SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IN BRITAIN
Four current horror stories below
Is this the worst diagnosis and treatment of all time? NHS told dying woman she was lying and locked her up in a mental hospital!
I had chronic fatigue syndrome once but luckily I have a very good immune system and it only lasted a month. It was a very real debility, though — JR
As Criona Wilson knelt beside her dying daughter’s bedside, she promised her that her death would not be in vain. Before the frail body of 32-year-old Sophia finally succumbed to the medical complications and ravages of ME, she replied in a whisper: “Then it’s all worth it.” In the years that followed, Mrs Wilson, 66, a former midwife, dedicated her life to proving that her daughter’s condition was not a figment of imagination, nor one that merited her youngest child’s incarceration in a mental hospital.
Her battle saw her take on the medical profession and accepted thinking about the diagnosis and treatment of ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Eventually, in 2006, a coroner ruled that Sophia’s death was the result of myalgic encephalomyelitis — the first such ruling at an English inquest.
The fierce debate over ME has been highlighted once again by the case of Kay Gilderdale, who admitted assisting her daughter, Lynn, to kill herself after suffering from ME for 17 years. When she walked free from Lewes Crown Court on Monday, having been cleared of murder, Mrs Wilson was among those cheering her from the public gallery. “I had to be there,” said Mrs Wilson yesterday. “It was such an important case. And the verdict was a vote for common sense in a trial that highlighted what people suffering ME and their carers have to face.”
Her daughter, Sophia Mirza, was a talented and popular arts graduate living with her mother in Brighton in 1999 when she contracted ME at the age of 25. She became confined to her bedroom and, just as Miss Gilderdale had, needed round-the-clock care. In 2003 she was visited by a psychiatrist, even though Miss Mirza complained only of physical discomfort. The psychiatrist told her that she was making up her symptoms and if she continued to pretend to be ill he would section her under the Mental Health Act. Mrs Wilson said: “I knew my daughter. There was no way she was mentally ill or pretending.”
When the dread knock on her door finally came in 2003, there was little she could do. A policeman forced the door open and the psychiatrist and a social worker locked themselves into Miss Mirza’s room to prepare her for her trip to a psychiatric ward. Her condition took a dramatic turn for the worse. After 13 days she was released and taken back to the care of her mother. “That spell in a mental hospital set her back terribly. We lost all faith in medical professionals. We were alone,” said Mrs Wilson.
In 2005 Miss Mirza could barely muster the energy to speak, eat or drink. She and her mother had already agreed that no doctors should be called in case she would be sectioned again. On November 25, 2005, Miss Mirza died in her bed at home.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Mrs Wilson said: “We did everything we could.” Determined to get to the bottom of why her daughter’s treatment had been so bad, she got hold of her medical records. After being contacted by the 25 Per Cent ME Group, which campaigns for those with the most acute form of ME, she agreed to her daughter’s body being examined.
At the inquest the next year a neuropathologist told the court that Miss Mirza’s spinal cord was inflamed and three quarters of her sensory cells had abnormalities. It was, the court heard, a clear physical manifestation of ME. The coroner ruled that she had died from “acute renal failures as a result of chronic fatigue syndrome”.
A year later, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued its first guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of the illness, describing it as “relatively common”, affecting up to 193,000 people in Britain. At the heart of that guidance is the need to take into account the opinions of the patients. Mrs Wilson is campaigning to get the Government to fund research into ME. “It’s not over yet.”
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NHS doctors can kill people but that’s OK
A doctor who prescribed “potentially hazardous” levels of painkillers to elderly patients who died has escaped being struck off the medical register. Jane Barton will be allowed to continue working as a doctor, despite being found guilty of serious professional misconduct, a fitness to practise panel ruled.
She was accused of a series of serious failings in her care of 12 elderly patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, in Hampshire, in the 1990s. These included prescribing prescription drugs at “excessive” and “inappropriate” levels, a hearing at the General Medical Council (GMC) was told.
The fitness to practise panel found that Dr Barton was guilty of putting patients at risk of premature death at the hospital between January 1996 and November 1999. She was found to have prescribed diamorphine, the opiate painkiller, at varying levels “and created a situation whereby drugs could be administered which were excessive to the patients’ needs” the panel found. However, it said that it had taken into account her ten years of safe practice as a GP in Gosport and 200 letters of support and ruled that she could continue working under certain conditions.
Relatives of the patients who had died reacted furiously to the verdict and walked out of the hearing in central London today. Iain Wilson, the son of Robert Wilson, one of the patients who died, shouted at the panel: “You should hang your head in shame.”
The GMC, which regulates the work of 150,000 doctors in Britain, had recommended that Dr Barton be struck off and also criticised the decision. Niall Dickson, the council’s chief executive, said: “We are surprised by the decision to apply conditions in this case. “Our view was the doctor’s name should have been erased from the medical register following the panel’s finding of serious professional misconduct. “We will be carefully reviewing the decision before deciding what further action, if any, may be necessary.”
