BLOG POSTS

There was a time when America was known for neighborliness and a good-hearted attitude towards others. I’m not sure when that time was, but I’ve heard it was so. It may still be true in some areas of the United States, but for sure, not in Obion County, Tennessee.

Only in today’s America would a fire crew stand and watch a house burn to the ground because the home owner had forgotten to pay his annual $75 “pay to spray” fee.

Pay to spray? What the hell sort of crazy phrase is that? Who’s the nerdy, simple-minded, county official responsible for that piece of intellectual articulation?

Home owner, Gene Cranick, forgot to pay the annual fee levied by his local city officials, so when his house caught fire the brigade were forced to stand and watch as it burned down.

The city officials (being as they were city officials) ordered the fire brigade not to intervene, thus causing the death of a cat, and three puppies belonging to Mister Cranick’s grandchildren.

Presumably, these city officials (being as they were city officials) would have given the same order had Mister Cranick’s wife, or three grandchildren, been trapped inside the property.

Meanwhile, to compound this strange disease, this American madness that seems to have overtaken the once good people of the United States, the lunatic broadcaster, Glenn Beck, goes on air with a crazy, convoluted, notion that the Obama Healthcare Bill is no more than a means to bring back slavery to these ex-colonies.

Beck recently attempted a lecture on the history of slavery during his Fox News program.^[1] It would have been laughable except for the knowledge that most of his viewers probably believed every word. Among the many spouted inaccuracies, Beck announced that there were no slaves in America in 1640. That’s strange when you consider that by 1690, one out of every nine families in Boston owned a slave.

In fact, it’s well documented that there were black slaves in the New World as early as 1502,^[2] long before any civilized government existed, let alone the law courts that Beck blames:

The President is exactly right when he said ’slaves sitting around the campfire didn’t know when slavery was going to end, but they knew that it would. And it took a long time to end slavery.’ yes it did. But it also took a long time to start slavery.

And it started small, and it started with seemingly innocent ideas. And then a little court order here, and a court order there and a little regulation here and a little more regulation there. And before we knew it, America had slavery.

It didn’t come over in a ship to begin with, as an evil slave trade. The government began to regulate things because the people needed answers and needed solutions. It started in a court room then it went to the legislatures. That’s how slavery began. And it took a long time to enslave an entire race of people, and convince another race of people that they were somehow or another, less than them. But it can be done.

I would ask you to decide, are we freeing slaves? Or are we creating slaves? That’s a question that must be answered.^[3]

There’s a big difference between the US media and that of other Western nations. It’s called regulation; or, in America’s case, the lack of it.

Glen Beck would never be allowed near a microphone in Europe. Free speech is as important to Europeans as it is to Americans, but doling out large sums of money to lunatics and allowing them to spew forth their own brand of lies and falsehood to the nation is, at best, unseemly, and at worst downright dangerous.

It’s all part of the new and insidious madness of America, a nation that seems hellbent on blowing itself apart like some great egotistical supernova, until eventually it collapses in on itself and disappears into its own black hole.

^{[1] “PART 2 Glenn Beck: History of Slavery” Fox News, August 19th 2010}

^{[2] “The Slave Trade” National Humanities Center}

^{[3] “Glenn Beck Blames Evils Of Slavery On Government Regulation” Mediaite, October 4th 2010}

Filed under: Get the asylum ready

I remember my old Mum telling me more than once that ‘folks always get what they deserve’. In fact, it was a favorite saying of hers. That one, and the one about …..’some folks never learn’.

She usually voiced these quotations following some apparent failing on my part. The response she got was invariably along the lines of, “Oh, leave it out, Mum, those old sayings are rubbish.”

Which inevitably got her going all the more.

The only other person she ever had a go at in similar vein was Margaret Thatcher, when she was the British prime minister. Mum hated Thatcher. She’d been a staunch socialist all her life and what Maggie was doing to the country fairly made her blood boil. No-one was happier than my old Mum, when the Tory witch finally got her just deserts, and was kicked out by her own party.

