I read a webchat yesterday about a novel and the dangers that alcohol is doing to the country and how there is a campaign for minimum pricing levels for alcohol, but I didn't read anything that convinced me that we need a Royal Charter mechanism to regulate our free press.
I saw the worst of British cockatoos masquerading as the best.
You see, I think there should be novels written about what went on in our hospitals when some patients called 999 to ask for a drink of water, or when people were drinking out of vases, or when people were lying in their own faeces. I want to know how this could happen and whether anyone knew about it. That's what I think should be the priority. Instead of a campaign for mimimum pricing levels for alcohol, I think the priority should be a campaign for minimum levels of decent care in our hospitals.
I want to see the best of British values and the best of British people, like the brave Julie Bailey who led the Cure the NHS campaign, on our BBC. I want her to be on the New Year's Honours List and I want her to sit in the House of Lords and I want her to hold the Establishment to account and I want her to be on the BBC and on Newsnight repeatedly and I want her to make whoever was responsible for what went on, hang their heads in shame.
I think it is about priorities. Instead of people on the BBC discussing novels, I want to see Julie Bailey discussing hospitals and our NHS. Maybe if healthcare had been a greater priority, then maybe the terrible things we read about would never have occurred.
When it comes to press regulation, it worries me. I don't fully understand it, the Charters and all the rest, but I am worried, maybe wrongly, that it may hinder our free press revealing the truth in future about what goes on in hospitals and elsewhere.
I'm not a progressive, I'm not one of the "metropolitan classes", I'm just a lowly reader of what they call the Daily Fail. But I am worried that just as the Mail was shouted down by the entire Establishment over their reporting of the Liverpool Care Pathway and just as some of their reporting was referred to the Press Complaints Commission, then maybe with Royal Charter regulation they may be hindered in revealing truths about what goes on in our hospitals and what lies behind gagging orders and who is responsible for them.
I know that the Press do things wrong and I know that they can be intrusive on celebrities lives and on ordinary people too, but it worries me that the price of stopping that may be the price of preventing them revealing shocking truths about hospital care and other issues that the progressive elite, the "metropolitan classes" and the Establishment would rather remain concealed.
I don't think it is a price worth paying, which is why I support a free press, free from any form of State regulation. It may be muck-racking sometimes, but equally it is an outstanding protector of our standards and liberties at others.
It is about priorities, and for me, liberty, protection of the people and our standards and desires always come first.