Sick survey, dead loss

This week’s local press prominently featured a lump of astroturf planted by parasites on the local health sector. If you’d rather read this pack of lies in the original form just go to
http://www.gov.im/lib/news/dhss/isleofmanendofli.xml.
On 10th December, in a piece entitled Isle of Man ‘End of Life Care Project’ set for launch, some of those who contribute most to the sum of Manx human misery when folk die told us that:“The Department of Health and Macmillan Cancer Support have joined forces on a new initiative aimed at improving end of life care on the Isle of Man.
The two year project will work with patients, carers, health and social care professionals and the voluntary and faith sectors on the Isle of Man, to produce an agreed end of life care strategy and to develop an implementation plan for improving end of life care across a wide range of life limiting conditions. “
Which probably sounds very impressive to an innocent reader, especially if they or folk around them are likely to die in the near future.
The con artists continue: “The Isle of Man End of Life Care Strategy will aim to identify what people’s preferences might be at the end of life and examine existing health, social care and voluntary support systems that will enable people to die in the place of their choosing. “
That is a bare faced lie.
To understand why, consider these three things.
Firstly, in the life of the current Manx parliament there will be an attempt to introduce a Bill on assisted dying.
Secondly, in the last two decades, care of the island’s terminally ill has left the hands of the public health service and gone to an ugly coalition of private and pseudo-charitable business interests. They have a tidy little racket going whereby the lives of the terminally ill are spun out as long as possible, and each painful unit is costed out at the maximum possible rate to vultures ranging from aromatherapists and other unqualified floggers of unregulated alternative woo-woo through to those with some semblance of professionalism but who also, in practice, do little more than pat semi-corpses on the head while extracting the contents of their wallets. If you’ll excuse the pun, it is one sick business.
Thirdly, the current Health Minister is a pro-lifer. To be fair, he is absolutely open about this and, for example, lists his membership of CARE (Christian Action for Research and Education) amongst his parliamentary interests. He holds his views and expresses them as a Christian, not a medical expert, and, to my certain knowledge, has not taken a penny from any company or individual which benefits financially from the current status quo. In that alone he is head and shoulders above many of his fellow political layabouts, whose inability to, for example, award a government contract without a skiing holiday, ‘fact-finding mission’ to exotic countries, seat on the board of a company when they retire from politics or (in the most extreme 1980’s cases) holiday homes in sunnier climes is a national disgrace that puts us on a par with their worst Irish role models.
Note also that the entire pseudo-project has been underwritten, not by government, but by one of the bogus health charities with most to lose if dying people were able to get the deaths they actually want, not ‘choose’ from a menu of overpriced, whimsical nonsenses, and that it will be conducted by an employee of a faith-based partner in crime.
While we’re at it, we should also consider that vacuous fluffy quote from Cicely Saunders, founder of the UK’s hospice con. In order to understand the true mentality and morality of Saunders, it is only necessary to know that, in 1981, she won the Templeton Prize. For those who don’t know, the founders of the Templeton Prize (until 2001 known as the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion) intended to emulate or even dwarf the prestige of the Nobel prizes. The only way in which they truly outdid the Nobels was to offer more cash. Otherwise, it’s just an open £1,000,000 bribe to any public figure, preferably with a scientific/medical/philanthropic or quasi-scientific/medical/philanthropic background to come up with reasons why such fields should be dominated by religious, not rational, thinking, or to muddy the waters in such a way that it is impossible to go about those disciplines without one leg in a barbed wire garter. Once you know that, the year after Saunders, Billy Graham got it you can appreciate what 24 carat crap the whole deal is, what kind of moral pygmy takes the loot and why you should dismiss anything they ever said about anything.
My advice to anyone who is approached by this survey is, firstly, insist on written communication, not a verbal interview, and secondly ask if assisted dying is on the menu for discussion. If it isn’t, then, say you don’t think it is a true research project into what dying people and their friends and relatives want and refuse to co-operate further. And make sure you get all this in writing.
It is important that you do this.
Firstly because this survey is a deliberate attempt to only allow participants to give answers those behind the scam have pre-decided, in order to pretend it is ‘what the public wants’ and further excuse the lack of choice and theft of public funds.
Secondly, because this survey will work itself into the arguments used by such parasites to derail an assisted dying bill.
Thirdly, because when they do all this, it is important that we can challenge such nonsense, and provide evidence of the way in which our attempts to give our true opinions were blocked by those, in theory, charged with gathering such opinion.
Bogus research is a growing industry in Manx government circles, increasingly used to excuse the most outrageous waste and theft of taxpayer money. It is our civic duty to stop it dead.