Bill's Comment Page

May I be facetious, if only briefly?

The experiences recounted here are worrying, if it is true that some doctors in the NHS face discrimination under various pretexts - whether because of their race, gender or sexual orientation. Now pan forward to the end of the report where a spokeswoman is quoted as saying:

"The government is fully committed to diversity and equality of opportunity for all health service staff. "There is no place for discrimination or harassment in the NHS on grounds of race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, or age. The NHS workforce must reflect the population it serves."

Now I think that spokeswoman must have disengaged her brain before giving voice to that last sentence, assuming she has been quoted accurately. Unless she, or the person who wrote this nonsense for her, truly believes that a predisposition to various kinds of bigotry forms no part of even a small part of British society, then if the staff of the NHS are to be genuinely representative of that society then it is inevitable that there will be at least a few NHS staff, at all levels, who come from bigoted (in various ways) segments of the population. No, what the good lady should have been saying is that NHS staff should be representative of only the better aspects of British society and exclude, quite deliberately, those who exhibit attitudes which are quite obviously unacceptable. The kind of moral cowardice which this bland and seemingly sensible NHS "Nuspeak" statement represents is illustrative of the trap that some of those who run our NHS, and our government, have fallen into.