The case will now be reviewed by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, an ombudsman of misconduct cases. If found to be unduly lenient the decision could be referred to the High Court and possibly overturned.
In April last year a jury inquest at Portsmouth Coroner’s Court ruled that at least five elderly patients who died at a hospital in Hampshire were overprescribed strong painkillers that hastened their deaths.
In the cases of patients Robert Wilson, 74, Geoffrey Packman, 66, and Elsie Devine, 88, the use of painkillers was found to have been inappropriate for their conditions. Arthur Cunningham, 79, and Elsie Lavender, 83, were prescribed medication appropriate for their condition but in doses that contributed to their deaths, the jury found.
Dr Barton, who worked as a clinical assistant at the hospital, was the only individual to be investigated by police in connection with the deaths but was not charged with any offence.
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Grandmother disgusted at filthy NHS hospital nursed and bathed other patients on her ward
A grandmother was so disgusted by the filthy conditions and neglect on a hospital ward that she bathed and cared for the patients herself. Janet Halsall, 74, was admitted to Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, for three days to have a scan on her liver, when she was shocked to see staff repeatedly ignore pleas for help and leave fellow elderly patients to ‘fend for themselves’. The kind-hearted pensioner was so appalled by the conditions in the hospital that she bathed, washed and tucked in the frail elderly patients herself.
The grandmother-of-seven said fellow patients were distressed after being left without water, and when she went to the pantry to clean their glasses, she found it in a ‘disgusting state’. When one elderly lady got no help after repeatedly complaining to staff she was cold, Mrs Halsall was moved to search a store cupboard for a blanket. The former hairdresser even washed and bathed one lady who needed help to clean herself and took another pensioner to the toilet after staff continually ignored her requests because they were ‘too busy’. When she was discharged on Monday afternoon, her fellow patients cheered and clapped her – branding her their ‘guardian angel’.
Speaking from her home in Little Staughton, Beds., she said: ‘I was absolutely disgusted when I entered the ward. ‘At 7pm I arrived in the ward and was appalled to find the bed was unmade and the water jug and glass were on the floor. ‘There was no locker or table to put my things on or bag to dispose of rubbish. ‘The patient in the next bed to me kept asking staff if she could go to the bathroom to have a wash and clean her teeth before breakfast. The reply was always “in a minute”. ‘She was really upset so I found her a bowl and washed her from head to toe and made her feel better. She was so grateful.
‘Never before have I seen so many people rushing around, working so hard but achieving nothing.’
Mrs Halsall, whose partner Eric died five years ago, blames the shoddy treatment on a shortage of staff. She added: ‘There simply weren’t enough staff looking after the ward. People were asking for help and it was falling on deaf ears. ‘The poor nurse was running around and didn’t have time to help everyone. I couldn’t just sit there and watch so, being quite agile, I got up and helped them myself. ‘When I left the ward on Monday they all cheered me out and said I was their guardian angel.’
Mrs Halsall was referred to the Hinchingbrooke Hospital at around 11am on Friday amid fears she was suffering a liver complaint. She was told she could not have the scan until Monday and was later transferred to the Appletree Ward for the weekend. But within minutes of arriving, she became angry after spotting a number of patients who were not being cared for. Pensioner Joyce Bates, who was also on the Appletree Ward as she underwent physiotherapy for rheumatoid arthritis in her legs, hailed Janet a ‘heroine’. Widower Mrs Bates, from March, Cambs., said: ‘I don’t know what we would have done without Janet. The place was an absolute disgrace and our treatment was even worse. ‘I’ve stayed in hospital 38 times and I’ve never watched as a patient is forced to give another a bed bath because the nurses won’t. ‘She truly was magnificent in what was a nightmare situation.’
Director of the Patients Association Katherine Murphy said: ‘Unfortunately we hear far too many examples of the kinds of things described by Janet Halsall. ‘It is completely unacceptable for patients not to be treated with dignity and respect and not to receive the help they need with things like personal hygiene. ‘That should be fundamental to NHS care-whenever it’s not it’s an appalling indictment of our treatment of some of the most vulnerable users of our health services.’
A spokesman for Hinchingbrooke said: ‘Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust takes all complaints extremely seriously. ‘We would ask Mrs Halsall to contact us directly so that a full investigation can be conducted into her experience on the ward. ‘Until we can look into these incidents in more detail it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.’ [Blah, blah, blah!]
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Don’t fall sick out of hours in Britain: GPs refusing to work nights and weekends claimed boy’s life
Like so many proud parents, Jean and Nicola Seevaraj meticulously recorded the milestones in the life of their first child, Joseph. He smiled when he was a month old, stood up on his own four days before his first birthday and loved the movie Madagascar. And there was so much more to look forward to – his first day at school, learning to read and to ride a bike. Instead, at the age of three years, one month and 19 days, Joseph was dead. ‘I remember checking on him around 4am,’ says Mr Seevaraj, 33, a church minister from Hove, East Sussex.
