Circus Freak Show Morality

In response to a poster who contributed to this debate.

Good article – now we just need statues of Orwell and Churchill to be put outside the houses of parliament!

– RussN , London, 05/4/2013 10:16

Why Orwell?

Could we not have Kipling?

And I’m not sure we’ve had a proper Conservative Party for a number of decades.  Look at Margaret Thatcher’s voting record on ‘liberal’ issues.  Fiscally conservative, maybe but morally and socially Conservative? I think not.

Mick Philpott’s children were living in moral squalor and yet this country made him into some kind of circus freak show.  That should be the issue being discussed here, not how much they cost.

Bystander apathy on a national scale.

Retiring

My mother retires in a few weeks. She is leaving the chaos that is the Birmingham mental health system. For the last few years she has watched it disintegrate. She is left wondering what went wrong.

My mother claims that the permissive attitude of the younger doctors and nurses to the consumption of illegal drugs is partly to blame for the mess Birmingham’s mental health services are in.  She sees patients taking them openly in the presence of staff members.  This has always happened but at least they used to have the decency to hide what they were doing.  They call it self medication. The problem is that it often renders their prescribed medication ineffectual.  Also the staff do not know which comes first, which is the chicken and which is the egg, the mental illness or the drug addiction.  

As someone who has had my lucidity snatched away from me, I do not not much patience with those who surrender their lucidity voluntarily. I would give anything to have mine back.  To be devoid of muddle headed thinking, visions, dreams and voices. But is anyone permanently in that state, I wonder.  Clouded visions, dispatches from another dimension have their uses. But being like this all the time renders you completely dysfunctional and can deprive you of the ability to make any kind of meaningful contribution to the world.

And that is tragic.

Addendum: According to Our Esteemed Leader:

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065491/David-Cameron-I-end-sicknote-culture-acts-conveyor-belt-life-benefits.html)

‘An expert report for Downing Street suggested more than three-quarters of GPs admitted they had signed people off sick for reasons other than their physical health.’

Make of that what you will.

Oh, look, it’s the Ghost of Lord Kitchener:

No, not you. You suck. Nor you. You suck like a Dyson! And haven't I told you to go forth and multiply about ten times already!

The Gospel According to:

The utterly charming Theodore Dalrymple:

‘Well you see rather vicious looking people who obviously are angry about something, their anger is misplaced, but nevertheless they’re angry. They look vicious, they look as if they would be ready to stick a knife in you if you crossed them in any way or displeased them in anyway.’

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2011/s3292495.htm

I can empathise. I’ve often felt like this, usually just before I am sectioned under the mental health act.

In Response (no. 999) to…

…this:

 

(A kind of public service announcement :-))

If people are defrauding the system (and I have no evidence that they are not) then they should bear the following in mind. In the UK if you have a mental illness you can be sectioned (imprisoned against your will), forcibly medicated, prevented from voting, prevented from travelling abroad. Being sectioned can have a detrimental effect on the rest of your life. Certain countries refuse to accept people who have been sectioned, you may be barred from certain professions and if you are ever a victim of crime and you have to testify in court your history will be used against you when you take the stand. Those costs far outweigh any benefits there may be in feigning mental illness in the short term. It’s not a good road to go down because if you’re not mentally ill when you embark upon it you soon will be.

‘Welfarism’

In response to this although it probably won’t be printed:

Most of the people I know on ‘welfare’ have very serious mental health problems. In the past such people would have been inhabiting long-stay mental health wards in traditional psychiatric hospitals. They do not exist anymore because they were closed down and the land on which they were built was sold off at rock-bottom prices to private industry. Who was responsible for this? The last Tory government. You say you have been a doctor for twenty years. Did you approve of this and, if not, did you protest? Just curious.

I am also curious about what the good doctor thinks of middle class people who abuse their children.  When I was on an eating disorders unit I heard some pretty nasty stories* of  middle class parents maltreating their children.  What causes this?  These people most certainly were not on welfare.  And, if the actions of Karen Matthews reflect the morality and ‘values’ (or lack thereof) of an entire class then is the same true of their social superiors who subject their own children to abuse? And, if not, then why not?

*And I am prepared to admit that my fellow patients’ stories may have been exaggerations or even outright fabrications.  But these people are middle class.  They wouldn’t do a thing like that, would they? They are, after all, innately superior.  But in the unlikely event that my fellow patients were lying, whining attention seekers then that must mean that all middle class brats are lying, whining attention seekers because for the concept of collective guilt to have any validity then it must be applicable to all groups of people, right?

Addendum: You may be aware that more and more working class girls are now suffering from eating disorders. Anorexia, in particular, used to be an illness confined almost exclusively to the middle classes. Still, the lower classes have always been urged to emulate their ‘betters’ and I guess that is exactly what they are doing. Good on ’em, huh?