Weaponise this!

Miliband has said he wants to ‘weaponise’ the NHS and quick as a feminist can call you a rapist, Cameron has hit back with his pre-weaponised dead son. Dead kids obviously trump back room theory any day, so it’s back to the drawing board for Ed. What a nasty way to start a blog, you’re now thinking, but at least I don’t plan on blatantly lying to you in order to confuse you into voting for me, so that I can keep you working until you drop in order to pay for my vainglorious ambitions.

The idea that any British government would even be capable of reforming, let alone dismantling the NHS is ludicrous; ludicrous yet tempting, so prepare for the health service to remain a political howitzer for ever more. Unemployment, immigration, the economy, the size of the state, the railways, the buses, social housing, welfare… they are all just part of the political arsenal and even those – especially those - close to the issues find it nigh on impossible to discern truth from lies, fact from propaganda. It is little wonder that most still vote on tribal lines; lines drawn in the sands of time, in some cases generations long.

By May this year the electoral battlefield that the UK has already become is going to be littered with casualties; political careers dead and dying, lying bleeding amid the spent shell cases of parliamentary ordnance of all calibres; great and small, noble and shabby. Prepare for dirty tricks, obfuscations, leaks, poison briefings and finagled statistics designed to deceive. Everything you ever thought you knew is going to be challenged as the spin machine forensically parses every utterance, every incident for signs of political advantage.

And after all that, few minds will be changed. It will be time to bring out the heavy artillery and the Big Bertha of political weaponry out there is the European Union. With remarkably little stealth, the juggernaut will act upon the delicate ears and minds of the younger generations so that future consent for the sovietisation of Europe will be a foregone conclusion. This coming election may be the last chance saloon for those who want change; the old ones won’t alter their opinions, the young ones won’t be able to. It’s going to be up to us baby boomers out on the margins to make some weapons grade choices for the rest of you. I only hope you forgive us for it.

The NHS... a petard all ready to hoist!

Of course, poorly maintained weapons have a habit of backfiring, of causing more harm to the aggressor than the target and in this clumsy war the majority of combatants have proved themselves cack-handed, often serially, especially when social media can twist the most well-aimed point-scorer to fire straight back at the person pulling the trigger. I look forward to watching the weaponised NHS blowing up in all their faces.