‘I went back to bed and the next thing I knew it was 7.30am and my wife was screaming. She was absolutely frantic and I knew something terrible had happened. She was next to Joseph’s bed. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t responding to anything she did or said. ‘It was the worst moment of my life. We called 999 and they told us to try to resuscitate him, but I knew inside myself that it was too late. He’d already passed away. ‘The paramedics arrived and rushed him to hospital, but it was hopeless. And that was the beginning of our nightmare.’
It was a nightmare that would be made all the more ghastly because of the fact that Joseph’s death had been avoidable. His parents had sought medical help for their son, who had tonsillitis. Joseph was prescribed antibiotics, but when he started to vomit and had diarrhoea, Mr Seevaraj phoned for further help. Because it was a Sunday, he could not talk to the family doctor. Instead, he was connected to the out-of-hours service and was put through to a German-trained medic. The locum doctor, who Mr Seevaraj claims struggled to understand what was being said to him, told him there was nothing to worry about and that, no, it wasn’t necessary to bring in the child for further treatment.
Mr Seevaraj followed that advice – and the following morning woke to find that his son was dead. An inquest would later hear that had Joseph been taken to hospital, then the septicaemia that claimed his life could have been treated. ‘He needed basic medical attention,’ the coroner said, ruling that neglect had contributed to Joseph’s death. ‘The failure to provide it was gross failure.’
Mr Seevaraj says: ‘If we had been able to speak to our family GP that weekend, I believe Joseph would still be alive. There are lots of holes in the out-of-hours system – it needs to be sorted out.’
And he is not alone in that view. New figures show that serious complaints about out-of-hours care have shot up by 50 per cent in just two years. The Medical Defence Union, the leading insurance company that covers most GPs, reported a sharp rise in the number of grievances against doctors following deaths, misdiagnoses and negligence. In 2007 and 2008, there were 517 complaints related to consultations at evenings and weekends – up from 337 over the previous two years. Seventeen insurance claims followed the deaths of patients.
And then there is the shocking case of David Gray, a 70-year-old kidney patient, who died in February 2008 after being injected accidentally with ten times the maximum recommended dose of morphine. It was administered by Dr Daniel Ubani, a locum who had travelled to Britain from Germany and had slept for just three hours before going on his first out-of-hours weekend shift in Cambridgeshire. As well as giving the fatal injection to Mr Gray, an 86-year-old woman died of a heart attack after the Nigerian-born Dr Ubani failed to send her to hospital.
While the deaths of Mr Gray and young Joseph may differ in their circumstances, both serve to shine a spotlight on the growing scandal of British doctors’ refusal to work nights and weekends, with their places too often being filled by doctors from abroad, some of whom speak poor English.
All this, of course, is the result of one of the Government’s most disastrous pieces of meddling, which allowed British doctors to opt out of out- of-hours duties – and meant they were no longer responsible for the care of their patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That’s why, six years on, Suffolk – a county of 600,000 people – has just two British doctors on call overnight and at weekends. Similarly poor coverage is offered elsewhere, as sick patients are fobbed off with telephone assessments or forced to make their own way to overloaded Accident & Emergency hospital departments.
Before the introduction of the new contracts in 2004, GPs were responsible for providing out-of-hours care to their patients. Since then, however, the responsibility for in-hours and out-of-hours care was split, so that primary care trusts took on responsibility for patients at nights and on weekends. As a result, despite the fact that British GPs are the highest-paid in the developed world – average earnings are £106,000 – they earn their crust during office hours.
Under pressure to return profits and cut costs, primary care trusts introduced ways of dealing with patients that reduced the need for time- consuming home visits while looking for ‘cheaper’ doctors from elsewhere. Though precise figures are not available, research by the Daily Mail suggests that a third of primary care trusts are flying in GPs to fill these posts. The doctors come from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland, and are attracted by the comparatively good rates of pay.
While the NHS has a long history of employing foreign doctors, their presence on the front-line of healthcare has raised specific concerns. Top of these are question marks over the foreign medics’ qualifications and language skills.
It’s something that 66-year- old Renee Forrow discovered when her husband Derek died at their Suffolk home two years ago after a longterm illness. It was a Saturday evening and, with her GP surgery closed, she called the out-of-hours service – Suffolk Doctors on Call (Sufdoc) – to request that a doctor be sent to certify the death. But what should have been a dignified process quickly degenerated into what Mrs Forrow describes as a ‘Monty Python farce’. First, the Polish doctor and his driver could not find the house and took two hours to arrive.
