Welcome to this special episode of the Sceptic, with Professor Nigel Biggar. Nigel Biggar is Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford and the author of Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning. Nigel recently delivered the second lecture of Modern Dissent, a London lecture series challenging established ideas run by the Sceptic’s host, Laurie Wastell.
The title of that lecture was ‘Deconstructing Decolonisation’ and that’s the jumping off point for today’s episode. Laurie speaks to Nigel about what’s driving the decolonisers, both as a social movement and as an ideology; their unacknowledged Eurocentrism; the importance of patient, reasoned argument in the face of woke dogmatism; the influence of Christianity on the decolonise movement; whether a liberal-humanitarian defence of the British Empire can successfully counter the woke decolonial narrative, and the merits of a purely self-interested appraisal of colonialism; his views on how to improve the culture in our universities; and the difference the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (now halted by the Labour Government) would have made to campus cancel culture.
Watch Nigel’s full Modern Dissent lecture here.
Get your copy of Colonialism: a Moral Reckoning.
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Produced by Richard Eldred.
Filmed at the Westminster Podcast Studio.
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How about a Tik Tok dance? It helped in the past
I could bang a pan with a wooden spoon if that would help.
I actually hadn’t heard of that as an thing (clapping/banging a pan) before the first occurrence. I wondered WTF was going on. When I did realise what it was the sight of BoJo on the TV news standing on the steps of No 10 clapping made me want to puke.
There is so much I could say on the subject of NHS but I will try and keep on topic. As one NHS worker said to me, doctors prescribe drugs to solve the symptoms without determining the root cause (eg lifestyle,diet). Almost all drugs have side effects. And the winner is ….the pharmaceutical companies. The answer so far has been more money needed to pay for this so called ‘free service’ which will be paid for by you and me (the taxpayers). I won’t be clapping for this failed institution any time soon.
I so despise every facet of the state that I’m enjoying watching our sainted NHS crash and burn. There are no solutions to this mess that don’t eventually involve spending every last penny of the country’s wealth on RNHS. We’ll be destitute, but at least we’ll be able to get our privates chopped off on demand.
On 5th July 1948 after much planning and political wrangling the UK government implemented one of the most radical reforms in healthcare provision in the world at the time.
The NHS was announced to the general public through a leaflet sent to every household.
The quality of available healthcare did not change. Just the way we paid for it.
No. It rained hospitals, ambulances, porters, nurses, doctors, beds, operating theatres, surgical instruments on 5th July – stuff we had never had before and would never have but for ‘our’ Holy NHS. Come the day, heaps of The Poor™️ were no longer blocking the gutters in their death throes.
”You are all paying for it…”. Maybe then, but soon enough ‘all’ weren’t and increasingly fewer were paying for it, and we certainly have millions of immigrant hordes who haven’t paid a brass farthing, nor ever will… but who are first in the Everqueue.
The mortality stats tell the same story. No change in the overall trend in reduction of death rate after the inception of the NHS. A distinct small step down in infant mortality but as it had fallen from 20% in 1900 to about 3.5% in 1947 the majority of the possible improvement had already been accomplished. death rates among men over 45 and under 85 actually stopped improving at around that time and didn’t resume improving until the seventies.
Prior to NHS ‘free’ GP services were funded by local councils – so from local taxes, not central government taxes.
Thing was, the original NHS didn’t fund many elective things which are now offered – and not just because the technology didn’t exist.
Quite so. The arrangements put in place by the Baldwin and Chamberlain governments were such as to ensure that more and more patients received treatment without financial anxiety. The overall plan – supported and extended by the original Beveridge report – was to use the state as a coordinating agency, stitching together the well established and multiple provisions supplied by private, local and charitable sectors.
Excellent! Well deserved. It’s what they keep voting for.
More people unable to pay their mortgage – that’s the reward for hiding under the bed during the Fakedemic.
Electricity on ration – great because they want to save the planet and no plastic too to save the fish.
Also adding to the list, the ever increasing gene therapy injured.
Yet surgeries – unasked – send frequent requests to healthy people for blood tests for diseases they don’t have….
This is a data collection exercise – our health data sent to China for analysis. NHS very keen to analyse our poo as well. Digital data is very desirable and biological data too.