David Craig, on December 5th, 2024Thursday-Friday blog
I imagine we’ve all experienced that ‘Foxtrot Oscar’ moment when a large organisation uses PR-speak to show us how much the organisation really despises us.
A couple of days ago, in the wake of the allegations against cheeky-chappy former greengrocer Greg Wallace, the BBC PR department informed us that “any issues raised (about presenters’ behaviour) are taken seriously and there are robust processes in place to deal with them.”
“We are always clear that any behaviour which falls below the standards expected by the BBC will not be tolerated,” we were told. Given the long string of BBC cover-ups – from national treasure Sir James ‘Jimmy’ Savile to national treasure Huw Edwards, some might find the BBC’s claim to have “robust processes in place” somewhat difficult to swallow. In fact, the only “robust processes” the BBC seems to have are those used to protect their ‘stars’ however inappropriate their behaviour.
I had always thought that there were about 34,000 people who die unnecessarily in our NHS each year. But according to a recent report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on ‘Deaths from causes considered treatable or preventable given timely and effective healthcare or public health interventions in those aged under 75 years’ the figures the ONS gives are: “In 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively, 22.3%, 23.8% and 21.8% of total deaths (all ages) in England and Wales were considered avoidable: in 2021 there were 139,495 avoidable deaths out of 585,484 total deaths, and in 2022 there were 125,612 avoidable deaths of 576,027 total.”
I imagine the difference in the figures is that I was looking at directly avoidable deaths in hospitals whereas the ONS figures seem to have a broader scope. But whichever figures you accept, avoidable deaths is a big number considering how much we pay each year for our apparently useless NHS.
But every time there is a NHS hospital health scandal, and there have been many, we’re told that: “Patient safety is our highest priority” or “Patient safety is the guiding principle of all who serve in the NHS” or “Safety has always been the NHS’ highest priority” or some similar Foxtrot Oscar guff produced by the NHS’s army of over-paid, over-pensioned PR staff. And, of course, we’re all assured that “important lessons have been learnt”.
Similarly, whenever some company is found to be cheating its customers or mistreating staff or whatever, the PR department is usually quick to claim that:
- “Customer satisfaction is our highest priority”
- or “customer safety is our highest priority”
- or “the wellbeing of our staff is our highest priority”
- or “the company takes complaints “incredibly seriously” but will not comment on individual allegations”
- or the most modern version being something like “We will not tolerate any kind of racism, misogyny, homophobia, bullying, exclusion or harassment and we have strict policies in place to deal swiftly and decisively with this kind of behaviour,”
We’re all used to this. But I really had to wonder how a government minister could keep a straight face when he, in my humble opinion, told us all to Foxtrot Oscar. The disastrous Rachel ‘the economist’ Reeves’s vindictive and economically-illiterate budget was critisiced by:
- Confederation of British Industry (CBI) now believes expectations for UK growth have turned negative for the first time in 2024. “As we head into 2025, expectations for growth have taken a decisive turn for the worse. Our surveys suggest that anticipated activity was already weakening heading into the October budget, and the chancellor’s announcements have left businesses with even more tough choices to make“
- The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry: ““the business community views the combined package of increased employer national insurance contributions, cuts to business rates relief and the employment rights bill as a serious threat to their operations over the coming years”
- Top stores such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Amazon and Greggs also told the chancellor in November that her Budget will cause “inevitable” job losses and higher prices”
- More than half of British businesses expect to put up prices and cut jobs to cope with the costs of Rachel Reeves’s National Insurance raid
- James Dyson: Reeves’s Budget is “an egregious act of self-harm”
Following the execrably-appalling budget and also partly due to lunatic Ed Miliband’s deranged Net Zero economically-suicidal policies, the British economy seems to be having a nervous breakdown. Business investment is being slashed, tens of thousands of jobs are being lost, many smaller companies will go bankrupt and we’re heading into a recession.
But in true Foxtrot Oscar style, a government minister claimed that he did not “recognise the characterisation” of negative growth from the CBI saying: “We believe that our Budget is a Budget for growth and that’s what we’ll be judged on.”
That’s someone, I believe, who has revealed how much the ruling elites really despise us all and is basically telling us all to Foxtrot Oscar big time because the government couldn’t give a monkey’s about the economic destruction it is causing while trying to make Britain into the first Third-world, nuclear-armed, Islamo-socialist theocracy in Europe.
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Your last few words are correct but I put the emphasis on socialism. Perhaps Attlee is the best place to start. Instead of focusing on getting the economy back to peacetime conditions he focused on creating a welfare state that was unaffordable then and has become increasingly so. Germany on the other hand restored the peacetime economy but seem to have lost the plot completely now and they have about the highest tax levels in Europe. The USA is moving to socialism after Obama. There is no escaping it and the worst aspect is the willingness of people to give up responsibility for their own lives and hand it to the politicians. All that needs to be done is make something free at the point of delivery and ensure that rational thinking does not form part of the education system.
The BBC gets its funding from us but none of the independent media seems much different. The entire MSM seems to be corrupt. This is another feature of socialism. It isn’t to help the poor, it is controlled by the rich to make them richer. The media is their propaganda apparatus. They have no shame in revealing their methods. They think they are bullet proof.
The NHS is the jewel in the crown of socialism and can do no wrong. I suspect that the Lucy Letby case is about covering up the failure of the management by putting the blame on her using statistics to lie, nothing could be easier with a dumbed down education system. The NHS has no competition, no idea what anything costs and now doesn’t even seem to care about providing health care.
It is exactly the same with anything the government touches. Ludwig von Mises got this correct when he pointed out that economic calculations are impossible without a market based economy, and that does not even exist in the private sector. We can thank Keynes for this and the idea that the economy could be flooded with money and there would be no consequences. This resulted in the creation of the central banks and the legalised counterfeiting of most of the money in circulation. A free competitive market is the only way to run the economy. The governments should keep out of it entirely. The market will set prices and it will also set the value of currencies. But that will end the giant socialist Ponzi scheme that is transferring money from the poorest to the top. They started by taking money from the middle classes to keep the poorest on their side and now the entire charade is being exposed, but now too late to stop.
They haven’t a clue what growth even means, but for us it means we are slaves required to produce what ever is required. We are needed to keep industry running and to buy replacement goods or the latest products. Everything is designed to be replaced because the factories would close if goods were reliable. Next we will find the administrative jobs that replaced industry will be replaced by AI.
We are the idiots who have let this happen because we cannot refuse a free handout from the government and misplaced believe that the more taxes we pay the safer we become. The handouts have a very high price and now we are suffering the consequences. What has happened in every communist country is about to happen here. The destruction, of course, always results in profit for the rich otherwise it would not happen. They hope to keep safe when the collapse happens.