When he did arrive, there were no sympathetic words. Instead, the doctor asked the stunned widow to fill in a form with her husband’s name, address and other details. ‘When he came in, he didn’t say anything to anybody,’ she says. ‘He just scuttled in, pointed at my husband on the bed and said: “Accident?” ‘He then examined him, gave me a form and said: “You say, you do. You fill in. I don’t understand.” I felt it was wrong that I had to fill in the details myself, but it was impossible to have a proper conversation with him. He simply could not converse in English adequately.’
As if that was not distressing enough, the doctor then pointed at her husband’s morphine pills and asked: ‘How many you give him?’ Mrs Forrow said: ‘It sounded insensitive because it almost suggested that he could have overdosed. It was almost as if I had done my husband in.’ Just minutes after his arrival, the Polish doctor left. Shocked by what had happened, Mrs Forrow decided to speak out. She is concerned by what might have happened had the doctor been called to treat a complicated case.
‘Suppose he visited an ill, old lady and was trying to pick up the nuances of what she was saying,’ she says. ‘Communication is half of diagnosis and he was like a little scared rabbit caught in the headlights.’ A letter of apology subsequently arrived from Sufdoc. It stated: ‘There is no question about his (the doctor’s) competence as a clinician. It is just an issue about communication.’
It is these twin issues – competence and communication – that are at the heart of concerns over the role being played by foreign doctors in the out-of-hours service. While concerns over the competency of foreign doctors are pressing-there is a growing belief that the way to address them is by a fundamental overhaul of the outofhours system that would make their presence unnecessary.
This would be achieved by handing back responsibility for roundthe- clock care to family GPs. In this way, continuity of care between patient and doctor would be ensured, as would direct accountability. Perhaps unsurprisingly, doctors’ leaders oppose these suggestions, saying that it would be ‘unsafe’ to make GPs work longer hours.
It is not an argument that cuts much ice with the likes of Dr Frank Newton, who worked as a GP for 25 years in rural Northamptonshire before retiring in 1989. ‘When I started, there were two of us and we covered 200 square miles with about 4,500 patients,’ the 80-year-old told me. ‘I worked every hour the other guy didn’t work. We took it in turns during the week for the nights, and in turns for the weekends. ‘We took a fortnight’s holiday each, so if the other guy was away you would be on for two weeks in his absence and he would do the same when you took your fortnight. ‘I can tell you that we weren’t on our knees with exhaustion and we were not unsafe – we were used to it. We wanted to be involved because we were part of the community and that is what the job was about. ‘I find it very sad the way things have gone today, because I think that the people who are missing out are the practitioners themselves as well as the patients. What pleasure can you get from doing only half a job?’
So, should GPs be involved in arranging out-of-hours care for their own patients? As providers or commissioners of this care, they would not necessarily be obliged to return to outofhours work themselves, but they would be obliged to organise it (experts predict that if this happened, more local doctors and nurses would get involved). Even the NHS Alliance – an independent body that represents NHS professionals working outside hospitals, including some GPs – is calling for doctors to take back at least some of the responsibilities they cast off in 2004.
Many patients who have experienced the shortcomings of the system – such as negotiating complex phone systems or being forced to take a sick child to a dropin centre in the middle of the night – would go further and demand that, in return for their increased salaries, doctors would be available when they were most needed.
As Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, points out, ill-health can strike at any time. ‘There should be no less emphasis put on the out-of-hours care than there is on the care on offer between 9am and 6pm,’ she says. ‘No one decides when they get ill, so the same importance should be given to the provision of care whatever the time of day.’
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British local authority snoopers question five-year-olds on home life
Children as young as five are being told to fill in Big Brother-style forms which let councils snoop on intimate details about their home lives. The questions – which have been attacked as exploitative – ask about junk food, television habits, family time and even whether the youngsters ‘like themselves’. Results are stored on a database, allowing families deemed to be ‘at risk’ to be referred to social services or doctors.
Children are asked to colour in answers to questions such as how much fruit they eat each day compared to crisps and fizzy drinks. Hundreds of the ‘lifestyle’ quizzes, which are backed by the Department of Health, have been handed out in an attempt to build a picture of the health and wellbeing of individual households.
But privacy campaigners last night condemned the forms. Alex Deane, of Big Brother Watch, described it as ‘an unbelievable intrusion into private life’. He said: ‘The state doesn’t bring up children, parents do. There is an important distinction between teaching and nannying – or even bullying – and this steps way over the mark.’
The lifestyle quizzes were piloted in Erewash, Derbyshire, where children filled in the forms at ‘healthy living’ after-school clubs, to which parents are invited. Although the survey was not compulsory, pupils were strongly encouraged to fill it in. The forms will now be sent out to 200 schools across the county and other councils are monitoring the scheme closely.
Daniella Yeo, of Erewash council, said the after-school clubs were very popular and that the questions followed guidelines set by NICE, the NHS’s regulatory body. She added: ‘They will help us target families at risk of obesity. We can then encourage parents to attend sessions with social services or GPs.’
