Conservative councillor derides NHS as “Marxist”

Conservative county councillor John Butcher (Surrey) has lashed out at the NHS in an email to fellow councillors and council officers, describing it as “a Marxist organisation” and “bound to fail”.

He went on to call for health policies to be changed so as to bring about polarisation between those who live healthier and less healthy lifestyles, hoping that those who live healthier lifestyles will be increasingly attracted to areas such as Surrey and those who live less healthy lives will be driven to live in other parts of the country:

Eventually the self-inflicted patients would end up living in ‘equality’ areas that are dominated by politicians who pander to their needs, thus driving more ‘other’ patients out of those areas, as healthcare there will be badly affected by the over-dominance of the self-inflicted.  These ‘other’ patients would move into areas, such as, hopefully, Surrey, where ‘other’ patients are not nearly so adversely affected.  Eventually the country will be sharply divided into two types of area:

4.1          the ‘equality’ ones, where the self-inflicted unhealthy are treated the same as all patients, and

4.2          the ‘others’, such as, hopefully, Surrey.

Average life expectancy will be substantially lower (by, say, 20 years) in the ‘equality’ areas than in the ‘others’…

Any political party that seeks to pander to the needs of the self-inflicted unhealthy, and to win their votes, will suffer twofold:

5.1          mortality will ensure that its voters will be much fewer in number than the ‘others’, and

5.2          by concentrating its voters into particular areas, that party will never be able to win enough seats to dominate Parliament.

Ironically, his anti-NHS hostility came in an email that started with apologising for missing a meeting – due to a hospital appointment.