@Fragmentedbrain I get what you are saying - great to see these children being treated but if the NHS can release funding for this, why not local children TOO?
If you were to spend the money to treat British children with this speed, resources etc, you’d be choosing to do it permanently, it would be the new way going forward. You can’t just say ‘we’ll increase funding for the 300 British children top of the queue and then who cares about the next 300.’ That’s a LOT more money.
Goverment spending decisions have multiple benefits to consider (not just the improvement of the thing you want to improve) e.g. political scoring, genuinely caring about treating these innocent victims of war, giving doctors war wound experience etc., and the government has probably decided this one-off has more bang for their buck than cutting cutting cutting much more as would be needed to go full bells and whistles as standard NHS children’s care going forward.
Now would I like to know where money has been found from to fund these treatments so I can make my own assessment of the benefits of this scheme vs whatever was cut? I suppose I would, much like anything else the government does, but undoubtably this is so much cheaper spend-wise than permanent improvement to the NHS in our current poor economic situation, so I’m not too worked up that I won’t find out. However, if it turns out the money spent would have covered 10 years of GOSH care for all British children at lightening speed then my ears would perk up.
Until we get a handle on the cost of our debt which is the massive problem, a humanitarian one-off spend with multiple benefits doesn’t seem that much to get annoyed about for me (those poor children, it’s so sad). I say that as someone who very much thinks that the tax payer, the citizen, the person who for 40 hours a week shovels shit and gives a portion of their hard-earned to the government and trusts the government to spend it on their, the citizen’s, behalf, has every right to care when they spend it on non-citizens, and I think it’s normal to want to scrutinise expenditure more closely when the portion we’re allowed to keep doesn’t stretch as far, but the middle classes often don’t understand that because they aren’t on the REAL breadline, so they just assume you’re an ‘-ist’ or ‘-phobe’ of some type.
For all I know, you might have hate in your heart for people of other races or nationalities or creeds, but you certainly haven’t written anything like that so I hope if you’re a good egg the brutal comments haven’t been too rough. The milk of human kindness is in short supply in public discourse the past decade.