Greasing the Slippery Slope

A newly-appointed under-secretary to the Minister for NewsCorp and Health has been having a bit of a gush about the National Health Service. Using the Daily Mail model of evidence by anecdote, Anna Soubry recounted her experience of gall bladder removal on the NHS as opposed to a couple of less exhilarating adventures in private hospitals. Since Soubry has just gained a promotion in the government which forced through Twizzler Lansley's Health and Social Care Act, these remarks are presumably on a par with Daveybloke's pre-election burblings about the wondrousness of nurses and suchlike. Those burblings, it will be remembered, were accompanied as often as not by Daveybloke's waving of little Ivan's corpse, since Daveybloke is not the chap to content himself with mere gall bladders when dead children are at his disposal.

Anyway, Soubry's likely level of sincerity about the NHS provides an interesting context for her other remarks, which concerned the laws on assisted dying. Soubry confined her observations to the problem of assisted dying for the terminally ill, though she apparently failed to acknowledge the contribution of Atos Healthcare in keeping such unfortunates pleasantly busy until their departure time. She registered annoyance that the euthanasia market is being cornered by foreigners and called for greater honesty, which is certainly a healthy development from a subordinate of Jeremy C Hunt. Measures to encourage a healthy increase in the suicide rate among other types of social expendable are presumably on the drawing board.