She was right, though, my Mum. Folks never learn, and they do get what they deserve. That’s because folks generally don’t think a lot. Instead, they rely on their gut reaction, and gut reactions are usually nothing more than indigestion.

Take the British, as an example. Ten years of Tony Blair was too much, but a decade of Labour government after the disaster of the Thatcher/Major years did turn the country around. No-one in their right mind could forgive Blair for going to war in Iraq, when 85% of the country said, “No!”, but during those years the pensioners got better off, unemployment stayed relatively low, and the National Health Service began to slowly recover from the devastation wreaked on it by Thatcher’s privatization policies.

Then, America plunged the world into recession, after George W Bush deregulated the US financial sector and allowed them to run riot, leaving governments no option but to bankrupt their nations to bail out the banks. Suddenly, unemployment shoots sky high, closely followed by taxes.

It didn’t just happen to Britain. Europe was hit badly with Greece and Spain far worse off than the UK. Yet, along comes a general election, and what do the British do? They vote another Margaret Thatcher into power.

Folks get what they deserve.

The BBC headline on Sunday read:

“David Cameron indicates universal benefits face curbs.”^[1]

The amount of the cuts could be in the order of 40%. David Cameron says he wants to inspire those on benefits to “go back to work.”

Unfortunately, he fails to say where the jobs will come from. Two million plus unemployed are not all professional ‘scroungers’. The vast majority are workers who’ve lost their jobs to the recession. Companies are laying off workers hand over fist. The number of available jobs is falling, not rising.

Today’s BBC headline reads:

“Prisoners ‘should work 40 hours’ a week says Ken Clarke”.^[2]

Now that’ll really help the unemployment figures, won’t it?

Kenneth Clarke is the Justice Minister in Cameron’s still-wet-behind-the-ears Tory cabinet.

Apparently, Mister Clarke considers that “jail is a place of sluggishness and boredom for many prisoners, where getting up in the morning is optional,” and he “wants offenders to prepare for life on the outside by establishing the habit of “routine hard work”.”

“Routine hard work?” How typically Tory! Spoken like a man who’s never done a day of “routine hard work” in his mollycoddled, upper class, university-pampered, life.

The words and the ideas are typically Thatcherite, but that’s hardly surprising when you consider Kenneth Clarke was one of Thatcher’s ‘boys’.

Under Margaret Thatcher’s thumb he was Paymaster General, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Secretary of State for Health, and Secretary of State for Education and Science. Under Thatcher’s successor, he was Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, until Major’s government fell to Labour in 1997.

The great British voters have taken Britain back to the dark days of the eighties. How short are their memories. The ghost of Thatcher once again stalks the corridors of Parliament.

It is, of course, a similar story in the United States. The man responsible for the huge Federal deficit was George W Bush. The man who handed huge cash sums to the bankers was George W Bush. The man who spent billions of dollars invading Iraq (for what?) was George W Bush.

Consequently, when the Bush administration left office the Democrats inherited a huge Federal deficit coupled with the worst recession since 1929. Two years later, and because the economy is slow to pick-up and the demand for workers still low, the good citizens of America are voting for egocentric lunatics like Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin.

It’s just another gut reaction, which, if the Palins and O’Donnells of this world ever gain power, will turn into one almighty bellyache.

Oh, well, it just proves that some folks never learn. I suppose that’s the reason my Mum said they always get what they deserve.

^{[1] “David Cameron indicates universal benefits face curbs.” BBC, October 3rd 2010}

^{[2] “Prisoners ‘should work 40 hours’ a week says Ken Clarke” BBC, October 4th 2010}

Filed under: Baa baa

It’s been a couple of years since I last visited our family doctor’s surgery. At first glance nothing much had changed. The crucified Jesus still hung above the reception desk, right over your head as you wait to be seen.

I swear the discreet Christian music emanating from speakers in the waiting room ceiling, like old Roman Catholic censers perpetually releasing incense haze above a High Altar, was the exact same I was forced to endure two years ago.

After exchanging the usual formalities with a prissy young receptionist – not a blond hair out of place, nails as immaculate as the conception that eventually gave birth to the guy hanging above me – I was given a clipboard and told to ‘fill it in’.

