It has been a memorable weekend for yours truly, nearly all for very nice reasons. Over the past few days, the weather in much of the UK – after a truly crap summer – has been glorious. There are few things to beat than walking along in a leafy park, with the autumn season turning the leaves into golds and reds, then sitting on the side of a river, cold beer in hand, in the company of close friends. I did all that in Cambridge over the weekend. The credit crunch and the worries of the financial world seemed, if only for a few hours, very far away. But then when walking with a friend around the Quad of Pembroke College, I felt as if I could have been in another century.
But perhaps I should have been prepared for a surreal weekend when I opened my mail on Saturday morning. First off, I got a letter from those admirable folk at the NO2ID campaign urging me to help contribute some money. I have already paid over a cheque and was happy to send another (please follow my example). And then I opened another, very different letter, from the UK Department Of Health. The DoH has something called a “Biobank”. This is a government-run research project designed to track the health of a cohort of the UK population aged between 40 and 69. As I and my wife are both in our early 40s, we are obviously in the cohort. I was informed that a “provisional appointment” had already been made on my behalf and that I nevertheless had the option to refuse. I have refused. While checking the health of certain people and attempting to judge their vulnerability to certain diseases or conditions can be a worthwhile thing for say, a private insurer to do, I had no desire to go along with a government programme. The reason is not simply that it would involve acquiring yet more intimate health details on myself, but recent embarrassing losses of government data give me no confidence that such details will not be lost. Also, one has to ask to what purpose will the “Biobank’s” findings be put? Presumably, to help drive government policy to cajole, encourage or indeed coerce UK citizens to change their personal habits. I consider that taking part in such a campaign would involve my giving my sanction to such things.
Well, at least I had the option to refuse to take part in this project, which is something. But one wonders how long such indulgence might last. Sooner or later, the DoH might consider it necessary to make involvement in such surveys compulsory.
So it’s true- Britain has had a lousy summer! I hope you keep mentioning the cold to all warmists, and asking for an explanation.
Thanks for the donation, Jonathan. By the wonder of philanthropic capitalism, donations to NO2ID currently are doubled up by the proceeds of supplying the desire of the Victorians for confectionary. The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd will give us a pound for every pound you give (up to £17,500) this year. NO2ID’s budget is tiny.
….
On the point about medical tracking studies becoming compulsory, this is part of the point of the Connecting for Health IT scheme – the part that gets the pharmaceutical companies and massive research charities on-side and gung-ho for state-mandated data-sharing. (Is that enough hypens?)
See:
http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org/?p=79
and
http://www.no2id.net/news/pressRelease/release.php?name=Hidden_SUS
And look at the cunning bait and switch in CfH that seems to have fooled a lot of people.
http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/comment_and_analysis/350/view_data
Since GPs and patients (if they know it is to happen) are extremely reluctant to put their records into the central NHS Spine without express, informed patient consent, the DoH is now saying that express consent – will be required for clinicians to use the information. This is a simple con: all the DoH’s misnamed and beloved “secondary uses” would be unaffected by the settlement. But it is also a sort of bureaucratic shrug: ‘If you doctors want ethics, then you can have them. Don’t expect us to care.’
I take it your refusal consisted of tearing up the letter and throwing it in the bin, annoyed that you’d wasted several minutes of your valuable time reading government BS.
The phrase to watch out for is “The current voluntary option has failed”…
I’m a bit torn, on the one hand worried in a similar manner as yourself – offset by the chance to crap in a bag and hand it to a government bureaucrat and have them smile and say thank you. Maybe you could have conditionally refused, saying no in the main but supplying a hefty sample and hoping them the best for what they can make of it, “I must, sadly, refuse your request but please find enclosed a sample upon which I hope much research is done. Feel free to share with one and all! Just trying to do my part.”
Censuses have been – in theory – been compulsory for years but I’ve never filled one in. I find that scrumpling it up and using it to light a fire is a sensible use of the paper. And if one of the government goons comes round tell them sweetly that you’ve posted it, they get to tick their box and everyone’s happy.
I too received the No2ID letter and will send money. But I think they’ll need to be really active now because I fear that the tide has turned in favour of state control of everything, including our identities. Still, whatever law they’ll bring in I’ve no intention of complying with it any more than I comply with silly laws on censuses. We’ll simply have to be more like the Italians: follow those laws which suit us and ignore the rest. Sad but unnecessary…. This is the true crime of NuLab: a repulsive authoritarianism which is in the process of destroying the very concept of the rule of law.
I meant to say “Sad but NECESSARY”. Sorry.
Sigh. And sigh again. Not an internet “gosh what a silly post barely worth replying to” sigh, but a sympathetic, resigned sigh.
I’ve said once or twice *cough* that I think the jig is up for liberty, the game is over, the
fat ladywoman with an unacceptably high BMI has sung, that Elvis has left the building. And I feel that is true because The Enemy have now control of all the significant levers of our society- politics, education, the media, the charities and pressure groups, most of science, and medicine. Medicine is one of their primary crowbars, and the now universally accepted policy of, for want of a better term “therapeutic fascism” is one of the greatest things for us to fear over the years ahead.People tend to often focus on the economic aspects of socialism, with good reason. But socialism is primarily a moral, ethical movement, more akin to a religion that politics. It is primarily a coalition of evangelical, deluded cranks, and this coalition of evangelical, deluded cranks, are now our rulers (and have mass support in the population, too). It is, needless to say, entirely incompatible with any form of liberty, as with similar religious movements. It is also impervious to reason. What is so deeply pernicious is that is has colonised and subverted that field which is supposed to encapsulate and champion reason- science and medicine (though in truth, medicine has always had a very high number of cranks within its ranks, since it is best seen as a group of engineers trying to maintain a machine they barely understand).
