As a 20 year old when the speech was made, I was appalled at the response it engendered. I struggled to see anything in the speech which was anything other than a political analysis of the possible outcome of a government policy. In the eighties, taking an education degree at a time when multiculturalism was being thrust into the curriculum, I was called racist, by a few (fortunately people were not as polarised or as vicious then) for querying the agenda of the group who came into college to lecture us on its implimentation. I wish I had been better informed to marshal the argument of incoming culture v the laws of this country that needed to be discussed, let alone the other issues. Not that long ago, I watched with interest as articles suggesting the failure of multiculturalism began to appear in a few places. When Enoch Powell was referenced, this time as being prescient, I reread the speech and looked around at what was happening. Recent events and their treatment by the media are leading us to a situation where the abuse of this country and its inhabitants by a small, vociferous and overindulged section of the minority groups, supported by a large number of ill informed and/or ill intentioned members of the majority group, together with the heads of some institutions and authorities, may well lead to the already violent clashes becoming even worse. Enoch Powell may be vindicated but I doubt his shade will be taking any pleasure in the fact; he is one politician who truly had the interests of everybody in the country at heart.
Colin Elliott
3 years ago
I will make three points. First, I am aware that other professionals are also becoming disincentivised by the increasing impositions of ‘standards’, and ‘procedures’, and the reduction in respect accorded to learning, experience and ethics. Second, we are cursed with the system known as the NHS, the most important feature of which is that it is the direct responsibility of the government of the day. Add to that the fact that there are many people (opposition and media) who always exploit any incident for their own reasons. A bad incident is used for this, rather than given an appropriate level of attention by disinterested authorities. Furthermore, politicians cannot stop themselves tinkering with it for one reason or another, and when they do so, they need numbers of civil servants to carry out their plans, and who probably end up sponsoring or defining the ‘guidelines’ etc. with minimal practical knowledge which end up causing the frustration referred to above. . Third, another feature of the NHS is that it is colossal, ranking alongside the US department of Defense and the PLA. It may adopt ‘corporate identity’ policies, but such a size provides limitless opportunities for creating jobs which seem a good idea at the time, but consume resources, and worse, create yet more red-tape, and distract from effective health care. Far better to have much smaller units, such as a hospital (and I don’t mean a group of hospitals, necessarily,) within which it becomes much easier to create teams with esprit de corps. It’s also easier to administer and remunerate. The obvious thing to do would be to look at the rest of the world, and copy what the best of them do. How about the countries to which these doctors are emigrating? They’re not going in order to find a better NHS-type system. As for money; doctors are amongst the more affluent embers of society, as indeed they should be, which is why I believe lack of satisfaction with the job is the problem.
Scott Allan
3 years ago
Socialised medicine is a failed Neo-Marxist ideal. The reason they run to places that use a hybrid system is that they are not wholly beholding to the “Woke” rubbish in the social medicine system.
Gary Baxter
3 years ago
In the long list of murderers from Marx to Osama Bin Laden one name is missing ” Mao Zedong! Is it intentional or accidental? I suspect the former as intellectuals in the West still don’t know (or care to know) how many Chinese lives Mao destroyed. Pol Pot is in the list. I wonder if he could have killed one million of his countrymen without Mao’s active support.
Joey Eccles
3 years ago
Fascinating article! But on your point “Europe was no stranger to violence, but not until the French Revolution was murder used systematically to erase a designated internal enemy from its existence.” would you not say that the Catholic / Protestant schism in England and further afield led to precisely such systems, not to mention going back further to the complete eradication of the Cathars in Occidental France?
johntshea2
3 years ago
“It was in the British interest to preserve its naval strength through means ‘not short even of alliance with Japan,’
Indeed, for Powell there was little to choose between the two, and “no reason to believe that the British constitution will be threatened more by the socialist dictatorship than by the democracy of the United States”.