At first, I assumed it was the inevitable, ‘spell out what’s wrong with you, list all your symptoms, previous diseases (including STDs), and don’t kid us you’ve never used illegal drugs’ type of form, so it was with some surprise (and not a little cynicism) that I discovered my doctor had been taken over.

The practice, so the blurb informed me, is now in the hands of a Catholic marketing company known as HSHS Medical Group. Basically, I was being told that HSHS would accept no liability if their medical staff killed, maimed, or mentally deranged me. I could sue the doctor, but not them. They just handled the financial matters and would certainly sue me if I didn’t pay them in good order any outstanding monies they deemed I might owe them. The form ended with the usual crap, that “the Mission of HSHS is dedicated to compassionate, holistic health care that treats the whole person, in the spirit and tradition of our founding Hospital Sisters of St. Francis.”

By this time it had become obvious to me that, HSHS, stood for “Holy Shit, Holy Shit, Medical Group”.

Previous experience of this surgery kept me from seeking any suitably perusable magazine among the pile of Christian monthlies on the waiting room table, all neatly stacked next to an impressively large copy of the Holy Bible -which had always been there – and a large, white, square, book that hadn’t. It might have passed for a photograph album if the words, “Focus On The Family”, had not been highlighted in gilt across the cover.

I wondered if James Dobson had nipped in to have his hemorrhoids snipped, and inadvertently left it behind?

I was still debating the origin of the tome, and whether I’d be struck down by a thunderbolt if I dared pick it up and open it, when a rather sloppy lady in jeans and slippers called my name.

I glanced at my watch. Only twenty minutes late; not too bad.

I was ushered into a room about ten feet square, with the usual trappings of a doctor’s surgery: washbasin, various perspex containers of cotton wool balls, those things for looking in your ears and up your nose, etc, etc…..and the inevitable paper-covered, plastic-leathered, couch that was obviously a fortune-maker for its inventor, as there’s one in every doctor’s consulting room the length and breadth of America.

Here I perched while it was ascertained that I was still alive, by taking blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, after which my companion swept out of the room leaving an echo of, “Doctor won’t be too long…..” lingering in the air.

“Too long….” turned out to be twenty-five minutes. After ten, I vacated the backless couch for the doctor’s chair. Well, I was there with neck pain, after all. A pin board on the wall contained sheets of information no doubt considered ideal consumption for bored patients waiting to be healed. There was another letter from the ‘Holy Shit’ corporation welcoming me to their surgery; a couple of painting efforts obviously the work of three year olds, and the usual, “If You Ain’t Got Insurance Don’t Come Here” type of notice, only couched in more flowery, condescending, language.

Over the washbasin was a wall cupboard. On one door was stuck a small pink card with a border of printed flowers. Text in the middle said, “The things you do, make you a wonderful person.”

It was while I was looking for somewhere to be sick that I spotted Jesus again. This time he was sporting a yellow halo and had his arm around a little Arab girl, with the usual background of gamboling lambs. The text said simply: “Suffer little children….”

As I’d just dropped off fifty-one of the shrieking, smelly, varmints at their school, I was in no mood for ‘little children’ platitudes: “You can have ’em, mate,” I shouted silently, You can bloody have ’em all.”

It was about then that the doctor finally put in an appearance.

Escape from this Christian enclave was achieved after a total of one hour and five minutes, of which barely fifteen were spent in actual consultation. I jumped in my car and sped away as though a whole bevy of crucified Jesuses were chasing me.

The local town hospital is a much more efficiently run establishment. I needed to have an X-ray, but from past experience was confident it wouldn’t take long. Sure enough, after two minutes filling in a form, I was handed one of those plastic gadgets that suddenly buzz and light up, and told to take a seat.

Fifteen minutes later I walking back to my car.

I’ve always had great service at the local hospital. The staff are genuinely polite, unlike the sanctimonious piety encountered in the doctor’s office.

And, best of all, there’s not one bloody crucifix in sight.

Filed under: Pills and prayers