August 31, 2024 - 8:00am
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, has suggested that she received priority treatment from an NHS doctor because of her decision to vote in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza.
Addressing the gathered throngs at “An Evening With Jess Phillips”, the Minister for Safeguarding described visiting A&E at a Birmingham hospital for breathing difficulties. Luckily, given that she told the crowd she had “genuinely seen better health facilities in war zones, in developing countries around the world”, she did not have to stay long.
Phillips claimed that she was able to push ahead of other patients because the doctor who treated her was Palestinian, and she had previously resigned from Labour’s front bench after voting in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza. “He was sort of like, ‘I like you. You voted for a ceasefire,’” she admitted. “I got through quicker.”
There are a number of reasons why this is staggering. The first is that Phillips claims “almost all the doctors in Birmingham seemed to be [Palestinian].” Given that only 207 Palestinians work in the NHS in total, it’s little wonder she was waiting so long. Equally astonishing is that Philips would tell this story at all. Presumably, she meant to convey a sense that Gaza had real impacts on her constituents because it is an issue that matters to respectable people like doctors.
Certainly, this would fit in with Phillip’s history of blinkeredness. After receiving a torrent of abuse from pro-Gaza activists at the last general election — including being threatened, intimidated and drowned out by shouts whilst giving her acceptance speech — she was asked whether this hostile response was sectarian. She responded that “the fact that they were Muslim is not significant because there are Muslim people in my constituency who didn’t behave like this”, before adding: “they did it because they were idiots.”
But, after being given priority for medical treatment by a doctor on the grounds of sectarian division generated by the latest flare-up of a millennia-long inter-ethnic conflict thousands of miles away, it is hard to see how the blinkers can stay on. Accusations of two-tier policing are bad; the implications of two-tier healthcare are arguably worse.
If the NHS in Birmingham will see you more quickly when you’re pro-Palestine the most pertinent question is, as academic David Jefferey asked: what type of care will you receive if you are perceived to be Jewish? The allocation of urgent medical care to an MP following lines of sectarian allegiance raises questions about how often such cases are happening out of the public eye, and what other care doctors are providing based on reasons other than medical need.
Any doctor who prioritises patients based on politics rather than necessity deserves to be struck off. Any MP prepared to accept this open abuse of public services to their benefit deserves to be removed from office. Phillips could perhaps redeem herself by tackling Britain’s increasing sectarianism and its effects. But we shouldn’t hold our breath. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
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SubscribeAny parent of a teenage daughter, familiar with the extreme mood swings, addiction to drama, and craving to be part of the in crowd, will understand these stats immediately.
When gender fluidity ceases to be fashionable, the numbers will drop to the tiny percentage with a genuine problem.
Yes Martin, and perhaps Stonewall will become a victim of its own success. By making transgenderism mainstream and legitimate it will no longer be attractive to young people who will have to think of something else.
Stonewall…..the homophobic gay rights organisation.
This survey illustrates that in a pretty liberal country a tiny (less than 1 %) proportion of the population identifies as trans or non-binary whatever is actually meant by either category which is far from clear. Why should national policies be altered to accommodate this eccentric minority any more than the country would tailor their policies to accommodate the policies of the the Monster Raving Loony party which used to poll at a similar level?
Canada is “a pretty liberal country”. Where have you been for the last couple of years?
Yes the trouble of using “liberal” today is that it may be unclear whether it is used in the traditional John Stuart Mill sense or in the modern sense of a “progressive” anti-nationalist quasi-fascist woke sense. I was using it in the latter sense. If a country as celebratory of woke politics as Canada can only record less than 1% alternative genders than it is not a vast constituency that requires a radical alteration of language and practices to the detriment of women.
Canada, where i live, is nowhere near the hotbed of progressivism that conservatives in Canada and people from other countries, including intelligent people like Douglas Murray, make out. Much of Trudeau’s woke behaviour is for appearances only; for the most part he is governing in a very traditional Liberal (i.e. the Liberal party of Canada) way. He does appear fatuously progressive at times for sure, but policywise he mostly sticks pretty close to the middle, where Liberals have always tended to be.
More to the point: How did this become a thing that we can’t stop talking about?
Also, if you and I are confused about what any of these labels actually mean, imagine how the average voter feels.
It’s because to be a white cis het person is the worst thing ever for young people today. The rest of us are just too old to care.
Occasionally, reality matches common-sense-perceptions that younger generations have been poorly served by the educational systems, especially at the secondary-school levels.Ditto the prevalence of difficult family environments – the largest factor explaining dysphoria. But, its an old story: crumbling institutions, questionable parenting, and dysfunctional schools are the sources of immature cognition, and not just gender dysphoria.
I don’t think the census demonstrates that young people will “grow out of it.” The more obvious reason is that transgender and nonbinary just weren’t options for the older generations. In contemporary liberal societies, young people are being conditioned into non-traditional gender choices through neo-Marxist ideologies such as queer theory and critical gender studies. Who wants to be part of the “dominant oppressor class” when you can “come out,” identify as trans or nonbinary, and become liberated from the cis-heterosexual hegemony?
This was my first thought too. My issue with all this is how quickly transgenderism is being enshrined in law. I wonder if the drive behind it is to reduce people to vapid sexless worker drones. Healthy masculinity has always stood in the way of toxic governments, so maybe transgenderism is a way to topple that.
So put together the total number of transgender and non-binary people in the entirety of Canada would just about fill Hove?
Funny.
They would be happier in Hanover.
Is it possible that the reason the number of transgender people decreases with age is that the transgender boom hasn’t worked its way up through the age groups yet?
I suspect most of us boomers don’t even understand what “Non Binary” means, let alone want to identify as one (it?).
despite the perfectly obvious fact some things are immutable
This is very much a phenomenon of Gen Z (my daughter’s age, and yes at her school there were several)
I think its something to do with the modern attitude to “Fairness” – everyone has a right to be whatever they want to be
Oddly, one can self identify as the other gender, but god help you if you self identify as black when you are white.
I don’t understand the concept of non-binary. The first time I came across it was when my daughter who is an animator gave me one of her animation magazines to read. It was aimed at professional animators. But there was a section called “The top 10 women in animation”. One of the women animators said she identified as non-binary. I asked my daughter what that meant and she told me that it means that the person does not identify as either male or female. “But she’s in a list of the top ten WOMEN animators” I replied. What?
Presumably non binary to her meant he/she was free to identify as male or female depending on whether there was an advantage in adopting one or the other genders.
Why would one not be non binary if you get the advantages of both genders/sexes.
This is an interesting point. Elsewhere on here this week, the point was made that if older people were hiding due to social conventions, their removal has not seen an uptick in boomers or gen-z ‘coming out’.
If the sudden swing among young people is, in many cases, peer pressure, then what it comes down to is how long people wish to maintain how they present themselves. How many people look, dress, behave and think the same way at fifteen and fifty?