I think most Americans would read this in total disbelief. 25 years

[Joe Chi Minh]

of far-right, corporatist government and underfunding of the welfare state have led to this surreal situation.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23387896-details/Hospital+staff+to+wear+stab-proof+vests+as+violent+patients+on+the+increase/article.do

And this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6395183.stm

You have such a promising future ahead of you as a country if, as seems to be the case, you finally build a welfare state for all the people. I pray you never fall into the situation we have, in which the devil was driven out of the body politic and the whole fabric of the nation, only for a whole lot more, to return, find it neatly swept out, and re-possess it, so that it's condition was ten times worse than it had been before.

It wasn't that the socialist politicans were angels. Far from it. But their "front", the Second Commandment, demanded that they produce results for the people as a whole.

Unfortunately, the party was taken over by atheists who had no anchor, no firm foundation, so that when the wind blew.... It was taken over by a corporatist stooge, a fifth columinst cultivated by MI5. An unprincipled, smooth-talking liar, posing as a left-wing fire-brand.

"When the salt loses its savour, what is it good for, other than to be trodden underfoot by men?" That's us. The UK. Where hospital staff are routinely violently assaulted by the beneficiaries of a free, national health service. You wouldn't read about it, as the Aussies used to say.

All on their own, our body politic has produced this massive class of deranged individuals, struggling to survive and without hope. And that's just the young people!

[ret5hd]

1. So this is atheists fault?

[Fridays Child]

8. Maybe atheists posing as christians--like Bush-- but certainly not secular humanists.

[lvx35]

2. Here's the problem right here:

But despite the government and the NHS's zero tolerance policy towards violence against staff, the programme found that fewer than 2% of attacks on staff result in prosecutions.

Prosecute all of them. Mentally ill, retarded, every single one. Then make sure the criminal justice system is diverse enough to deal with the diverse cases, and has tools for appropriate responses. Don't have a system where abusive patients walk scot free. Socialism requires anti-parasitic measures, or the right will parasitize it.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. That brings up a very pressing issue in both the UK and Australia.

Socially liberal-minded people can see the causes of this anomie and lawlessness, but don't seem to see the need to protect the general public from its effects, from the perpetrators of the violence. Instead, protecting the assailant at the expense of the victims.

In the UK, this is down to the corporatist Governments' need to check the prison population, which though minuscule in comparison with the US, is by far the largest in Europe. Building and maintaining so many prisons is expensive. And they're not yet privatised here, I believe. Mercifully. And its all due to outsourcing and the destruction of manufacturing industry, low pay and long hours and a longer week - longer than in France of Germany and doubtless elsewhere - reduced welfare benefits and pensions, underfunded education, the privatisation of transport and utilities, taxes on private motoring (road tax used for everything but the roads), underfunded health service, underfunded policing and justice systems, the inequitable de-centralised tax system and its concomitant, multiple empire-building by competing councils, with myriad flat taxes on the working population, reduced tax imposition on the very rich, tax loopholes for the very rich (off-shore tax avoidance, etc). We have our own oil, yet pay more for it than anywhere else in the world, thanks to the tax on it.

The schools are apparently even more violent than the hospitals these days, and that is definitely down to a combination of the multiplicity of stresses brought about by the parasitic vandalising of the country's social and physical infratructures, and the failure to teach Christianity in the schools, as the historic, national and European culture. Multicultralism has been the watch-word, and now they're beginning to understand that its leads to division, not harmony.

The bottom line is that the hard, absolutely adamantine line that you advocate, and which, in the short term is more or less necessary, can only be a poor stop-gap measure, necessary though it is. What is needed is a much more equitable distribution of the country's earnings across the whole population - as we used to have.

[Ravi]

9. so,you think non-christians are responsible for attacks in hospitals

there was no multiculturalism in germany still world war 11 and hitler was born so,what else was bought by multiculturalism global warming, american job loses....post here what else you need to blame non-christians

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. Re your first question, not directly, but indirectly. Yes. As regards multiculturalism,

I believe schools run by other religions should obligatorily have an hour a week spent on lessons on Christianity by visiting Christian eachers, not for the purposes of proselytism, but for a degree of understanding of our historical British and European (and American) culture, which would facilitate greater mutual understanding, and in time, maybe, substantial integration.