Other questions for five-year-olds include whether they eat breakfast, how much water they drink and how they get to school. They are also asked ‘how much to do like yourself?’ – and told to tick a thumbs-up or thumbs- down sign that matches how they feel.
Seven-year-olds are being given an even more detailed quiz in which they say exactly how many hours they spend with their family, watching television and playing computer games. Civil liberties campaigner Josie Appleton, of the Manifesto Club, said: ‘Councils and schools should concentrate on providing everyone with a good education. ‘But they should keep their noses out of children’s lunchboxes and away from the family dinner table.’
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A Savage attack on free speech in Britain
The UK government’s border ban on an American shock jock reveals its utter disdain for freedom of speech and its fear of a volatile public
Imagine this: a man is banned from entering the UK. Not because he intends to hurt someone, or because he is fleeing a crime committed some place else. No, he is prevented from ever putting a foot on British soil because of the things he says. That’s it. No other reason.
This is the situation in which the American ‘shock jock’ Michael Savage currently finds himself. More shocking, however, is that barely anyone in Britain has batted an eyelid on his behalf. That freedom of speech can be so flagrantly disregarded and merit barely a murmur of comment in response reveals just how normal we consider restrictions on free speech today.
Perhaps the indifference to Savage’s plight owes more than a bit to the nature of the protagonist, a rent-a-chauvinist dj with a not-so-nice line in liberal-baiting. Here’s a sample: ‘Only a devastating military blow against the hearts of Islamic terror coupled with an outright ban on Muslim immigration, laws making the dissemination of enemy propaganda illegal, and the uncoupling of the liberal ACLU can save the United States. I would also make the construction of mosques illegal in America and the speaking of English only in the streets of the United States the law.’
When Savage is not labelling the Koran a ‘book of hate’, he’s having a pop at the ‘gay and lesbian mafia’ for wanting to ‘homosexualise the whole country’ – an unprecedented feat of seduction by any standards. Savage by name, a bit ridiculous by nature. Abortion, Mexican immigrants, Barack Obama: there are few things the potty-mouthed dj hasn’t built a politically incorrect tirade around. No liberal causes, sentiments, or, as Savage portrays them, sacred cows, are out of bounds.
It’s probably fair to say that he’s not exactly the most progressive of guys. In fact, a lot of the stuff he spouts is undoubtedly offensive. But then again, as his ‘shock jock’ appellation suggests, he’s meant to be offensive. One thing he probably never meant to be, however, was a threat to UK national security. Yet, as the latest attempt to overturn his ban from entering the UK was defeated in the House of Lords, this, it seems, is exactly how the Home Office views him: a man who, with a few illiberal rants, might shock the British public into a gay- or Muslim-bashing frenzy.
The Savage case first came to light in May last year, when the then-home secretary Jacqui Smith announced that this polar opposite of Simon Mayo was banned from entering the UK. ‘He is someone’, she said, ‘who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country’. Savage isn’t alone. Since 2005, 21 other people have also been barred from the UK on the grounds of inciting hatred and violence, including a motley crew of neo-Nazis like Erich Gliebe and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black, a few ‘hate preachers’ such as Amir Siddique, and a couple of Russian skinheads convicted of 20 racially motivated murders. Given the last two are currently serving 20-year prison sentences, one suspects that their freedom of movement might already be limited.
Last week, following the failed attempt of UK Independence Party leader Lord Pearson to have Savage’s ban overturned, security minister Lord West reiterated Jacqui Smith’s original position: ‘Mr Savage was banned for… unacceptable behaviour and making clear comments that might lead to civil violence [and] community violence.’ In other words, he was banned because he says things – really, really rude things. In fact, the things he says are so rude, and yet so magically persuasive, that Lord West wasn’t prepared to give any examples. Presumably in case the Lords and Ladies of the UK’s upper house were spurred to ‘civil and community violence’.
One of the absurdities of this, the UK’s list of banned people, is that quite a few of those on the list, including Savage himself, had neither tried, nor intended, to enter the UK. This was because the list, compiled by Whitehall types using Google and a little help from the intelligence services, was never really a practical measure. It was, as Smith herself said at the time, a way to showcase ‘the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here’. ‘It’s a privilege to come to this country’, she continued: ‘There are certain behaviours that mean you forfeit that privilege.’
And, in a way, Smith was right. This list of people exemplifying ‘unacceptable behaviours’, whether a shocking dj or a maverick cleric, did represent something about contemporary Britain: it showed just how low is the esteem in which the government holds its citizens. All it takes, apparently, is for someone to say something, in this case an invective-filled rant by Savage, and hundreds of people will automatically, unthinkingly act upon it. If that is all that is necessary for a race riot or a spate of homophobic violence, then far from showing ‘the sorts of values and sorts of standards’ we hold in the UK, it reveals their absence. We are barbarians in the making, a powder keg of bigotry just waiting for the shock jock’s spark. If we’re not racist homophobes, then we’re potential victims of racist or homophobic words, wallflowers in need of the state’s protection. Either way, as censor or protector, the state cannot trust the people.
