If you still harbour doubts about the true mission of the NHS, this should dispel them. And if you think its main business is treating patients, this should disabuse you of that misapprehension.
The staff of this saintly – no, scratch that, I mean divine – institution is now being offered training on Black Lives Matter, as one of the highlights of its extensive curriculum of diversity.
The articles I’ve read on the subject make it unclear whether attendance is elective or compulsory. If it’s the former, I think the government is displaying wishy-washy, weak-kneed liberalism. NHS wokers must spend on such training most of the time left over from filling in hundreds of forms.
What can be more important for a doctor or a nurse than learning about the BLM version of Marxism? Surely not all that recondite medicine?
Anyway, before even reading more about this programme, I’m so aroused (no, not that way, you perverts) that I’m hereby offering my services as one of the tutors. After all, if the course is designed to elucidate the “history, guiding principles and messages of BLM”, I’d like to think that my credentials are unimpeachable.
Ever since BLM first set America on fire, I’ve been writing regularly about it. My last contribution to the study of this vital subject came less than a fortnight ago: http://www.alexanderboot.com/my-apologies-to-the-queen/
Having got this hasty job application out of the way, I’ve decided to read on. After all, the first pupil a teacher must educate is himself.
Turns out this invaluable programme covers such rubrics as “white privilege, unconscious bias and authentic allyship”. Mercifully, the first two terms are straightforward.
White privilege means that, when it comes to emptying patients’ bedpans, white nurses are in the front of the queue. They are administratively empowered to push differently coloured colleagues out of the way, thereby quashing their ambitions for career advancement.
‘Unconscious bias’, on the other hand, has puzzled me at times, which probably means I myself suffer from that disorder. As I understand it, and please correct me if I’m wrong, many white people may be racists without realising it.
Hence, the purpose of the course must be turning unconscious into conscious – and then eradicating it. That’s like some lines of a poem haunting your mind day and night. The best way of handling that problem is to write them down on a piece of paper and then tear it up.
Of course, there’s always the danger that, once made cognizant of his deep-rooted racism, the pupil may quite like it. Suddenly, he may replace his amiable civility towards his chromatically different colleagues with frequent references to the shape of their noses, the thickness of their lips, the size of their genitalia or their rapacious appetite for bananas.
That’s where the art of teaching comes in. A teacher must not only convey the relevant facts, but also inculcate his pupils with the moral values derived therefrom. Again, if you look at my CV, you’ll know that inculcation of moral values figures prominently.
Now, the meaning of the third subject, ‘authentic allyship’, escaped me altogether. I had to look it up on the Authentic Allyship website, only to find out that much of this subject is too subtle for me to grasp.
I did learn that “Allyship can often fall into this bracket of performativity without us realising it”, which I understood to be a bad thing. Down with performativity, I say, even though I haven’t a clue what it is.
Not to worry: true knowledge may be negative as well as positive. Just consider apophatic theology, approaching God not from what he is, but from what he isn’t. Jumping on that train of thought, if my job application succeeds, I hereby foreswear the whole “bracket of performativity”, whatever it is, into which authentic allyship may fall to its detriment.
Apparently, the new course will describe BLM as a “healing” movement, which is an interesting multi-layered metaphor if I’ve ever seen one. Since BLM’s modus operandi focuses on torching commercial buildings, this evokes the image of a cauterised wound, with bleeding stopped by applying extreme heat, usually fire.
In the course of this welcome programme, NHS wokers will learn to look at its practices through a “BLM lens”, thereby “fuelling better racial equity in the health service”. Hear, hear.
What can fuel racial equity better than forcing white doctors and nurses to take the knee and, if they manifest their unconscious bias by refusing, beating them up or, in truly incorrigible cases, necklacing them? (It’s that hidden fiery metaphor again, I hope you appreciate this.)
One plank in the BLM programme that I would focus on is its commitment to defunding the police. Since the NHS suffers from a chronic lack of finance, this initiative would hit two birds with one stone.
First, it would abolish the police, consumed as it is with unconscious bias and cravings for white supremacy. Second, it would free up the funds that could then be channelled into the NHS, where they’ll be put to good use by expanding diversity departments at all hospitals.
As it is, many hospitals have cut the number of beds to accommodate Directors of Diversity with their six-figure salaries, and not necessarily low six figures either. You’ll agree that anyone blessed with the title of Director must have a large staff reporting to him, and the new initiative will solve this problem.
It’s not enough for Directors of Diversity being able merely to optimise facilitation and facilitate optimisation. They must also be able to compartmentalise and departmentalise, and clearly BLM training deserves its own department, or compartment if you’d rather.
Such expansion will eventually help Diversity, with its BLM, Homophobia and Misogyny subdivisions, replace the more customary ECG, ECU, Traumatology, Endocrinology or what have you. I’m sure the road signs one sees in all hospitals are already being amended to that effect.
And if you can’t read the signs, just ask the chap at the information desk for directions to BLM. He’ll be happy to help.
P.S. I don’t understand why we have Kwasi Kwarteng as Business Secretary. Doesn’t this ministry rate a real Kwarteng?
Perhaps that black African Doctor whose deadly mis-diagnosis led to her firing , then re-hiring , will be the diversity director of this program . Failing upwards being the leftist bureaucratic theme.