Liverpool Care Pathway - Telling It How It Is

The GSF summarises how to recognise the one percent to line them up for EoLC.

Eyeballing - The GSF

How do you make the unacceptable acceptable? You redefine it and adopt terminology that grants it an apparent scholarliness which academia will rush readily to discuss. 

You retreat from defensiveness and go on the attack; you challenge and question. You repeatedly raise the issue such that what was once shocking becomes ‘daring’ and slips almost imperceptibly into the window of respectability. 

You use slander or slur to diminish and demean those who oppose you such that they are placed in ridicule and their views are mocked as ‘outdated’ and ‘old-fashioned’. You are ‘advanced’, your views are ‘modern’ and it is time for change. 

It is ‘cool’ to denounce the Hippocratic Oath and traditional mores. It is trendy to challenge long held beliefs of right and wrong. 

Those who have raised issue with the LCP and EoLC Pathways have been denounced in online forums and in newspaper comments columns as right wing, Christian (particularly Catholic) crackpots. 

In 1935, the inaugural meeting of the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society was hosted at the BMA in London. Fifty years later, it still hadn’t gained widespread support. Its fortunes changed in 2005 when it became Dignity in Dying. Also, at this time, the LCP was being trialled and, in 2008, the DoH and NCPC joined their resources to roll out the EoLC Strategy and the version12 LCP.

Having learned the merits of Newspeak, Dignity in Dying started up a charitable wing calling itself Compassion in Dying. Bang! Age UK actually partnered up with them in a project in East London which gained National Lottery funding. Political or what...? That wasn't given national exposure on the Saturday night lottery draw!

Euthanasia was always espoused as 'advanced', as 'modern', as 'forward thinking'; hence, from the beginning, it found support with public figures who viewed themselves as being such. However, give yourself an appropriate and suitable name and - particularly if you may demonstrate yourself to be part of a persecuted minority - you will find more ready and widespread support from such people.

The post war years saw a rising tide of diverse groups, competing, but united against the common enemy of the establishment. The CND Easter March of pilgrimage and the Spies for Peace became the weekly anti-Viet Nam War demos of the late 60s. Agit Prop (Agitational Propaganda) readily lent its resources for their purpose. Collets was a frequent haunt in Charing Cross Road in London to sell the radical journal. This was the Left or the New Left. Only the Bard had the vision to sing of the Upwing and the Downwing. 

I have mentioned, in passing comment in these pages, training I have been sent on at work. One such course was on sex offenders. The trainer had academic terms she used not just for 'paedophiles' but for specific kinds of offending. There is, for instance, a specific kind of paedophile who will latch onto a single mum with young child and wait for the child to grow to a particular age of his liking, all the while gaining the child's trust and grooming them for his purpose.

I objected that the use of such terms was a cop-out. What do you mean, she responded indignantly, defensively. It's all abuse, I replied. Giving them the dignity of an academic term to describe what they do is to make excuses for the abuser, to give him dignity at the expense of the victim of the abuse, the child. I then raised with her the Paedophile Information Exchange which actually published a magazine called Magpie (Magazine of the Paedophile Information Exchange). To my disbelief, this trainer had never heard of the Paedophile Information Exchange! 

A long, long time ago, a news item came up on the tele. I pricked up my ears because Bromley was mentioned. I had lived on the Downham Estate by Grove Park in my teens. This was just down the road from Bromley. Bromley was also home to one of these woolbrained diverse groups. Arrests had been made. The PIE and their magazine, Magpie, was mentioned. It is incredible, but true, that child abuse really took off in the 1980s in just the manner already discussed here by gaining sympathy and support from such woolbrained intellectuals. 

I had never before heard the word paedophile. It seemed obviously an academic term with Greek roots. As with bibliophile, someone who loves books, it must mean someone who loves children, I thought. What was going on? How could child abusers call themselves paedophiles when, clearly, they just wanted to exploit children for their own selfish purpose and rob them forever of their dignity and self-worth? And yet I had recalled brief reference in a left wing journal of 'misunderstandings' in regard to child sexuality. The Reichians in particular had made note of this.

These child abusers actually perceived - perceive - themselves to be 'advanced' and 'forward thinking'. They did not - do not - view themselves as 'sick' or in any manner doing wrong. This is their moral perspective. Call pornography erotica and it immediately becomes an acceptable topic to discuss over the After Eight Mints once the dinner table is cleared.

The Right and the forces of reaction; Christian (particularly Catholic) crackpots and their concept of family; the hypocrites in religious office who clearly tolerated if not upheld child abuse themselves were clearly opposed to this radical political minority which challenged their beliefs. And the academia - these woolbrains - actually reinforced this 'radical' challenge and those who promoted it. They upheld their world-view, and gave them sense of purpose by themselves adopting their terms to describe them and what they stood for. This was another cause celebre to fight! The academia leapt on the bandwagon. One Dutch psychologist of the time actually suggested a child might benefit from such a relationship.

The woolbrains of the time readily fell over backwards to provide them and their cause support. The worse thing in the world would be to be denounced as a reactionary. Is this why Esther never denounced Jim? Was she, too, part of this trendy set who didn't want to be denounced by their fellows as reactionaries and 'chauvinists'? How on earth could Jim 'fix it' and get away with it for so long such that never, in his lifetime, did justice ever catch up with him? 

This is how it was in these groups. I can personally remember a 'comradely act' of sharing an umbrella in the pouring rain being denounced as an act of male chauvinism. Today, Esther has jumped on the EoLC bandwagon. The person who started Childline has started Silverline. Note, I say 'person' rather than 'woman' as it would be sexist to draw attention to such an insignificant detail. This political correctness proceeds to this day. You're just not allowed to say it how it is and, for that reason, do so many injustices continue and is the initiative passed to the Nasties on the Right.

It is time to say it how it is. When journalists report abuse they must not use the terminology of the abusers. The philatelist, the bibliophile may be enthusiasts and devote much time to their pastime. Others might just dabble. This is exactly the language of the 'paedophile'. The 'paedophile' might throw themselves into their pursuit; others might dabble in a small image collection on their laptop. They 'dabble'. You permit them to say that by using their terminology. But use the word abuse; speak only in terms of abuse; could they then say they 'dabble'...?

We have seen our latter-day New Left deny the facts of the killing that has proceeded. They refer to the right-wing press and the 'Daily Fail' and a submission to the BMJ has actually resorted to calling this an assault on the Pathway. There is a Strategy in place. It is taking effect.

Nearly fifty years ago Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker made his landmark observations in parliament. Just twenty years prior to this, as a BBC journalist, he reported on the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. The good old Beeb paused in disbelief. We had seen this sort of propaganda fifty years previously to that in the Great War of 1914-18. The Hun were bayoneting babes in Belgium...

One hundred years later, and they're euthanasing babes in Belgium!

Let us get away from the political language of the abusers. Let us start saying it how it is. Let us all wise up and make them own up...

This is ACTIVE KILLING that is proceeding as policy; it is not care!

Further pertinent reading -

Liverpool Care Pathway - No-one Answered