This shouldn’t be a surprise. A ban on unacceptable behaviour, on offensive speakers, is never a testament to the strength of a society’s norms and values. It is always its opposite, a sign of weakness. Indeed, how weak must the British establishment be that it fears that a few utterances from a really rude dj might cause ‘inter-community tension or even violence’. If the government really believes in the strength of the values and standards it would like Britain to hold dear, why are a few people with dissenting, sometimes offensive views deemed such a problem?
It is precisely when speech is offensive that its freedom needs to be defended. This is not to give the okay to violent attacks on Muslims, homosexuals, or any other constituency the Home Office deems is at risk. And that’s because actions – actions which, in the case of killing or beating people up, have long been illegal – are not the same as words and thought. The fact that the government and its cronies in the House of Lords are happy to elide this distinction reveals the disdain with which they view the reasoning abilities of the British public. And that, not the un-PC shtick of Savage, is really shocking.
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Free speech on campus? Yes. A free ride? No
There should be full freedom of speech for ‘extremists’ in British universities – and also for those who want to slate or ridicule them
In our era of dumbing down, where the academy risks turning from a hotbed of Platonic debate and Truth-seeking into a conveyor belt that churns out jobsworths, it isn’t often one can agree with the words uttered by a university provost. But yesterday Malcolm Grant of University College London (UCL) made a statement that spiked can get behind. In response to claims that the ‘Pants bomber’, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was radicalised during his spell as a student at UCL, and therefore that ‘extremist speech’ on campus should be curtailed, Grant said it is not a university’s job to ‘police’ its students’ beliefs or speech.
‘We must continue to regard students as adults’, he said. ‘Campuses should be safe homes for controversy, argument and debate.’ Hear hear. In defending the free exchange of ideas on campus, Grant is taking a stand for rigour and honesty in university life against the anti-extremist camp that wants students to be protected from ideas judged to be too ‘toxic’. One of the academics concerned about extremism says that when universities ‘tolerate on their campuses organisations which seek to radicalise, they hammer another nail in the coffin of the idea of higher education’. In fact, banning organisations on the basis that their ideas are dangerous and that students are easily brainwashed would be the real funeral pyre of higher education, turning universities into thought-policing institutions and redefining students as overgrown children.
Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian-born rich boy who allegedly tried to blow up a jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day with explosives hidden in his underpants, studied at UCL from 2005 to 2008. He was president of UCL’s Islamic Society which often held meetings to discuss (and denounce) the ‘war on terror’. He helped to organise a ‘War on Terror Week’ which included debates such as ‘Jihad or Terrorism?’. Radical Islamist preachers and members of the controversial Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir spoke at UCL while Abdulmutallab was there, and this has led some to argue that UCL, by tolerating such discussions, was ‘complicit’ in the failed Christmas Day bombing and that there should now be tighter controls on who can speak in universities.
There are many problems with the demand to curtail so-called inflammatory speech. First, it transforms the university from a place where asking questions (yes, even off-the-wall questions) is positively encouraged, where students are provided with access to Knowledge and the space in which to interrogate and doubt such Knowledge, into a place where only certain, non-extreme, vetted ideas are allowed to leak on to campus and into students’ heads. And that can, and already has, led to the exclusion not only of Isalmist rants but also of other ideas considered dangerous these days: climate change ‘denial’, alternative views of history, lecturers who are too right-wing or too left-wing. Erecting an intellectual forcefield around universities changes the whole nature of university life, turning it into a place where students are provided with nuggets of wisdom, the correct ideas and thoughts, rather than a place that nurtures a way of thinking, independent thought, the sharing of Knowledge through expertise but also through debate and interaction.
Second, filtering out ‘extremism’ infantilises students. University is meant to be an arena where boys become men and girls become women, demonstrating an ability to think, work and act independently as well as with professors and other students. The academy is built on the idea not only that its students are thirsty for Knowledge but that they are also capable of weighing it up and understanding it; that is, their minds are healthy and robust. The expulsion of ‘extremism’, by contrast, sends the message that students are fragile creatures, with minds like sponges, who might be easily swayed by some loony cleric or Holocaust denier. One reporter said of Abdulmutallab’s ‘War on Terror Week’, ‘It was brainwashing’. This is a judgement not so much on the nonsense that Abdulmutallab’s speakers were no doubt spouting but more fundamentally on students’ own ability to decipher right from wrong, Knowledge from gibberish. The censorship of so-called extremism would denigrate the very idea of the student.
