The Mail reports today that an Exeter University philosophy student was threatened with expulsion in 2018 after he was overheard through the wall of his room by a neighbour who took exception to his views:
A philosophy student overheard through the wall of his room saying “veganism is wrong” and “gender fluidity is stupid” was threatened with expulsion by his university, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Robert Ivinson said he was disciplined after a student next door in halls of residence at Exeter University heard the comments then complained he had been offensive and “transphobic”.
Mr. Ivinson, who expressed the views in a phone call to a friend, was hauled before university officials and put on a ‘behavioural contract’ for the rest of his studies.
It seems, according to the Mail’s description, that the university authorities are effectively sentencing students in absentia:
He was warned he could be expelled if the university thought he had done anything else wrong, and told by letter he had been found guilty of harassment.
Edward Skidelsky – director of the Committee for Academic Freedom, academics fighting to maintain free expression on campuses – said: “It’s extraordinary that in 21st Century Britain eavesdroppers can be rewarded, and a student punished for remarks made to a friend in the privacy of his room.
“Robert’s case once again underlines the insidious erosion of the freedom to express opinions and ideas which is playing out at our universities.”
Although Mr. Ivinson, who is still studying at Exeter, experienced the University’s disciplinary system several years ago he has only recently felt able to talk about the incident, thanks to support from the Committee for Academic Freedom.
When an officer from the University’s estate patrol banged on his door to tell him his female neighbour had complained, the mature student was shaken.
“It was like the Stasi had come to my door,” he said. “He stuck his foot in my door and said you’ve been saying some very offensive things.“
Mr. Ivinson was called to a disciplinary hearing and grilled by university officials.
It’s not clear what the most remarkable aspect of this story is: the eavesdropping neighbour who dobbed him in; the University employee who enthusiastically went round to Mr. Ivinson’s room to threaten him for daring to criticise Veganism; or Exeter for punishing him for holding non-conformist views. Whichever it was, the comparison with the Stasi and East Germany seems uncomfortably appropriate.
Worth reading in full.
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My GP NHS surgery prominently displays leaflets for the local private hospital under a small poster suggesting asking the GP for a referral!
“And here lies the essential problem…the primary concern of the NHS is the welfare of its staff, not its customers.”
And why is that? Because it’s about buying their votes.
“It never ceases to astonish me that people think they can’t afford healthcare, but they can afford healthcare with a huge government bureacracy.” Tom Sowell
“If you think health care is expensive, wait until it’s free” P J O’Rourke
Debbie Evans on UK Column who is a retired nurse is worth a watch, this is her area of work and she has been warning about surveillance and AI in the NHS for a while.
Always check UK Column.
Any political party that seriously wishes to sort out Britain’s public sector should start with the NHS.
The blueprint has already been written….and it most certainly isn’t Darzi’s utterly predictable and uninspiring prognostications:
‘In terms of outcomes, quality and efficiency, social health insurance systems are consistently ahead of the NHS on almost every available measure.
They combine the universality of a public system with the consumer sovereignty, the pluralism, the competitiveness and the innovativeness of a market system.
We do not see any one particular country’s health system as a role model, because they all have flaws and irritating aspects of their own. But there are also plenty of interesting lessons to be learned, which we are missing out on by ignoring alternatives to both the NHS and the American system.
The Dutch system shows that a successful health system needs no state-owned hospitals, no state hospital planning and no hospital subsidies.
The Swiss system shows that even substantial levels of out-of-pocket patient charges need not be regressive, and that people can be trusted to choose sensibly from a variety of health insurance plans.
The ‘PKVpillar’ of the German system shows that a healthcare system can be fully prefunded, just like a pension system.’
IEA Paper ‘Universal Healthcare Without the NHS
Will the public see through it? Didn’t every mainstream political party stand in the last election on a platform of keeping the NHS more or less as it is?
The NHS needs to be dismantled and we need to start again from the bottom up.
The (?Ethnic Indian ?Muslim) In-House Doctor makes the same odd mistake as the Christian Armenian Lord Darzi, by careful avoidance of mentioning The Elephant in the Room: MASS IMMIGRATION FROM THE THIRD WORLD OVERWHELMING ALL INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE WEST.
The National Health Service is paid for by British Taxpayers through their National Insurance contributions throughout their lives.
The British People never consented to their own NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE being turned into the PLANETARY HEALTH SERVICE.
See the Communist Cloward-Piven Strategy to Destroy the West.
Indeed
You can’t have a sustainable welfare state AND open borders
You have summed it all up very succinctly.
And who has ensured that there are not enough home-grown doctors to staff the NHS?
BMA meeting [in 2008]: Doctors vote to limit number of medical studentshttps://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a748
So that would be the BMA and a Labour Government. So much for being the best combination to produce a good outcome.
The benefits of digitalisation…
Brings to mind a phrase my father used regularly which I did not understand was crude. Much later I found out he was repeating something that the military often used and that Prince Philip had used in one of his less cautious comments.
Computerising a deeply flawed bureaucracy will make things far worse. It sets in stone inefficient process and layers of management that we could well do without.
The best thing we could do is to fire anyone paid over £50k who doesn’t have direct contact with patients.
That pay setting is on the high side. When a ward sister gets paid more than some junior doctors (even after the recent increase) the problem is exposed. When a DEI person gets £100k or more (for nothing useful to patients), and when necessary cleaning is subcontracted, we know there is a problem. When nursing degrees do not stress patient care over other stuff, there is more than a minor problem. Where is the plan from the chief executive of the NHS? Oh there are a few pointless tweets, meaningless fluff to the masses. F…..ing present a plan, then at least we could discuss and explain why it won’t work! More of the same I am afraid. There is a London hospital which does not have enough surgeons available to utilise all of its available facilities, so waiting lists increase at an alarming rate. Seriously ill patients tend to have to nearly die before an emergency procedure might happen if they are lucky. This is the quality of NHS management at the higher levels. Apparently they have insufficient ability to even address such difficulties!
