Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

‘Tory twat of the week’ award

The first in what will hopefully be a regular feature to remind everyone that 'Call me Dave', if you believe everything he says, is on the extreme left of his party.

This week's award goes to Lord Mancroft, a Tory peer, who said that nurses at the Royal Bath Hospital were 'grubby' and 'promiscuous'.

Two things to remember: first, peers and MPs are in a privileged position. They can say what they like, inside or outside Parliament, and no-one can sue them. That privilege comes with it absolute responsibility for what comes out of your gob. Second, it's imperative that MPs and peers act responsibly, intelligently and appropriately in the interests of reasoned debate and the promotion of democracy - if they go around talking shit, then people are going to notice that, and even fewer will turn out to vote (not that we got a choice about unelected fossils like Mancroft being in the Lords anyway).

Lord Mancroft told the House of Lords that he was treated at the hospital in 2007, and described the nurses as "grubby and drunken".

It's taken him a whole year to make a complaint. Wow, either he was so badly treated that the trauma is only just subsiding, or it wasn't bad enough then to do anything about. Why didn't he use his privileged position then to speak out, in the national or local press?

"The nurses that looked after me were mostly grubby. We're talking about dirty fingernails, slipshod, lazy."

Dirty fingernails are a big problem for nurses. Shouldn't this man, in a very privileged position, have reported this problem straight away to the supervisor of these nurses, who supposedly all had grubby fingernails? Or did he think it was all right that they were going to be treating other people with grubby fingernails, dressing other people's wounds with grubby fingernails? Why did he sit back and do nothing? Is that the mindset of a politician, or a total dick? Maybe you could excuse an ordinary Joe for not speaking out, but this man is a member of the House of Lords, for Christ's sake; if he can't be bothered, why should anyone else?

But you have to remember a couple of other things about Tory politicians. They're obsessed with clean hospitals. Obsessed. Ever since Michael Howard's nonsensical campaign to 'Bring Back Matron' (matrons exist in hospitals now. But they're not responsible for cleaning. Should trained senior nursing staff be responsible for cleaning?) the idea has persisted that hospital 'superbugs' = 'dirty hospitals'. There may be some truth in that, of course, but if it is, I don't think the obvious solution - paying cleaners more money to clean more thoroughly and often - is a particularly Tory way of doing things; wouldn't go well with the idea of 'efficiency in the public services', which roughly translates as 'pay people as badly as possible and bodge it, if it goes wrong then never mind, at least we haven't thieved people of tax, especially the rich'.

During the debate on NHS patient care Lord Mancroft went on to say: "It's a miracle I'm still alive.

It's a shame you're still alive, more like.

"But worst of all my Lords they were drunken and promiscuous."

Drunk at work - another extremely serious offence, which should have been reported instantly if it were true. Medical staff simply should not be there if they're intoxicated. But again, Mancroft didn't do anything about it. Who comes out of this story looking worse - the hospital staff or this peer? But I don't think he even means they were drunk at work, as we'll see.

As for promiscuous - who gives a cunting fuck? It's 2008, pal. That's allowed nowadays, you know. So long as they weren't fucking in front of you in the ward - and I don't think they were - then you have no right in the world to complain about it. Promiscuity is part of life - as is going out and getting drunk, I might add, especially when you're in a badly paid shit job and treated like scum by people like Mancroft.

"How do I know that? Because if you're a patient and you're lying in a bed, and you're being nursed from either side, they talk across you as if you're not there.

Do you know, I probably wouldn't speak to you either.

"So I know exactly what they got up to the night before, and how much they drank, and I know exactly what they were planning to do the next night, and I can tell you, it's pretty horrifying."

So is he telling us they're drunk, or that they were just drinking? Is he saying they were still drunk because of residual alcohol levels, or is he just upset about their lifestyle, which is their own free choice? I'm thinking the latter. He just doesn't think that people should go out and do what they want in their own free time. Sure, it's not ideal for professional people to be out on the piss the night before work, but so long as your work doesn't suffer then that's the important thing. Coming in to work drunk, however, is completely wrong, and if Mancroft suspected that - I don't think he did - then he should have reported it immediately.

He said he was "kidnapped" from the hospital by his wife, and transferred to a hospital in west London.

A private one, by any chance?

The hospital's deputy chief executive, Brigid Musselwhite, said: "We have received no complaint about this issue, but I will be contacting Lord Mancroft to discuss the matter with him."

Why bother? He couldn't be bothered telling you about it at the time.

So there we have Lord Mancroft: telling people they're not allowed to drink or have sex in their own time, not caring about hygiene in hospitals until several months later, trying to pursue the same old Tory shit about 'dirty hospitals' but not wanting to do anything constructive about it. And so, he is Tory Twat of the week.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Related posts:

1. Flouncing cunt of the week award
2. Flouncing cunt of the week award – August 19, 2002
3. Grumpy Tory OAP in ‘behaves like grumpy Tory OAP’ shock
4. You brainless utter twat
5. Illness? At a hospital?