And third, trying to shut up hotheaded Islamists is an extraordinary displacement activity. It is true, as spiked has argued many times, that al-Qaeda-style terrorists are more likely to be radicalised in the West than in Kabul, Kandahar or Baghdad, where the disastrous ‘war on terror’ is still focused. The evidence shows that most wannabe Muslim martyrs are middle-class, well-educated and tend to be either from Western cities or to have lived and studied in them. Often they seem more influenced by the woe-is-me politics of victimhood and identity than by Taliban-style traditionalism. Yet chasing the preachers who might possibly exacerbate such feelings is about avoidance: instead of getting to grips with what is missing in, or wrong with, Western society, to the extent that some young people are drawn towards shallow anti-Westernism and reject the ‘evils of integration’, such censorship pins the blame for social problems on a handful of men in frocks. It discourages open, honest debate; it leaves burning political issues unresolved.
For these reasons, Malcolm Grant’s comments are welcome. However, while it is sweet relief to hear a provost defend freedom of thought and speech, it is also worth asking what lies behind the idea today that ‘Colleges must let extremists speak’, as the front page of the London Evening Standard declared yesterday, reporting Grant’s comments as if they were shocking and disturbing. Because often, I fear, the ‘let the extremists speak’ argument springs not from an unflinching commitment to freedom of speech but rather from a deep-seated crisis of authority in the modern academy. It seems to me that it is not so much universities’ love of openness and rigour that leads them sometimes to tolerate extremists but rather their doubt about what is True, what is Right, what is Good, so that they provide platforms to all-comers who might have something ‘valid’ to say. It is relativism that underpins the tolerance of ‘extremists’, rather than freedom. And we should insist that having free speech on campus does not mean giving everyone a free ride. In fact it means the opposite.
That relativism has been elevated over liberty can be seen in the fact that at the same time that more ‘extremists’ are allegedly running riot on campus, there are more and more codes of speech governing the extent to which other people can question, ridicule or mock these ‘extremists’, or even moderate religious and political speakers. At the end of last year I was invited to debate the head of the UK wing of Hizb ut-Tahrir at Queen Mary Westfield College in London. But under pressure from censorious student groups and the university’s administration, the debate was banned. It was moved to the University of Westminster a couple of weeks later, and there, both me and the representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir were informed about what we could and could not say. The university’s religious affairs liaison – a white convert to Islam – told us that before being allowed to speak we would have to read a document telling us not to insult or ridicule anyone else’s religious beliefs, political affiliations, sexual preferences and so on.
I read it, and ignored it, and later got booed for saying ‘Sharia law is inferior to Enlightenment-derived laws’. Yet this experience reveals much about the crisis of freedom in British universities. In one serious London university a debate is banned outright because the ‘extremist’ might corrupt the pathetic students, and in another serious London university the debate is allowed to go ahead but is severely governed by informal codes designed to preserve ‘respect for identities’. Such codes now exist on campuses across the UK. The extremist is allowed to speak, but no one is really allowed to say to him: ‘You’re talking bollocks, mate, and here’s why…’ Such informal rules protecting all belief systems and granting equal weight to all lifestyle choices really demonstrate what lies behind the ‘let the extremists speak’ argument: a relativistic climate in which universities doubt whether it is their job to assert Truth with a capital T over madder, weirder small-t ‘truths’, and where what looks like free speech is actually something very different.
If a student at a British university starts believing that some radical form of Islam is ‘the Truth’, it is most likely as a result of this intellectual cowardice rather than the strength of conviction of some visiting preacher. It is the climate of non-debate, of listening and nodding along to everyone, that can make things seem like the Truth by default. This creation of a relativistic mishmash of equally valid views sells students short as surely as does the outright censorship of ‘extremists’: it, too, creates a climate of conformism and question-avoidance, where the extremists are allowed to speak but only because ‘everyone must be heard and treated with respect’.
John Stuart Mill said the Truth can only be worked out through free and open debate, and ‘on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right’ (6). Absolutely. That remains the essence of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. But Mill didn’t mean creating an unsightly, unchallengeable public parade of ‘many truths’ showing us their wares – he meant a rigorous arena in which everything is sayable and in which some ideas will inevitably be defeated and sidelined by other, better ones. Just such an atmosphere should prevail in British universities, rather than the dire choice between outright censorship or a relativistic pseudo-free-for-all that they are faced with today.
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Ridiculing the obese is the new gay bashing
British society has become far more enlightened over sexuality and race. Now we reserve our contempt for the underclass
My son begged me to switch the show off. “It’s too cruel,” he said. But that seemed to be the point of Fat Families. “You make me feel sick,” said the smug presenter as the obese couple looked forlornly at their takeaway supper. Later they were stripped naked — she weeping, he head bowed — while the camera boggled obscenely at their bodies. I hope they were well paid, this good-hearted pair, who clearly loved their kids and each other. What price to be paraded as an object of hatred and disgust.
