to be a democrat and yet stifle free speech, you
should at least be thorough and lock everyone's
lips shut, or else you'll get screwed by public opinion.
Among a spate of "shut-yer-f%&*&kin-mouth" legal orders,
the NHS health service has been at the leading edge.
And so hospitals have actually paid large sums, like half
a million for one case I heard, to get doctors to not tell
the media how screwed NHS bureaucracy is.
The new Health minister, Mike Hunt said out of one side
of his mouth that gagging orders were a waste of public
money, and so we thought he was against shutting people
up. Actually, he was against paying them to shut up.
what we discovered recently was what Mike Hunt meant:
He could make NHS workers shut up, if he so wished.
and he does, because he's in the process ofdismantling public health care in the UK, but doesn't
want the media to know what a god-awful mess
this privatisation is.
I suppose the next thing we'll hear is that he will, like
Jimmy Savile, demand noblesse oblige in the
hospital mortuaries.
I can't believe this place. Just leak the info and get
on with the flaying of the minister.
forsooth:
The young minister forgot to gag the media and so
the message leaked out.
They should have done like Andrew Marr, the interview
guy on tv. He had an ugly extra-marital
dalliance and gagged the media, and gagged the media
from even mentioning the gag. Thanks to
Twitter, that one snuck out.
UPDATE:
Just saw "Have I got new" rerun that discussed that
escapade. Marr often went over the line in asking
personal questions of public figures, so it was
really hypocritical of him to pull a
three-monkeys on the media about his own life.
Isn't gagging just fundamentally wrong? Look at the
hypocrisy and stupidity that is the only conclusion
one can draw once the gag gets out into the open.
Isn't free speech important? Obviously not, in the UK.
I'll add the story from the Telegraph soon