[lvx35]

15. You know, I kind of like what you are saying.

And I am a big fan of keeping church and state separate, but damn I have seen some racism perpetuated in the name of multiculturalism. basically, it takes the form of "oh look at all the quaint tribal religious people we have oppressed" and yet completely ignores the tribal religious origins of European peoples. Though it presents its self as extra sensitive toward issues of ethnicities, it fails to portray Europeans AS an ethnicity like any other, and in so doing, presents this "our shit doesn't stink" view of the world which simultaneously elevates the status of Europeans while denying them knowledge of their own culture.

So yes, we all should KNOW ourselves, and we should know the limits of our cultural experience, and not presume to be above cultural experience looking down on others. I think learning that we are ALL coming from similar places regarding religion and so forth would be a good start, and teaching more about Christian culture in the classroom would help that come to be.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. You have identified the profoundly important point missed by modern Western man

very clearly: his ignorance of his tribal and cultural origins and consequent, misplaced sense of cultural superiority.

Tangentially, it is interesting in the broader context, that anthroplogist have long realised that tribes, viewed by the general public as primitive, are, in fact, in terms of understanding and thriving in their own environments, sometimes particularly very hostile, extermely sophisticated and resourceful. Intelligent.

What is more, the brains of cavemen, the later ones anyway, would not have been one wit inferior to our own. Physical evolution takes a lot longer than that.

Separation of Church and State notwithstanding, Americans today may be atheists, wiccans whatever, but, Americans have grown up in a Christian culture, as had their European ancestors, distorted and debased though it has been since by the very people, the current, criminal underbelly and heirs of the old Republicans, who still promote some of its characteristic precepts.

[Book Lover]

3. Forgive me if I misinterpret you, but are you surprised that patients can be violent?

Because that is. not. news. Nor can that blame be laid at Hewitt's feet.

on edit: Please don't take that to mean I think Hewitt is doing anything approaching a decent job; I know she is not.

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Surely, surely, you can see that it's the scale! Maybe you are too young to know

that hospitals weren't always gladiatorial arenas.

Are you living in the US? They have plenty of stresses on the population there, now, but I doubt if biting or stabbing the hand that cures you is something contemplated over there very often. You wouldn't attack a mechanic mending your car, if you're paying him to do so, now, would you?

[tom_paine]

6. So, please elaborate. Why do you think this epidemic of violence is occurring

What is it about the defunded social programs that you believe is causing this?

What sociological and psychological forces do you believe are at work here?

You made a point to say that biting or stabbing the hand that cures you doesn't happen much in the US. I agree that I don;t believe it does happen much here.

So, what are you getting at, in plain direct english?

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. I mean that the gradual destruction of the welfare state and massive

impoverishment of a large number of citizens here impose immense psychological stresses on them.

It's all about stress, anomie and marginalisation (most particularly, those they are pleased to designate the underclass), and this, after decades of a justifiable sense of entitlement. People deprived of the most elementary rights, rights which their grandparents, the baby-boomers knew, are not greatly disposed to think in terms of duties. Hopelessness and despair breed that anomie and well-founded sense of alienation that leads to sometimes even random violence.

There are so many things going on now that would not even have been dreamt of pre-1980. School-children beating someone up or raping a girl, maybe one of their classmates, to photograph the incident on their wretched mobiles.

Parents who can afford it, and doubtless some who can ill afford it, are now apparently buying kevlar vests for their school-children to wear to school, so common-place are stabbings by school-children these days.

A few of today's headlines:

"8-year-old girl brought blade into school".

and excerpts from an article:

By Steven Henry of the Daily Mail

"Wealth gap linked to child mortality."
"Britain has one of the highest child mortality rates in the developed world because of the growing gap between rich and poor, it was claimed yestreday.

A Scottish study said people were now so focused on business that society takes a back seat, leading to the high rate of child deaths. Researchers found the UK's child mortality rate was twice that of Sweden, which had the lowest rate."

(snip)

'In Japan, businesses have have more of a responsibility towards their employees than Western countries. There's more emphasis on on people, instead of maximising shareholders' profits. The country's with the worst rates are by no means the poorest.'

The research found that, even when the US was excluded from the analysis, there was still a strong link between income inequality and child mortality rates, Mr Collison said."

And the scariest thing of all is that the Daily Mail is far right, and would prefer their oldest friends, the Tories, in power, who would, of course, simply accelerate the corporatist take-over massively.

