Contemporary rhymes for Janus

You there, taxpayer! Have you any dosh?
No sir, no sir, not got lots!
But some for the warmists, most for the State,
the rest for the Jihadist who loves to hate.

—–

Armageddon’s coming and the debts are getting fat
Please put a penny in the politician’s hat
If you haven’t got a penny, a hundred quid will do
If you haven’t got a hundred quid, God help you.

—-

The old MP was a merry old soul, and a merry old soul was he;
He called for his house to be cleaned in the night
And he called for his mukkers three.
Every mukker had a fine fiddle, and a very fine fiddle had they;
Oh there’s none so rare as can compare
With an MP and his fiddlers three.

OZ

Bottom Up?

I listened this morning to a discussion on the radio about the plan to give doctors power over budgets in the NHS. During the discussion, someone in favour of the idea mentioned that this would be an end to top-down management. I future, decisions would be made ‘bottom up’. I disagree. GPs are ont at the bottom of the pile. That space is occupied by the patient. Indeed, in the British system, the GP already has the power of gatekeeper to NHS services. In my view, that is too much power. It is already very difficult for patients to be referred to specialists. That situation will worsen as GPs weigh the cost of a referal to their budget.

Interviewed a little later, David Cameron admitted that the UK health service performs worse than many other European countries, despite having about the same spend. Yet, in the same interview he expressed his devotion to the NHS, apparently unaware that this financial behemoth is the cause of Britain’s weakness on health.

Dissimulation for ‘Balance’

Though I listen to The Today Programme most mornings, I mentally swtch off, and sometimes physically, when Thought for the Day comes along, a misnomer in my view. However, this morning I half listened as some Christian did his bit for God, the church really, by asking us to imagine whether a visitor from outer space would consider earthly religion an advantage to society or a handicap. One phrase he used struck me as hypocritical. He said that the spaceman would find “Christians and Muslims at each others’ throats.”

Really? Have I missed some news item, some incident in which radical Christians have destroyed a mosque, or massacred the people praying there? I doubt it, though am preparted to hear otherwise. I suspect that the phrase is the kind of dissimulation that the politically correct liberal uses to give an impression of balance.