Census results may suggest that religious faith is on the decline. But that’s just because of an omission in the form. Somehow the Office for National Statistics forgot to include Britain’s main religion.
the NHS.
It’s been 30 years since Nigel Lawson described the NHS as ‘the closest thing the English have to a religion’. But it is truer today than ever. This country loves the NHS. Even when it’s in a horrendous mess, as it is today, we never blame the NHS itself. We blame the government of the day for not giving enough money to the NHS. After all, the NHS budget last year was just £176.5bn.
In any case, it cannot be denied that, in the years since Lord Lawson’s comment, our reverence has only intensified. The most obvious proof came during the first Covid lockdown, when, every Thursday at eight o’clock, we all stand at our doors and clap our hands reverently. We weren’t just showing our appreciation for the bravery and hard work of the nurses. We were affirming our faith in the NHS as a whole. It was a secular form of thanksgiving. A weekly service, diligently attended by the whole country.
All MPs know that the NHS, or “our NHS” as they call it, is sacred. If any party dared to suggest privatization, they would be defeated at the polls.
This may be why, during the 2019 general election campaign, Jeremy Corbyn kept telling voters that the Conservatives were secretly planning to sell the NHS to donald trump. Admittedly, it sounded like a rather strange plan, given the high probability that Trump would be removed from office the following year, which, in fact, he was. It was also unclear why Trump would want to buy the NHS, given that his main business interests are in hotels, rather than hospitals. Even a businessman of his undoubted gifts might have a hard time turning an A&E in Scunthorpe into a six-star resort with casino and golf course.
Still, Corbyn insisted that the Tories were about to sell out the NHS to Trump, and a man of his unimpeachable integrity could not have made such a serious claim. I wonder what’s holding up the sale. Trump runs a tough negotiation, so maybe he’s still haggling to get the price down.
A lesson for work
If Labor’s plan to impose VAT on tuition fees ends up bankrupting private schools, the left will naturally be delighted. In his opinion, it is indefensible that some children receive a better education than others simply because their parents have more money.
I am afraid, however, that you have not thought of this. Because, if the left really wants to achieve a level playing field in education, destroying private schools it just won’t be enough.
On the one hand, more affluent parents will still be able to pay for their children to receive private tutoring. That is an unfair advantage. So Labor will also have to ban private tutors.
Second, Labor will need to stop well-off parents from buying houses in the catchment areas of the best public schools, as this excludes the poor. Short of banning people from buying houses altogether, there is only one solution. Workers must ensure that no school is better than another. If a school achieves above average test scores, its staff should be disciplined and ordered to lower the scores. Ofsted inspectors will be dispatched to check that standards are being lowered sufficiently. Any school rated Outstanding will be placed in special measures.
However, the fight to eradicate educational inequality cannot end there. Studies show that children who grow up in a house full of books do better academically than children who don’t. Clearly, this is unfair, because some parents can buy a lot of books for their children, while others can’t. So the purchase of books should also be prohibited.
Above all, however, Labor must tackle the biggest source of educational inequality: genes. Intelligence is largely hereditary. So being born to smart parents gives the child an unfair advantage in life, just like being born to wealthy parents.
There is only one way to remove this advantage. Sir Keir Starmer must decree that under Labour, all children in Britain will be born to the same biological parents. The ministers will select an unmarried married couple and charge them with the repopulation of the country, year after year. All other couples will be prohibited from procreation.
To maintain Britain’s birth rate, the designated couple will need to have around 700,000 babies a year. It may seem like a tall order, but socialist governments have never shied away from ambitious production targets.
mental crime in oxford
It was decided last month that, from next year, the Oxford students’ union will no longer have a female officer. Instead, it will have something called a “liberation and equality representative”. A union leader, Ellie Greaves, expressed concern about the decision, saying she would “continue to prioritize women.”
For this heinous crime against awakening orthodoxy, he has now issued an abject public apology. Her comments, she says, reflected “a narrow-minded, bioessentialist narrative of what it is to be a woman… I cannot apologize enough for the damage and pain I have caused the trans community… I will do my best to educate me…”
What a remarkable conversion! It’s like a 21st century update of 1984.
“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of her nose. But all was well, all was well, the fight was over. She had won the victory over herself. She loved Big Sister.”
way of the world is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aimed at poking fun at the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7 am every Tuesday and Saturday.