A public health message? No, this was the All-New Fat & White Minstrel Show. The obese are the last group — should you feel enraged today by a parking penalty or Blair — at which you can vent your fury with legal and social impunity. A friend mentioned, en passant, chastising a man for letting his dog pee copiously over her doorstep. “P*** off, you fat bitch,” was his automatic response. I was aghast, she was nonplussed: as a largish lady she dealt with this (and worse) every day.
This week the British Social Attitudes survey revealed our greater toleration of homosexuality: only a third of us now think gay love is wrong. Which still seems mighty high to me, yet only 20 years ago this figure was double. Gay men are still violently assaulted, name-calling is too infrequently challenged in schools, but these days homophobia is rarely given full vent in the national media. And if it is — as with Jan Moir’s article — a powerful and righteous lobby will unleash all hell.
But sometimes it feels as if the anger and intolerance upon our angry, always up-for-a-fight island, is just being funnelled to other targets: the fat, the poor, the white trash, the chavs and pikeys, the underclass on the fringes of society who we loathe almost as much as we fear.
Outsiders are always easiest to hate. When gay culture was confined to the margins, it was simple to caricature and condemn. After all, it was unlikely you’d meet anyone to disprove your view. The great progress of the past decade was gay relationships ceasing to be subject to saucy speculation but becoming normal, banal even. The once-separate straight and gay worlds have meshed. When my lovely lesbian sister-in-law had a baby with a gay man, I’d wondered how to explain this scenario to my elderly northern parents, so sheltered were their lives. I was stupid to worry.
Love and babies, the warmth of real human contact, breaks down suspicion of The Other. After one hilarious Christmas karaoke night my eightysomething mother reflected simply: “Well, I’d never met any gays before. But they all seem very nice.” And when I was interviewing the American writer David Sedaris recently he marvelled at how parents bring 14-year-old sons along to his book signings: “Meet Doug,” they might say. “He’s gay.” Sedaris’s own tortured, confused and utterly closeted teenage self would have marvelled at this casually acknowledged truth.
At this time when our respect for the political process has never been lower, few will acknowledge the wonder when government does something right. The creation of civil partnerships in 2005 not only dignified and formalised gay relationships but acted as a catalyst for further change. Moreover, it signalled that the British culture war was over. Run up the flag: the forces of tolerance had won.
It was a long, bitter conflict, fought all through the Thatcher years, when it was the ugly, snarling, bullying tap-room bigotry more than any economic policies that made many loathe our Government. This was not so much a clash of policies, but about what constitutes full humanity. Peter Lilley was getting belly laughs with his conference ditty against single mums; disgust against homosexuality led to the creation of Clause 28, banning discussion of same sex relationships in school for fear that predatory gays would stalk our kids.
That the Tory party is run now by social liberals sometimes boggles the mind. Can people change that easily? Only seven years ago David Cameron voted to keep Clause 28, but now he has apologised, declared his intent to reward not only marriage in the tax system but civil partnerships too.
And Baroness Warsi who, when I asked her why she sent out anti-gay literature when she was standing in Dewsbury in the 2005 election, said: “I have learnt, read more; my views have matured since then.” Maybe they have. Even Elton John’s arch tormentor, the former Sun Editor Kelvin MacKenzie, claims these days to be a friend of the gays.
Or maybe Cameron realises that laissez faire morality is so deeply entrenched that there is no point in fighting it. And besides, why go against the grain when you can go with the flow? While our social attitudes have grown more liberal, our economic views have hardened into conservatism: only a bare majority now believe it is the Government’s job to secure employment for all or to ensure the unemployed have a decent standard of living.
Indeed, as racism and homophobia have become ever more verboten, there has been a corresponding growth in intolerance for the poor, a disgust at their lifestyle, an ugly, lazy disdain for those who live in council estates, who have scary dogs and babies too young, a licensed mocking of their yeah-but-no-but speech and culture. I grow tired of arguing with well-brought-up children of liberal parents that “chav” is a disgusting, reductive label, that the kids who live in the flats behind our house are not — apart from the amount of stuff they own — so different from them. How depressing that even 12-year-olds see society set into two separately entrenched tribes.
But it is fine now to believe that the underclass only has itself to blame for its educational failures, and laziness keeps families on the dole. And there they are, paraded on those circuses of disgust: Big Brother and Jeremy Kyle. Or on that whole new TV genre, the obesity freak show: Fat Families, The World’s Fattest Man, Too Fat Too Young … All feign concern when their only object is to poke ridicule at the stupid chavs unable to stop shoving kebabs into their face even when it’s killing them.
Obesity is, above all, a mark of poverty: a handy melding of our social and bodily disgust, No, these days we may not bash so many poofs. But there is still plenty of sport to be had watching a 20st woman in a wedding dress that will never fit, weeping her heart out with shame.
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