I remain amazed that this government appointed the same person to find the Holy Grail of the NHS as they did last time around. His last report was full of the praises of a German polyclinic (just the one) as a way of bringing care into the community, whereas the dispersal of specialist expertise is counterproductive and remains so. Yet this report contains the same mantra. Investment in technology eats money, and the last attempt wasted some £20 billion. Hospital productivity cannot go up if more staff are rammed into the same facilities and there aren’t more beds to accommodate more patients. New drugs cost a fortune.
There is another way to improve medical staff morale. Abolish the shift system. Restore team working (which will abolish handover errors). Restore hospital accommodation which will foster trainee collaboration; the doctors’ mess was where problems got solved. Other suggestions end my book “Mad Medicine”…
They haven’t manufactured MY consent. Blair tried “save the NHS via technology.”
He spent £10 billion creating and installing a system which didn’t work.
I’m sure Keir Stalin will go one better and waste 3 times that, and it still won’t work.
Do you know why it didn’t work? I suspect they didn’t ask anyone who actually understood a hospital what was needed! Instead some academic study said something like “we need AI” . This is the latest fad and a complete sham, computers cannot address problems at all, they may learn slightly, but that is not intelligence. You can try this yourself with the online attempt. Ask the computer programme “Please design a computer language which is foolproof in concept but simple to use”. You will get answers like: Python, C++, etc. none of which has either of these properties. In other words it just spits out known stuff rather than new ideas.
The NHS is badly run, wastes money hand over fist, the Drs/Nurses/Consultants no longer do it as a vocation, its all about money and more money, it has been practically privatized for a long time, laundry, food, cleaners, nursing, medical staff, its just a “money pit” that we have no option to pay for, and is only “free at point of use” to those who have not paid in.
It’s only free at the point of use if you ever actually get to use it.
This concise article nails the problem precisely. Confirmation bias at its worst. Great article.
Agree with the idea currently is beholden to providers rather than patients. My only comment Tax Payer ownership alignment will not work as owners as the power is distributed far too wide. It will be better any reform to shift the power away from providers to patients. Given the NHS free and the constraint on patient power should be the tax payers.
In 1948 the Socialist Government nationalised hospitals and medical services along with other key market sectors.
Recently a commentator was complaining that 2 000 NHS hospitals were built before 1948. In fact there were more hospitals prior to 1948 than now.
The point that so many people miss, is that the NHS did not add anything new, it just took over what already was there – and screwed it up.
The propaganda is that only the wealthy could afford medical care before the NHS, but that patently is not true. There were not enough wealthy getting sick often enough to support over 2 000 hospitals and all the staff.
The 1911 National Insurance Act provided medical insurance via the State. (Prior, 75% of people had their own private medical insurance. Nobody wanted it except the politicians.)
The reality is nationalising medical care was just part of the Socialist ideology serving no practical, beneficial purpose to the population just gathering more power and control to the centre.
The NHS cannot work as supposed. It does not operate in a free market with a price system, it lacks private investors so there is no incentive to be efficient, increase labour productivity and absent this and outside funding cannot generate and attract capital to expand to meet increased demand in the way other businesses can.
The NHS has been a mess since the start with dozens of reforms, If it’s still in a mess after 70 years only a lunatic off their treatment regime would image it can be put right by… what? More money, bring back matron, one more heave of the wheel and a visit from the Good Fairy?
Shut it down, let private enterprise in a competitive free market do its job – as it did years ago with all the public services.
Those who won’t accept medical care is just another Human activity producing a good for Human consumption and therefore subject to the usual business process and market economics, are not living in the real world.
“No more money for the NHS without reform.” Queue a new Public Health Reform bill, probably to include the kind of provisions that they intend through the equivalent one Northern Ireland (https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/consultations/policy-proposals-inform-development-new-public-health-bill-northern-ireland, paragraphs 61 and 76)
“61. The officer may for the purpose for which entry is authorised:
• search the premises;
• carry out measurements and tests of the premises or of anything found on them;
• take and retain samples of the premises or of anything found on them;
• inspect and take copies or extracts of any documents or records found on the premises;
• require information stored in an electronic form and accessible from the premises to be produced in a form in which it can be taken away and in which it is visible and legible or from which it can readily be produced in a visible and legible form; and
• seize and detain or remove anything which the officer reasonably believes to be evidence of any contravention relevant to the purpose for which entry is authorised.”
“76. The restrictions or requirements that may be imposed on a person by an order are that:
• the person submit to medical examination;
• the person be removed to a hospital or other suitable establishment;
• the person be detained in a hospital or other suitable establishment;
• the person be kept in isolation or quarantine;
• the person be disinfected or decontaminated;
• the person wear protective clothing;
• the person provide information or answer questions about the person’s health or other circumstances;
• the person’s health be monitored and the results reported;
• the person attends training or advice sessions on how to reduce the risk of infecting or contaminating others;
• the person be subject to restrictions on where the person goes or with whom the person has contact;
• the person abstains from working or trading.”
Cue, this is the most ridiculous overreach I have ever read. If you go for treatment of course you allow the job to be done. If you avoid the doctor or hospital you avoid all the above. Surely it is that simple? You give permission by implication. If you refuse any necessary procedure or whatever you are shown the door. I could add a point about needing an interpreter, but that would be considered racist, as I have seen a doctor whose English was so poor he could not answer simple questions!