Monday, 1 October 2018

The Great British Menu

There is something deeply disturbing about our current fetishisation of the NHS. Any hint of an attack on this admittedly fine organisation is likely to lead to death by a thousand tweets. Any suggestion of even the mildest reform leads to screaming allegations of support for "creeping privatisation".

Most of us who are not super-rich have had dealings with the NHS and can recount excellent experiences. Yet for every such tale we all know from our own experience, or that of family and friends, of failings from the insignificant to the outright horrific.

Our medical service seems to offer good value for money. I have no doubt that it IS underfunded and requires a larger percentage of GDP devoted to it, particularly as an ageing population creates additional demand. But there is nothing for the non-statistician to "benchmark" against. If I collapse in the street am I likely to get better treatment here than in, say, Paris or Berlin? The Spanish health service is usually lauded as excellent but how does it compare with ours? If I contract bowel cancer how long am I likely to survive in England, compared, say, with Norway or the US?

I have an NHS hearing aid. The appointment was via a private shop. The tester there was concerned about something and wrote to my doctor who duly sent me to a very busy hospital department. They did look after me splendidly. Now I carry on and get any newer model of hearing aid or batteries via the private shop. Some people see this as an anathema. But do busy - and very expensive - hospital departments really need to go back to dishing out hearing aids/batteries instead of dealing with more serious stuff? Corbyn and his Marxist chums say "yes" but I don't buy it.

The rich and privileged in Britain have the option of private education and medical treatment. Despite all the b*llshit about British sovereignty and "taking back control" we are a nation of pathetic grovellers - sucking up to the ludicrous royals, aristocracy and the otherwise privileged. There is nothing we like more than bending the knee before these greasers. In turn they love to patronise us plebs and talk down to us.

Which brings us to the Great British Menu where cooks prepare ridiculously expensive and elaborate dishes and serve them with ludicrous "props" to members of some "deserving" organisation. Last year the grub was doled out by the licence fee-payer to the poor starving mites at that ultimate bastion of British snobbery, Wimbledon Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club. (My last post here showed that the whole top Wimbledon Board were white in multi-cultural sarf London!)

This year an elitist "banquet" is to be served to our most egalitarian body. The shtick of the programme - repeated ad nauseum and almost as often as the words "sous vide"* - is that the meal is for the "heroes" of the NHS. As in BBC magazine programmes like "Midlands Today" a nightly sob-story is reeled out - here to illustrate just how, er, heroic individual NHS employees are. This becomes as cloying as a BedPanna Cotta. The rich BBC in full de haut en bas mode have literally decreed "let them eat cake" - and lobster, and venison etc etc.

There is no balance to this inane glorification of an often flawed organisation. I am still waiting for the episode where a "hero" of the medical negligence department explains how his/her workload has expanded exponentially as life-ending or life-changing errors wreck lives and the budget to cover legal costs etc in 2016/17 was £65 BILLION in England alone!

On top of all this we have the presenters condescendingly telling NHS staff just how marvellous they are. But are they themselves patrons of the service they laud to the skies?

I can't comment on Andi Oliver but fellow judge Oliver Peyton married one of the Polizzis - a granddaughter of hotel tycoon Charles Forte. It seems improbable that the famous and wealthy clan are unfamiliar with private medicine and, indeed, when Peyton had addiction issues he hurried to the Celeb's expensive private clinic of choice, The Priory.

The other judge, Matthew Fort is an old Etonian. Having benefited from a private education it is unclear whether he also avails himself of private medicine.

Back in the early days of the NHS one Tory MP often railed against what he called "the unlimited expansion of the Health Service." He preferred a contributory funding regime instead of "socialist" funding via increased taxes etc. He was very much against the proposal for a full-time NHS GP service. He would, no doubt, be horrified at the size and cost of the NHS now. Who was he? Step forward the member for Cl*theroe, Richard Fort - father of.....

So, BBC, do the presenters of this whole charade use private medical services or the NHS? I think licence-payers should be told!



* ie "boil in the bag".

iancrowmultimedia@gmail.com

Tuesday, 10 July 2018

All White at Wimbledon?

Sometimes - just sometimes - you feel you may have touched a nerve....

Last year I was corresponding about a matter with the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club ie "Wimbledon." They were very efficient and prompt in replying to me and so I took the opportunity to ask how many BAME people were on their top board. There was no response other than a link to a list of names. I thought this was odd and have now taken a look.

Wimbledon runs a magnificent operation but remains a bastion of  English elitism - fawning to our ridiculous royals at every tick and turn etc. The rules provide for all white gear on the courts but is it also "all white" around the boardroom table? "Yes" would appear to be the answer (though it has been as easy as one would imagine to track all board members down).

