This is what a Tory MP thinks of the NHS

uksceptic — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:23:45 +0000

Here is Daniel Hannan Member of the European Parliament, representing South East England for the Conservative Party, saying that a National health care service is a burden and that he wouldn’t wish it on anybody. He also says that ‘no politician can ever afford to forget what his constituents think about things’ when he has done just that. It seems to me that the only person that considers the NHS a burden is Daniel Hannan not his constituents who benefit from this service every day.

If the Conservatives take the expected victory at the next general election I for one won’t be celebrating. This latest comment from a member of their party may have been shunned by Cameron but he is still guilty of associating with racists. This all shows how pathetically ineffective the Liberal Democrats have become that they cannot front a serious challenge for power in the face of such competition. It was criminal that they did not elect Vince Cable as leader when they had the chance and they will pay the price for that for years to come.

Avoid the swill.

uksceptic — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:56:01 +0000

The media is going crazy over this swine flu thing at the moment. I personally think everybody needs to calm down.

There is no doubt that S-OIV H1N1 can be dangerous but it is important to keep a little sense of perspective on the subject. Data at this stage can be misleading but at the moment, according to a paper recently published by the British Medical Journal, this is a disease which has a case-fatality ratio similar to seasonal flu (around 0.5%).

Anyway, if you do want more information about Swine Flu it is best to go to a reputable source, don’t take it from the papers or the TV, or me for that matter. Here are a couple of great resources for all your swine flu needs;

The NHS run a fantastic service called Behind The Headlines which “provides an unbiased and evidence-based analysis of health stories that make the news.” Or health stories without the bull shit.

This is their page on Swine Flu.

If you want to delve further and you don’t have access to medical journals then I suggest you check out The Lancet’s page on swine flu (emphasis mine).

“The Lancet‘s H1N1 Resource Centre is the result of a collaborative effort by the editors of over 40 Elsevier-published journals and 11 learned societies who have agreed to make freely available on this site any relevant content. All papers have been selected by a Lanceteditor, grouped by topic and fulltext pdfs made available to download free of charge.”

What more could you ask for? Here’s a link!

UPDATE

Ben Goldacre just linked to this article on his twitter page. Having critised the media in this post, credit where credit is due.

scepticalbanter.com » NHS

This is what a Tory MP thinks of the NHS

Avoid the swill.