A letter a day to number 10. No 1,250
Thursday 05 November 2015.
Dear Mr Cameron,
As I follow the battle of junior doctors being fought against bogus reasons and deceitful ideological purposes, for a 24 hour NHS which has existed since its inception, what hits me more than anything else is that Hunt, and all you Tory misanthropes, care nothing for our quality of life. Hunt is perfectly happy to force junior doctors into a life that really isn’t worth living and many will leave because it will be intolerable. Dedication and belief in what one is doing can only go so far especially when attacked by an external demand to be more dedicated and give up even more of ones own time and values to satisfy a political ideological game. As one anaesthetist put it, ‘I love my job, I have worked incredibly hard to get myself here but I am not a machine. If the contract is imposed I will leave medicine. This is a line that cannot be crossed’.
This person is exactly right, since 2010 you have crossed the line, undermining peoples ability to have dignity and self respect, that underlies all your policies against the poor, the vulnerable, sick and disabled people. You simply don’t care what makes my life worth living or anyone else’s outside of your cloistered bubble of privilege and entitlement.
Whether its welfare reforms, our human rights, legal aid, the independent living fund, our NHS, front line services, sanctions, housing, education, decent pay and employment conditions, and all the rest that I’ve forgotten in the moment, it is our very quality of life that you are attacking, undermining and destroying. And the correct response is, ‘How dare you!’ These are the most egregious offences against us and the many and varied qualities of our individual, familial and community lives.
Hunt claims that he cannot ‘negotiate on the Conservatives’ manifesto commitment to a 24-hour NHS and that he had to implement the new contract introducing a seven-day-a-week service’. Aside from the fact that election promises mean nothing to you (remember ‘no top down reorganisation of the NHS?), this particular mandate is based on the fundamental lie that we don’t already have a 24hr NHS service. Hunt has promoted a myth and successfully undermined the astonishing quality of care the people who work so damned hard to provide our NHS and give us health care 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Hunt has knowingly and deliberately set out to undermine and demoralise those who staff our NHS. No one, but no one, gave him the right, let alone a mandate, to do such a thing. This is an issue that precedes any (deceitful) posturing over manifesto commitments.
That is where we must draw the line and fight at that line with our feet planted firmly on it, no quarter given and no compromise accepted. Some things are worth living and, indeed, dying for and human dignity and respect are right up the top alongside the right to life, because what is a life without dignity and respect? Life matters, Mr Cameron, but so does dignity and respect, and if you can’t or won’t grasp that, you are out of order, a government gone rogue on humanity.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/05/contract-imposed-nhs-junior-doctors-protesting
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/03/jeremy-hunt-offer-junior-doctors-pay-rise
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 
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