event. Every day thousands of old people collapse and die. While it may appear strange to CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox, old people dying is actually incredibly natural.
So when 87 year-old Lorraine Bayless keeled over at the independent living community of Glenwood Gardens in Bakersfield, California, and the staff on hand called the emergency services, it was unlikely she would survive for very long, and she didn’t.
The subsequent furore – headline national news, the internet swamped by half-baked pseudo-experts sounding off at the staff of the facility for refusing the woman cardiopulmonary resuscitation, (though I bet many of those who yelled the loudest hadn’t a clue what the acronym ‘CPR’ stood for), has pushed most of the day’s genuine news into obscurity.
I know nothing of the policies of this Glenwood Gardens facility, but it has been stressed that the woman was in the ‘independent living’ part of the complex, and was aware that emergency help would be restricted to summoning the emergency services.
To the uneducated American viewer it would, no doubt, appear callous in the extreme for staff to refuse this poor woman CPR. Either the national media were similarly ignorant, or they were playing on the lack of their audience’s knowledge to ‘heat up’ a dumb story.
CPR can be highly injurious, even when carried out by a trained person. On a frail 87-year-old it could prove fatally so. Apart from fractured ribs, complications include bleeding in the lining of the pleura, serious damage to the liver and spleen, and pulmonary problems. Unless she was in remarkably robust condition for her age, CPR was as likely to kill her as keep her alive.
Despite the fictions of TV soaps and Hollywood, CPR does not ‘bring you back’ to life. At best, all it can do is keep the body’s tissue from deteriorating from lack of oxygen until professional assistance (usually in the form of a defibrillator) is available. If that fails to start the heart then the patient is already dead and CPR was a waste of everyone’s time.
Glenwood Garden’s policy of non-intervention was probably determined by fear of legal repercussions. The idea that such an issue could result in someone losing their life is horrific to most of us. So, blame the lawyers. In Lorraine Bayliss’s case her death was almost certainly inevitable.
The woman’s daughter, herself a nurse, stated she was totally satisfied with the care her mother had received. Obviously, she was more aware of the best nursing approach to her mother’s condition than were the idiot news broadcasters, and those factions of the US public stupid enough to assume their media is actually feeding them something newsworthy.
One of my great concerns as an ex-pat is watching from afar as the structures and standards that prevailed for so long in my home country are systematically dismantled by a load of privately educated, frock-coated, shits with no more desire to run the country for the benefit of its people than has a school of sharks for the victims that will become their next meal.
I refer to the class of so-called ‘politicians’ presently in charge of the United Kingdom’s future.
There was a time when great statesmen rose to political prominence by devoting their careers to the improvement and advancement of the lower social classes.
Many, though not all such great men, came from the aristocracy. That fact did not prevent them exercising a natural humanity towards those over whom they held political sway. Neither men nor women of such caliber exist in today’s world of corrupt, self-serving, politicians.
For years, the British National Health service was respected, held aloft on the world stage as an example of the success of social medicine. Today it is being dismantled before our eyes, privatized along similar lines to the money-guzzling monstrosity that passes for a healthcare system in the United States. The latest viper to slither into the top seat of the now ridiculously named “UK Ministry for Health”, Jeremy Hunt,[1] professed a deep dislike of socialized medicine and stated he much prefers, …”something along the lines of the US model…”. He’s also a firm believer in homeopathy!
One can only wonder why Viper No 1, Prime Minister David Cameron, placed such a shit in charge of the NHS, if it weren’t to oversee its dismantlement on behalf of the US medical corpocracy?
My last post referred, in the title, to skunks. It’s hard to differentiate between shits and skunks, though on balance I find the skunk more preferable. After all, it’s hideous aroma is no more than a defense mechanism. There’s nothing defensive about the stench of shit emanating from the Palace of Westminster these days. It’s an all-to-familiar aroma of corruption, as the big boy corporates on this side of the Atlantic, hungry to expand their ill-gotten profit-taking at the expense of the UK poor and needy, pour many more than forty pieces of silver into the eager, outspread, palms of our much-unloved, British parliamentary shits as they happily sacrifice the lamb of the NHS on the butcher’s hook of US corporate control.
Further twisting the knife of poverty in the backs of the poor and needy, Cameron recently announced that people living in “social housing” – that is, houses rented from housing associations or local authorities – will lose a percentage of their housing benefit for every unoccupied bedroom in their home.
Here, in a BBC report, is what this little shit, Minister for Pensions Steve Webb, had to say about it:
Under the government’s so-called “size criteria”, families will be assessed for the number of bedrooms they actually need.
The change affects council tenants, and those renting from housing associations, of working age who receive housing benefit…Tenants in social housing will have their benefit reduced by 14% if they have a spare bedroom or 25% if they have two or more extra rooms.
The Liberal Democrat minister [Steve Webb] was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about the example of a divorced father who has a spare bedroom for his visiting children, but will lose out under the new arrangements.
Mr Webb said: “Many of the people we are talking about – over 100,000 – are in work. So they could, for example, work a bit more and simply pay the shortfall.
“We’re talking on average £14 or £15 a week. So three hours at the minimum wage would pay the shortfall then he can keep the spare bedroom and have someone to stay.
