Strengthness, Not Scaredness

The Vicar of Downing Street and his angel of mercy, the Secretary of State for Health Service Privatisation, are both doing their best to reassure a nervous flock. His reverence believes that Britain's human resources feel "under threat" from terrorism, migration and globalisation, because "the interplay" between the three has changed: "Suddenly we feel under threat, physically from this new terrorism that is coming onto our streets, culturally as new waves of migrants change our society and economically because an open world economy is hastening the sharpness of competition."

Translated, this means that Tony's forces of justice should be permitted to continue their brilliant policy of random harassment of Muslims, dawn raids and occasional shootings; that John Reid's forces of justice should be permitted to continue their brilliant policy of random harassment of immigrants, dawn raids and deportations; and that everybody should continue to work harder, work longer, work for less, invest in private pension plans, and spend, spend, spend. This is called "an approach which is strong and not scared".

Meanwhile, Patsy Hackitt, the Nurses' Friend, has been reassuring the staff of NHS Logistics that their imminent sell-off to a private profit interest means only that "they will continue working for the NHS as part of the NHS and true to its values". This is certainly convincing. NHS Logistics is the branch of the NHS which supplies "everything from stationery to bed linen and MRI scanners"; and so, as one might expect, the Government has decided to contract the service out to a German parcel company. Conditions for staff will be "comparable" to their present ones. Translated, of course, this means that conditions will be worse, since if there were the slightest chance that conditions might be the same or even (perish the thought) better, Ms Hackitt would have said so.

"The central issue here is that it is not driven by ideology," Ms Hackitt said. Ideology is for Islamofascists and crypto-Marxist union bosses. The Vicar of Downing Street and his chums are, necessarily, driven by something else. "We are not in fact selling off the business (sic) to private shareholders in the way that gas and telecommunications were," Ms Hackitt said, observing that "the NHS has always been a mixed economy," as opposed to, well, you know, a service. But that is not an ideological observation. God, George and Tony forfend.