So, he was stark raving mad! Far from being the prophet the author suggests, Powell’s rants sound even more delusional now than when he made them.
As a 20 year old when the speech was made, I was appalled at the response it engendered. I struggled to see anything in the speech which was anything other than a political analysis of the possible outcome of a government policy.
In the eighties, taking an education degree at a time when multiculturalism was being thrust into the curriculum, I was called racist, by a few (fortunately people were not as polarised or as vicious then) for querying the agenda of the group who came into college to lecture us on its implimentation. I wish I had been better informed to marshal the argument of incoming culture v the laws of this country that needed to be discussed, let alone the other issues.
Not that long ago, I watched with interest as articles suggesting the failure of multiculturalism began to appear in a few places. When Enoch Powell was referenced, this time as being prescient, I reread the speech and looked around at what was happening.
Recent events and their treatment by the media are leading us to a situation where the abuse of this country and its inhabitants by a small, vociferous and overindulged section of the minority groups, supported by a large number of ill informed and/or ill intentioned members of the majority group, together with the heads of some institutions and authorities, may well lead to the already violent clashes becoming even worse.
Enoch Powell may be vindicated but I doubt his shade will be taking any pleasure in the fact; he is one politician who truly had the interests of everybody in the country at heart.
I will make three points.
First, I am aware that other professionals are also becoming disincentivised by the increasing impositions of ‘standards’, and ‘procedures’, and the reduction in respect accorded to learning, experience and ethics.
Second, we are cursed with the system known as the NHS, the most important feature of which is that it is the direct responsibility of the government of the day. Add to that the fact that there are many people (opposition and media) who always exploit any incident for their own reasons. A bad incident is used for this, rather than given an appropriate level of attention by disinterested authorities.
Furthermore, politicians cannot stop themselves tinkering with it for one reason or another, and when they do so, they need numbers of civil servants to carry out their plans, and who probably end up sponsoring or defining the ‘guidelines’ etc. with minimal practical knowledge which end up causing the frustration referred to above. .
Third, another feature of the NHS is that it is colossal, ranking alongside the US department of Defense and the PLA. It may adopt ‘corporate identity’ policies, but such a size provides limitless opportunities for creating jobs which seem a good idea at the time, but consume resources, and worse, create yet more red-tape, and distract from effective health care.
Far better to have much smaller units, such as a hospital (and I don’t mean a group of hospitals, necessarily,) within which it becomes much easier to create teams with esprit de corps. It’s also easier to administer and remunerate.
The obvious thing to do would be to look at the rest of the world, and copy what the best of them do. How about the countries to which these doctors are emigrating? They’re not going in order to find a better NHS-type system.
As for money; doctors are amongst the more affluent embers of society, as indeed they should be, which is why I believe lack of satisfaction with the job is the problem.
Socialised medicine is a failed Neo-Marxist ideal. The reason they run to places that use a hybrid system is that they are not wholly beholding to the “Woke” rubbish in the social medicine system.
In the long list of murderers from Marx to Osama Bin Laden one name is missing ” Mao Zedong! Is it intentional or accidental? I suspect the former as intellectuals in the West still don’t know (or care to know) how many Chinese lives Mao destroyed. Pol Pot is in the list. I wonder if he could have killed one million of his countrymen without Mao’s active support.
Fascinating article! But on your point “Europe was no stranger to violence, but not until the French Revolution was murder used systematically to erase a designated internal enemy from its existence.” would you not say that the Catholic / Protestant schism in England and further afield led to precisely such systems, not to mention going back further to the complete eradication of the Cathars in Occidental France?
“It was in the British interest to preserve its naval strength through means ‘not short even of alliance with Japan,’
Indeed, for Powell there was little to choose between the two, and “no reason to believe that the British constitution will be threatened more by the socialist dictatorship than by the democracy of the United States”.
So, he was stark raving mad! Far from being the prophet the author suggests, Powell’s rants sound even more delusional now than when he made them.