Going
Going
Gone…..
Remember Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22? Milo who?
People forget him or don’t understand what that part of the
book was about.
Catch-22, the best-selling book and later film is a satire on
an American WW2 bomber base in Sicily. The fliers bombing tours keep getting
extended, each time just as they are about to go home. Each mission is suicidally
dangerous but if you apply to be excused due to mental illness you will be
deemed fit to fly as no sane person would want to fly suicidal missions. Only
the insane would actually do it – but they don’t apply - the moment they make
the application they are deemed fit to fly.
“That’s a good catch
that Catch-22.”
In the background, Milo Minderbinder offers to supply the
squadron’s mess with food and the men with supplies, bought from the black
market. His business ventures grow and grow and become more intrusive. He buys
up the entire Egyptian cotton supply in a giant speculation and then when he
can’t sell the cotton, covers it in chocolate to try to sell it to the fliers as
a snack.
It turns out he sold the silk from their parachutes to pay
for the cotton, then when they need the chutes, the fliers find they’ve gone,
replaced with a share certificate in Minderbinder’s company.
That’s the end result of this creeping privatisation. As the
private part grows, the NHS shrinks and the patients who thought they owned the
NHS, find they don’t.
Casual jobs replace full-time careers which came with
pensions and holidays.
NHS patients get stuck in second class.
Just when you needed the parachute, there’s nothing there.
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
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