Withdrawing from Organ Donation
The day after Parliament voted to overturn the Lords amendment on the Brexit bill, in all but name, it signalled the start of UK negotiations with the EU on leaving, without ensuring the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.
With things going from bad to worse for the UK on Brexit, yesterday night, Parliament voted o reject two House of Lords amendments guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens to remain in the UK. This sent a clear message to EU citizens that they are not welcome in the Britain, it was also a clear and unprecedented message that the lives of other human beings aren’t worth the same as human lives here.
I’ve shown these before, and I’ll continue to show these graphs again, but many Brexiteers have deluded themselves into thinking immigration affects people at a national level. That it somehow pulls way more funds than it contributes for the whole of the UK, conveniently forgetting the real cost to the UK public purse.
Some are continuing to peddle this lie in an attempt to convince themselves and others wavering that voting Leave was the right decision. “Democracy in action!”, “Will of the people!”, “£350 million Bus”
Brexiteers voted to segregate humans into this patch over here, deemed worthy, and that patch over there, deemed unworthy. They dress up their ill informed, unbeknown, institutional racism as “skilled immigration” when in reality the all proposed UK points systems work, means unskilled immigrants, with certain profiles, can enter the UK ahead of skilled immigrants we badly need. For example, if a points system needs 1,200 points, and UK family adds 600, but being a doctor with no UK based family adds 200, then…Dude! Numbers don’t give a shit! They don’t discriminate. People do.
Back in the 90’s, it was my choice to do with my own organs, it is still my choice now in 2017. I will choose who I donate my organs to. I don’t want the risk of donating to a Brexiteer, and denying a Remainer or denying family. I won’t participate in that lottery. Brexiteers had the option of thinking, of not harming others, but chose not to. So they accept harm in all its forms. That’s fine. They get what they wish for.
As we’ve already seen already, Theresa May’s original proposition to put a £35,000 earnings requirement on foreign NHS nurses before allowing them to remain in the UK is on temporary hold for nursing and other jobs that have ever been on the shortage list. If nurses do not achieve this, they’ll be deported. This stay is due to come to an end. What will this do for nursing?
Well, I’ll tell you!
Nurses in the NHS earn through bands. The NHS Agenda for Change moved the pay scales a little bit away from the old grading system used for decades. A fully qualified staff nurse was a D grade, now a band 4. The current pay scales are:
A £35,000 requirement means only nurses qualified at the top end of Band 6 and at average levels of band 7, will achieve the necessary salary to remain.
Staff Nurse band 4 and Senior Staff Nurse band 5 have “caring” responsibilities. Those you see on the wards. Band’s 6 and above don’t appear on the floor in hospitals and not at the volumes required of band 4 and 5.
Band 6 are roles way past ward nursing, normally achieved through different roles such as health visitors, clinical psychologist trainee and biomedical scientists! This makes £35,000 an impossible barrier to achieve for regular nurses on the front line. We’d be importing more management level staff than junior nurses whilst simultaneously cutting staff or losing NHS staff through retirement, attrition, or emigration, which increases waiting lists massively. Even Jeremy Hunt removed NHS targets early because he expects these to be breached and breached badly!
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Well, Brexiteers voted for discrimination, they voted for segregation, they voted for judgement on, and to contribute to the persecution of human life, to the hail of “out with refugees”. Voted on “worthiness”, ethereal sovereignty, to close their doors. On empirically baseless grounds. They also voted for price hikes, to his themselves in the pocket, to hit the NHS by removing funds (£350 million… bus… what was that?), to revoke UK science from the world stage.
They claim these are “Unforeseen effects” except pretty much everyone, economist or not, on the Remain side saw it coming. We did tell them. We knew.
Some claim “We are aware that the economy will take a hit” through some overarching, Aristotelian trap. It’s bull! All they did was basically vote for racism. Whether they believe they did, or not.
Still, there isn’t any evidence in the world that can convince irrational, disingenuous, malicious and dare I say, mathematically illiterate minds like theirs. A collective delusion of 17 million people.
Yet, Theresa May’s Parliament are rushing ahead before enough real effects are felt by the UK populous to turn the tide against Leaving and also before an alternative, capable opposition mobilises itself. Those who are currently crippled between a voting core of Brexit supporters and whatever leadership crisis Jeremy Corbyn finds himself in now.
Before people notice the price rises in the supermarkets.
And before Brexiteers realise coming to the UK is a two way street. Where nurses have to want to come to the UK too. They have free choice in other countries don’t you know.
Brexiteers have proven time and time again they have no concept of reality. That you have to close the gap in nursing care by supplying potential nurses in the UK with bursaries to fund their tuition. Yet, is has seen a drop in nursing by 10,000 applications this year alone because, guess what, bursaries to train UK nurses were pulled. That lost 10,000 applicants. One quarter of all applicants, the same size number that the Tory government want to get immigration down to, have chosen not to train in nursing. The shortfall has now got to be filled by nurses from the EU or abroad, which will cost the NHS more in both relocation and processing costs.