The collection of bullshit statistics to support this hegemonic quasi-religion is just one of the crowbars, but is an important one. It will continue and liberty be ever more reduced. Smoking was only the vanguard. I saw in The Telegraph today a story of a school that has banned sugar in tea to improve the health of the poor mites trapped within its walls. This is the future for society as a whole.
It’s going to be really, really shit, the future.
“The Enemy have now control of all the significant levers of our society”
Cheer up, Ian B! Look on the bright side — the Lefties are sawing off the very branches on which they sit. Look at the growing public contempt for the institutions which the Lefties control, be it Parliament, the Church of England, Health & Safety, the universities, the BBC, the press. It will all coming crashing down around them some day, just like the USSR.
Your mission, if you accept it, is to laugh at the Leftie establishment as often & as publicly as you can. Do what you can to help create an environment where people snigger at those pompous Leftie establishment figures and scoff at their laws whenever possible.
Some day in the future, more robust action may be required to extirpate the Leftie virus from the bosom of humanity. But for now, ridicule & raucous laughter will do. Those Leftie geniuses have certainly created a target-rich environment!
BTW, “Biobank”. This is a government-run research project designed to track the health of a cohort of the UK population aged between 40 and 69.
It isn’t government-run. It is a classic example of corporatism, in that it is a private charity, backed by a number of large corporations, and large medical research charities, and supported by the various UK Departments of Health and their offshoots.
Thay say themselves:
One of its godfathers is the Director of the Wellcome Trust, Dr Mark Walport. The same Mark Walport who was appointed by HM Government to conduct a review of the rules on data-sharing. An enquiry that was sold as a response to the HMRC child benefit leaks, but which was predicated on discovering the “benefits to society” of the wider use of personal information, and whose main recommendation was that there should be a new accelerated parliamentary procedure to enable, ad hoc as it suited ministers, data-sharing that would otherwise be unlawful.
Alice,
Look at the growing public contempt for the institutions which the Lefties control, be it Parliament, the Church of England, Health & Safety, the universities, the BBC, the press.
I don’t see any sign of a growing public contempt, or even any significant discontent. I do see a lot of right-wing people who – just like the lefties – talk only to people who agree with them and mistake groupthink for a dominant public mood.
“I don’t see any sign of a growing public contempt”
You might be right, Guy. Then again, you might be wrong. The evidence I am thinking of is all anecdotal. If you are waiting for the BBC to announce that careful research has revealed an increasing number of people consider them to be a joke, you will have to wait a very long time.
But your point about “groupthink” is a good one. Each of us sees the world through a very restricted keyhole. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that those who look through the keyhole of the dominant leftie institutions are seeing the whole picture.
Perhaps you aught to get out more Guy.
Brown, and NuLab are screwed.
I talk to people of all political stipes.
Even ultra leftists think this government is dead.
If Brown thinks that he will be seen as the “Competent pair of hands” in this current crisis (as advertised on that rusty empty tin he has been hawking around for the last decade) then he really is losing his sight big time.( I wouldn’t wish than on anyone of course, but apparently he is. Can only see big print now etc).
All the Tories have to do to earn a landslide at the next election is say-
Brown sold our gold at the bottom of the market?
Raided the very healthy pension funds to fund his fatuous Welfarism, borrowed billions when he couldn’t steal any more of our money in taxes without even Joe Bloggs dole recipient noticing?
Competent or Criminal?
Now he wants to steal more and give it to the same banks and bankers who fucked up in the first place.
Come the next Election, they will be gone, possibly for decades.
This crisis will not save him, or them.
I am willing to bet right now that Brown will lose his own seat next time.
RAB, it matters not a whit if the Labour party are “gone” at the next election. What Guy was referring to was the leftie hegemonic institutions that actually run the country. If you think things are going to be any different under Call Me Dave’s Tories, I think you’re being wildly optimistic.
Ian, I have been writing so many emails to so many people today, I have lost track of what I’ve said to whom.
But you didn’t think that I thought i Dave and crew are going to be much difference, considering all I’ve commented about the twat over the years do you?
All I was saying was that Labour are going to lose big time, next time.
They are.
But misreable life as we know it, will continue almost unabated.
“But misreable life as we know it, will continue almost unabated.”
Why are we so unhappy that we can’t even spell straight any more?
We are living at a great moment in history. Technology is freeing more & more of the human race from the age-old problems of hunger, disease & poverty.
Yes, there are still problems out there — primarily in the political arena, where Leftie Neo-Stalinists care only about increasing their own power. And yes those Lefties have been on a winning streak for some time. But don’t get depressed; no winning streak lasts for ever.
Let’s see some optimism, people! Even if we do down, we can still go down smiling.
Alice, if you are going to have fun with others typos (for that is what it was) make sure you dont make any yourself.
I presume “do down” should have been
“go down” Oui? 😉
“I presume “do down” should have been
“go down” Oui? ;-)”
Let my fingers try once again to type the thought my brain was forming:
“Even if we do go down, we can still go down smiling.”
If my silly attempt at levity caused you offense, RAB, I apologize. Now let’s see who among us can spell schadenfreude!
Alice I am uninsultable, and no offence taken, hence the smiley icon.