Doctor, doctor!

The doctors have been on strike. How dare they, people ask? How very dare they? But in the greater scheme of things, doctors don’t become doctors to earn vast wealth, they do it because they are ridiculously fond of the human race, or intensively curious about their insides – something like that. Yes, there is potential for some doctors to become filthy rich in the private sector after expensive training at the expense of the public purse, but I don’t believe this is the motivation of all but a very venal few. There are plenty of other routes to riches for those with the mental wherewithal to withstand medical training.

So, if you have even a shred of faith in the human race, you’d have to conclude that they have a legitimate reason to engage in withdrawing their labour. I don’t pretend to know much about medicine, but I do know that if you offer a human something for ‘free’ there’s a fair chance they’ll perk up: welfare, entertainment... healthcare. The National Health Service creaks at its seams because too many people expect too much without taking any responsibility. It’s always up to the government to pour in more money, isn’t it? And as the government hasn’t any money of its own it has to take it from those of us too busy to go to the doctor.

So it strikes me we can kill two birds with one stone here, three in fact... hell, we can crack shitloads. They say work sets you free and it really could. Fuck the EU, sod the environment (it will take care of itself) and pay no heed to the howls of the progressives. Leave the Deutsche Eurocratic Projekt, seal off the borders and let’s go self-sufficient for a while. Stop bowing to the deity of globalisation and start to consider not what citizens of the world need from their home country, but what we all need from each other, right here in the UK.

Open up the mines, re-fire the furnaces, get people back on the land and back in industry and flip a big fat bird at all the new-age, iMoney, eCommerce, everyone’s-an-entrepreneur, every kid's-a-coder nonsense. Start making stuff again, kickstart construction; get people grafting for a living. We'd regain a measure of independence and solve many of the problems of full employment and energy security and we would have to address our own skills gap... and we’d once again have something to occupy the laggards rather than just paying them off, writing them off, as we do now.

There should be no dole when there’s a harvest to be gathered in or black gold to be hauled to the surface. Work hard at school or work hard with your hands; instil a work ethic and make it shameful to claim special treatment for all but those who genuinely need it. Ah but, the mark of a civilised country is how it treats its needy and its minorities, they’ll say. Okay, so let’s reduce their numbers by rolling back on what is considered a ‘need’ as opposed to a lifestyle choice.

This won't hurt a bit...

Oh, it might not be pretty and we’d have to forego strawberries in December and three thousand varieties of breakfast cereal. Our treatment of indolence and sloth would necessarily be forthright and everybody would have to pull their weight, but speaking of weight, obesity may once again become a thing of rare luxury. Fitter, leaner, more active people would become the norm and the threat of striking doctors would recede with every pound of fat shed. What’s not to like? A self-reliant, healthier population and a return to community coherence...

But first, as Shakespeare famously said, we would have to kill all the lawyers. It’s never going back to the way it was, is it? 

Talking 'bout Your Generation

I grew up in a Britain which, having expended its last gasp in defending the free world from Nazi totalitarianism seemed to slump and give itself up to Soviet totalitarianism. The unions called the shots and gave the working man – a man who formerly had to fend for himself – the impression that he and his comrades held the keys to the country. They did, but only in the sense that they turned the lock at the beck and call of their shop steward masters. Collectivism turned out to be a powerful voting bloc but did little to truly improve the lot of those with only their labour to sell.

Fortunately, for a while, their labour was in high demand, until uncompetitive practices eroded what was left of Britain’s manufacturing base, business owners sold up, packed up and took their savings away from hideously punitive taxation and for the best and brightest of our scientists and entrepreneurs the lure of the swirling maelstrom of the brain drain proved too powerful a pull. By the seventies Britain was dead in the water but by then the lumpen proletariat was seduced into believing that it was the responsibility of the state, not the individual to make everything better. So much for the blitz spirit.

Until the brief respite from the maudlin, state-teat suckling mind-set brought about by the inspired and principled leadership of one strong woman Britain was heading in only one direction. The eighties saw the bitter struggle to wrest back individualism from the morass of mediocrity that insisted for every aspect of life ‘the government must do something’. You still hear that cry tday, but thankfully Gordon Brown’s little dalliance with Old Labour was brought to an abrupt end when once again Labour left us bankrupt. Even if it had the will the government no longer has the means. “Can we fix it?” asks Bob the builder. No, we can’t.

So it was with both pleasure and surprise that I listened to Monday night’s radio programme “Generation Right” which posed the question: Are the political views of young people shifting away from tedious lefty expectation? Surely, you might think, this is the selfish ‘me’ generation - Thatcher’s children? But no; aged between18 and 30 their views and for some, almost their entire lives, have been shaped during new Labour’s bizarre mix of Thatcherism-lite, multiculturalism and spend-spend-spend. Defining themselves differently from their parents’ generation these hip and happening kids appear to have fallen out of love with the welfare state.

Less tolerant of entitlement culture, they want to make something of themselves and have an individualised outlook on life and a firm belief in personal responsibility. Some of those interviewed were even perfectly happy with university tuition fees yet they still hold liberal views on many social issues and are not entirely selfish. It’s not that they don’t care about others but their whole lives have been lived witnessing state intervention getting precisely nowhere. A generation that doesn’t trust the government to solve their problems is a step in the right direction.

You're on your own, Owen

Meanwhile the Labour Party’s schtick has centred for four long years around the statement that the out-of-touch government just doesn’t get it, praying all the while for economic disaster to deliver the cold and hungry vote back into their sticky, crime-red hands. The welcome news that the cost of living is now the lowest it has been since 2009 must have come as a bitter blow to Red Ed and his motley crew. Yet still they chant their empty slogans and offer up sound-bite solutions to non-existent problems. As Owen Jones andhis People's Assembly demand, “No more austerity!” the rest of his generation open their eyes and ask “What austerity?” Good for you, young folk, spread the word; there’s hope for you yet.