The politics of fear and loathing of politics (part 1)

Politicians rely on people having short memories, or just outright bad memories. Fortunately, although I am blessed with a bad memory, I do have a facility for flagging important events, so that I notice immediately when a politician says something in contradiction to something that has gone on before. For instance when the first resolution on Iraq was passed, the term used was 'serious consequences', a term, as was widely reported at the time, that does not allow for military action without a second resolution. The term for that would be something like 'all necessary means'. In fact, that is exactly the phrase that the US and the UK wanted to use for the first resolution, but that was blocked by the other security members, because they did not want to give the 51 states of the union carte blanche. Like Bush would ever be held back, or even understand, such subtleties. I think there should be a law that states that someone who cannot spell or pronounce 'nucular deterrant' should not be allowed to have their finger anywhere near the button, but that is another matter.

All this as a prelude to the following... Remember less than two weeks ago, when Labour was stirring up fear, saying that the Tories would dismantle the NHS (the UK's free National Health Service) by giving people the option to pay for private treatment and then reimbursing half the cost. 'That would drain vital funds away from the NHS!' While I do not agree with those plans, now Labour have done a similar thing. A mere week after retaining power, the new health secretary has announced a 3 billion pound plan to have the private sector perform routine operations for NHS patients. An important word in that sentence is the word 'routine'. This is a perfect set up for arguing that the private sector is more efficient than the public one. 'Look,' they will say, 'the private sector carried out x number of operations for much less money,' conveniently ignoring that the public sector is left with the not-so-routine cases, and even receives back the 'routine' cases that have gone wrong in the private sector. And that argument will be used to further increase the involvement of the private sector. If you do not believe me, and think I am overly cynical (if that's not a tautology), consider the following: while in the beginning of Labour's stint in power the private sector accounted for 2% of health treatment, Labour set a target for 5%, and now that has been 'upgraded' to no more than, I forget the exact number, but it's either 11 or 15%. (I just checked... It's 'between 10 and 15%. Guess what it'll end up as?)

Uh, so who's privatizing the health sector now?

PS: I am really fed up with politicians saying things like: 'Everyone knows that...' or 'We know that people believe that...' without backing this up with any evidence. Have they always been doing that, has it been getting worse of late, or am I just a bit more sensities to their non-language? Then again, everyone knows that politicians are lying scumbags. And I know that people believe that.