See if you can spot a non-white face amongst this lot:

Head Honcho - Philip Brook:



Cabinet Sec to War Criminal Tony B-liar - "Lord" Gus O'Donnell:



"Come On Tim" - Tim Henman


The Honourable Bruce Wetherill (son of former Speaker of House of Commons) Ex-Public  (ie private) School - hope I have the right photo here but this guy is definitely not BAME:


Ashley Tatum - left - at Public (ie private) School Old Boys LTA:



Richard Stoakes:



Simon Jones L.V.O.:



Debbie Jevans (Sport England):


Alexandra Innes (had a bit of trouble tracking this one down but hope I have the right person):


Ian Hewitt:


(Richard) Michael Gradon:


Sally Ambrose (I struggled with this one as she appears to hide her light under a bushel if I have the right person. She is described as a "buyer" on ALETC documents and this Sally Ambrose was a top buyer at M&S and is now at the, er, White Company):


In a city where 40.2% are "non-White" there does not appear to be a single BAME person on the top Board. You will have probably noticed that women also constitute just a quarter of the  top flight. Come on Wimbledon - you can do better than this!

Coda:

This Board have a say in who gets VIP passes at the Championships. Despite the elitism they do sometimes slip up and let scum in. And so last year they gave two tickets plus lunches to a vicious thug who, inter alia, hounded a man to his death with vile and completely unfounded allegations. Step forward the now slimline former porker Tom "Ten Bellies" Watson MP.

Watson declared a package worth - and I kid you not - £3,790 for his jolly day out. Given his size at the time it is unclear whether he had two seats to accommodate his massive buttocks or whether he did, in fact, take a guest?

At least now that Watson has given up any pretence that he lives in his hell-hole Sandwell constituency he didn't have far to get back to his south London home. Bless!

Hopefully, the Board won't have repeated the invite this year but then you know what the Establishment is like....

iancrowmultimedia@gmail.com

Twitter: @CrowMultimedia

Saturday, 14 April 2018

Smell The Corbyn Coffee!

Jeremy Corbyn has never run anything but his own mouth and the only "work" he appears to have ever done is jack-hammering his honourable member into numerous women. He is thick, lazy and a political dinosaur determined to destroy the democratic infrastructure of this septic isle.

Apart from money he has taken from the brutal, torturing, homophobic Iranian regime he allegedly only has his parliamentary salary, pensions etc and yet he was unable to fill in a simple tax return a couple of years ago and was duly fined. That should fill you with confidence for a man who wants to head the government.

Jeremy Bernard is an economic imbecile who did not know that bonds are debt instruments. Bearing in mind that governments rely on bonds for their borrowing this lack of even basic knowledge from the man with 2 Grade "E" A-levels is truly staggering.

His support for the "socialist" paradise of Venezuela is the mark of the man. A country with colossal oil reserves is mired in poverty and has lurched into dictatorship. People are facing starvation or fleeing into neighbouring countries to seek refuge. You have been warned, Britain!

Corbyn has supported terrorism around the world. At the moment he is purporting to be a "man of p*ss" (sorry, "peace") in respect of Syria but has been a vocal advocate for the Hezbollah terrorist group which has been actively involved in the fighting on the ground there in support of Corbyn's old mate, President Assad.

As a long-standing Birmingham resident I was the sole demonstrator at his Nuremberg Rally on Eastside before the last election. Unlike the morons braying at his every utterance I objected to an IRA supporter coming to lecture us in a city where they murdered so many.


"Jeremy" is fiercely (insofar as this splenetic, ranting Lear can be "fierce") anti-Israel. He gives succour to terrorists groups bent on its total destruction - Hezbollah and Hamas. He claims not to be anti-semitic himself but has surrounded himself with such people. Labour #forthemanynotthejew.

Corbyn is onto his third (official) wife now and she is Mexican so this buffoon thinks this qualifies him to speak about the North American Free Trade Agreement:

I think he needs to have a chat with Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada and President Enrique Pena Nieto before he spouts this sort of b*llocks!

As it happens, his third (official) wife does a very "Islington" thing ie importing fairtrade coffee from "happy" Mexican peasants and attempting to flog it. She runs two companies both of which have just filed accounts on 31st March, 2018.

The first company, Maya, has filed "dormant company accounts" ie it is not trading. The second company is, like Jezza's intellect, tiny and has filed "micro" accounts so that only very limited information is available for Mexica Products Limited:



Clearly Mrs Jezza shares his "socialist" principles - since she owes more than the assets of the miniscule company. But why not stack up outside creditors who can be shafted in the company goes down? Corbyn heeds his wife on matters Mexican but if he listens to her on economics and business we will all be doing the Aztec Two-Step if he and the Trots (geddit?) grab control of this disunited queendom.......


iancrowmultimedia@gmail.com