[tom_paine]

13. Yes, just so. I have been saying the same thing in different words for years

Ever heard of the GINI Coefficient (if you haven't, Google it up, I think you'll find this particular statistic facsinating, as well the the predictable direction of the USA's rating)?

Yes, as wealth inequality increases and don't forget the subtle but marked effects during the last 6 years in which we heavily transitioned towards an authoritarian oligarchy, a kind of capitalist Soviet Union. Don't kid yourself, even people who aren't history buffs know what Checks and Balances are, and even if they are consciously unaware of it you can bet some added stress is nagging at them in which their devaluation by their own government (one in which we've all been taught was and may be yet again, of, by, and for the people) factors into this equation.

We were born Free Americans, now 30% of us are Soviet-ish Automatons (well, at least 15% and the other half are gullible and fearful), and the Leader and his henchpeople think us to be as worthless and stupid as the Communist Leadership thought the Russian public was.

It seems to me that what you are talking about is sort of a gestalt of emotions, the emotional sea we all swim in, if you will.

As that sea is "getting hotter" (metaphorically speaking). Thus, people who in another age would have held on and not gone ballistic are doing to because in their minds, adding to whatever problems and issues are foremost, is that little Bushler voice (metaphorically-speaking) saying, "You cares what you think? I lie to you, I send you to die, I value my dog and my prescription drugs more than the 295,000,000 of you worthless peons put together."

Oh my yes, the "emotional sea" we all swim in affects us all.

This is above and beyond the very legitimate and real forces you so accurately catalog in your above post.

In your country, mine and all of them, this affects every person differently, according to who you are and whether your society is improving, deteriorating, or holding steady, and well as the root meaning of that society, which does not often change.

But still sometimes does change. In the case of pre- and post-Bush-Occupied America, the root meaning of society basically turned almost a full 180 degrees overnight. Talk about wrenching dislocation? How about your country turn from Beacon of Freedom (with all of it's faults, flaws, imperfections, and yes, atrocities carried out occasionally - as is true with all nations, some more or less than others) to a Capitalist Soviet Union, but with less hammering of the citizenry?

I've still got whiplash.

[Joe Chi Minh]

14. Wonderful, wonderful France! Norway, too. Thank you. It's very

interesting.

That's us! The UK. Just below India. Trickle down has obviously been working well for both of us. Though they seem to have prospered much better then us, in terms of their starting point. Or not "not prospered" as badly!

And you're neck and neck with China. Held back all these years by Communism!

[tom_paine]

17. Got a link to the GINI site to which you are referring?

I am always interested in current GINI data. Last I read, the 2003 data suggested that Bush-Occupied America had fallen to 0.39 (I think), which was at that time, I recall, equivalent to Argentina's highest rating before the Bushie-like Crony Capitalists decided to loot their country.

It would not surprise me in the least if the USA has an equivalent GINI as Commie China. Under Little Boots Bushler, we are now equivalent to them in so many ways.

Except prisoners. We keep far more pirsoners in terms of both raw numbers and we absolutely KILL China (because of their massive population) in terms of per capita people in prison.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. Here it is Tomaso:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

0.47 in 2005. A heck of a lot worse than the 0.39 something, which you cited for a couple of years earlier. Characteristic of the poorer countries, he states, which tend to be above 0.40. How much worse still would it be now, I wonder, 2 years later.

But like China, our good old UK have been taking giant strides to try and catch you up.

I'm afraid it's post-Commie China, really, though. Things have got a whole lot worse for many millions of the poorer folk there. Probably hundreds of millions.

But, if you haven't done so already, read this superb article by a wonderful American physician, who, though it is only considered by most as a career stepping stone, chose to work in the ER Department his career. A Democrat, of course:

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=4647§ionID=10

Tremendously informative, and the passage about the Hispanic casualties and their families is hilarious in a feel-good kind of way.

[Book Lover]

7. I do live in the US, yes

And my family is a medical family, so I have heard stories for many years of abusive patients. One of my grandmother's stories came from a year after WWII (this was in Italy, FWIW) when she had a patient who tried to choke her when she started his bath. I think you also have to understand that being ill or in severe pain always affects people's judgment and behavior. Frankly, to me, the only news in the two stories you give links for is that the NHS is actually taking what might be effective action in protecting staff.

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. Your words suggest that you still don't think you grasp that it's the scale of the problem now.

Your reference to Hewitt suggests to me that you take an interest in British politics.
What is your "take" on the current political landscape in Britain?