“The issue of an extra shift, a bit of overtime, to pay that shortfall, if it really matters to have that spare room – and I entirely understand that it will, for a family in that situation – making up the shortfall through working extra hours will be one of the options. But there may be others.”
The government has estimated the change will affect around 660,000 housing benefit claimants.
Or, the father requiring a spare bedroom for his estranged, visiting, offspring will now need to work so many hours he won’t have the time to look after them.
Pettiness, a meanness directed at the most hard-hit in society, is a hallmark of the true political shit today. Their aim is the demolition of society. They work their shitty little butts off to drag Britain down into the mire for their own short-term gain.
Perhaps it’s not so much them who do the dragging. They are just allowing it. They are just obeying the demands of their corporate and political masters on this side of the Atlantic. It would be interesting to know the content of private transatlantic telephone conversations between British politicians and US corporate and political bosses. We can be sure those conversations exist. As yet, we can only guess what deals are done; what favors promised; what remunerations exacted.
The “Special Relationship” is being dragged down to a whole new, stench-ridden, level.
Meanwhile, British people, complacent about their welfare state, are naively untroubled by the decimation taking place before their eyes. They’re blind to the once proud Union Jack methodically ripped from its staff in front of them, soon to be replaced by a dirty, bedraggled, and heavily shit-stained, Stars and Stripes.
We’ve heard a lot about ‘austerity measures’ of late – both in the US, and in Europe. Nation’s are in financial trouble and the only way out of the mess – we’re told – is for everyone to tighten their belts and make do with less. If you lose your job through no fault of your own – hard luck! If you don’t have enough money to feed your children, and have to give them up to wealthier individuals (as has happened in Greece), it’s just an unfortunate result of ‘austerity measures’ necessary to help the country back into prosperity.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only citizens not seriously affected by the ‘austerity measures’ they’ve been instrumental in inflicting on the populace, are the wealthy and powerful of these nations. They get to keep their highly paid positions. They’re not forced to give up their children. They still retain the good things of life – in abundance.
And yet, aren’t they the very same who created the financial mess in the first place?
I received a letter from the British Inland Revenue this morning. I was expecting it. I get one every year. No, it’s not my birthday. They weren’t sending me a card with flowers and, “Best wishes for many more of the same…”. It was actually three letters in one. Two of them detailed the fact that I would not be paying tax on each of my two (minuscule) private pensions this year. The third informed me of the contents of the other two.
The letter was posted from Malta. I don’t know why the British Inland Revenue post their letters from Malta, but if every ex-pat receives similar correspondence from that wayward department of Her Majesty’s Government, then the cost must prove astronomical. I haven’t paid tax in Britain for ten years. I pay my taxes to the US Government. HM Dept of Inland Revenue has known that for ten years. Yet, every year I get a letter from Malta telling me so.
I also received another envelope in today’s mail. It was nineteen inches by fourteen. I’m surprised the mailman managed to squeeze it into the box. It could have been important. It looked important – like it might have come from a lawyer’s office, or the British Inland Revenue.
It didn’t. It was from someone called Harold W. Huffstetler (Jnr). I knew at once, of course. Anyone with a name like Harold W. Huffstetler (Jnr) could only be selling insurance. With a name like Harold W. Huffstetler (Jnr) no-one would ever give you a job, except in the insurance business. It’s a profession stuffed with Harold W. Huffstetler’s, and similar.
The envelope bore the familiar mark of the ‘AAA’. The legend on the front informed me the contents had been ‘Prepared for…’, and enclosed were ‘Your Beneficiary Card’; ‘Your Thank You Gift’; ‘Your Coverage Selection Chart’; ‘Your Summary of Benefits’, and ‘Your Personalized Application’.
The ‘Thank You Gift’ turned out to be a dozen sticky address labels, for which I was, no doubt, expected to be eternally grateful.
I wonder when it was that the ‘Automobile Association of America’ finally parted company with the motor car? I cannot recall the number of junk mail items received over the last twelve months from this marketing front – for that is what it is – bearing no relationship whatever to the original function of the ‘AAA’.
Years ago, when I was a small boy, the British Automobile Association sported clean-cut, uniformed officers driving spick and span motorcycle combinations, ready and willing to aid any member in distress at the roadside. One glance at the shiny yellow and silver badge on a car’s radiator would elicit a smart salute from the rider as he passed you by.
Of course, they don’t exist anymore. And, if they did they’d probably just flog you life insurance.
I wonder how much it costs for Harold W. Huffstetler (Jnr) to send out all those fancy envelopes that end up in the trash? If the AAA and the British Inland Revenue got their heads together they could solve the financial problems of both countries just by saving on envelopes and postage.
Still, look on the bright side. In America the “sequester” started at midnight. It won’t be long before poor Americans are needing to flog their kids to wealthy Greeks.
Is there anyone left in any doubt in this country that those prohibitive cuts in public spending, designed (we are told) as a doomsday machine to force the political parties into agreement, weren’t deliberately planned to happen?
Barack Obama has just now signed the order into force. He didn’t have to sign it, did he? No-one stood over him with a gun to his head. Ah, but it’s the law, I hear you cry. Rubbish, I respond, he has the power of veto. Who’s going to dare throw the POTUS in jail?
Isn’t the “sequester” just “austerity measures” under a fancier name?