… that’s assuming they want to come in the first place, of course.
In 2016/2017 Brexiteers failed and still fail to remember that we are not a colonial power going over the English channel to colonise Spain, and pillage their lands of nursing staff like potatoes. Nurses and medical staff have a choice to come here, and they are choosing not to.
What became clear to me through the referendum was the focus Brexiteers had on segregation of lives. The short-sighted selfishness. That’s fine. They want it, they get it. It is now my most “right wing” position.
In cold, hard, facts and now, the way I see it, the life and actions of an illiterate Brexiteer, who makes judgements and impacts people outside their circle, without taking responsibility for their own positions, and fixing the problems, nor putting the effort in to even see if they’re being conned, isn’t regularly worth the same as someone who works for the collective benefit of their own and society as a whole. Especially if they take! This is an ugly, ugly statement, but one that is categorically true. Yet, the latter are supremely rare and sacrifice so much for the benefit of others. Indeed, they are more likely to donate their organs and blood than right-wing folk. Brexiteers sat on the operating table or accepting/getting a blood transfusion are more likely than not having it supplied by a Remainer.
Some may argue it isn’t fair to compare people’s lives to a political vote. OK, tell that to Thomas Mayer. Except in any event, it wasn’t a political vote. Brexit’s impact, the real stuff, wasn’t about politics. It became politicised.
Furthermore, it is about people’s lives. Sending refugees “back home” also sends Syrians into the mouths of ISIS. The very group you don’t want to send these people to, if you want to make the world, sorry, ‘your land’, little Britain, safer. By radicalising them… and alienating folk. Inside. The. UK. How does voting for Brexit and sending back that volume of displaced people (almost none of whom are here), to be radicalised make us safer?
Brexiteers can’t comprehend that.
It’s also about the lives of everyone on benefits here in the UK, since the government have to collect the cash to support them somehow (less immigration, less surplus). It is about people on waiting lists for NHS treatment. People already in the UK will still be in the UK and social housing is not being built fast enough to cover the shortfall, accounting for the buildings that fall into disrepair or leave the social housing stock base. As with the financial crisis, benefits will be impacted. People will be impacted.
Brexiteers can’t comprehend that.
The NHS is now in the position of losing NHS staff who have qualified and/or are EU nationals and also losing applicants due to the removal of training bursaries. Brexiteer fairyland assumes there won’t be an increase in waiting lists. A missing of targets for treatment. Yo, dude! There already is and has been! That is why Hunt removed NHS targets, because he’s a donkey! Whether you get treated at all will become a lottery or be privatised! Well done!
Brexiteers can’t comprehend that.
Local authorities have been tasked with making tens of millions of pounds of cuts each (Manchester £30 million, Liverpool £30million…). In no small part to claw back money central government is spending on Brexit that was previously allocated to local authority causes. This also led to central government allowing Local Authorities an intra-budgetary rise in council tax. “Just Don’t say Brexit”.
Brexiteers can’t comprehend that.
I don’t know if there’s something wrong with their brain, or what, but in the absence of a medical reason for that level of thick, I have to take it at face value and assume it was “rational”. I don’t want my organs anywhere near that sort of brain, not least because it seems like they have their brain and colon swapped around! Maybe they should fix that first.
End Result? It’s come to this.
The latest, streamlined organ donation register was set up in 2005 to both aggregate two different donation bodies, organs and blood, and allow anyone to make known to the NHS that they wished their organs and blood to be donated to people who needed it. 246 people are on the waiting list for heart transplants today for example.
Donors don’t have a say in who gets the organs or blood. Indeed, it’s unethical to do so, and arguably rightly so.
I’ve been an organ donor since I obtained my driving license, nearly 20 years ago. As an atheist, I always thought that I frankly didn’t need my organs when I die. There isn’t an afterlife, so someone else could have it if it saves theirs or it goes to medical science. I’ve seen too much cr*p in medicine to want to send it there and given the waiting lists for organs, at the time, I figured it would have better use there. Now?
During and after the Brexit vote, it became clear that folk were making irrational judgements on whether someone is worthy or not. For me, anyone making such judgements, on nothing but discriminatory grounds, pushes two very very important bottoms.
- I don’t tolerate discrimination, on protected characteristics in all its forms.
- I am allergic to stupid.
Included in number 1 is the organ donation and charity donation processes. I do not believe that general donations should be attached to conditions. It’s all or nothing.
Within that frame, it was all or nothing for me. It was my choice to do with my own organs what I chose back in the 90’s, it is still my choice in 2017. I will choose who I donate my organs to and I don’t need a general register to do it. I don’t want the risk of donating to a Brexiteer, and denying a Remainer or denying family. I won’t participate in that roulette. Brexiteers had the option of thinking, of not harming others, but chose not to. So they accept harm in all its forms. That’s fine. They get what they wish for.
Hence, this morning, I withdrew my consent from the Organ Donation register. When my move out of the UK is done, I’ll probably sign up to donate my organs in whatever country I settle in. I deem those people more worthy of it.
After all, it’s what Brexiteers wanted.
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