Welcome to Dickensian Britain

Britain is Suffering in Shocking Ways — But Its Leaders Don’t Care

Image Credit: Elizabeth Davies, who was left in agony for 25 hours, on the floor, with a hip injury, waiting for an ambulance.

Take a hard look at the picture above — if you can stomach it for more than a second or two, that is. What is it? Who is it? Where was it taken? What story is it telling? The old woman looks like she might be a refugee. Or have just survived a war. Or perhaps some natural disaster befell her.

Do you want to hear the real story? Prepare to be absolutely shocked. “A 93-year-old woman was left ‘screaming in pain’ while lying on the floor with a broken hip during a 25-hour ambulance wait.”

Welcome to Dickensian Britain. Think about that for a second. It’s not just a picture. It’s a portrait. Of a failed state. A society in profound, utterly shocking, jaw-dropping levels of distress. It’s not just one story, but dozens, thousands, millions, of the staggering level of ruin that Britain inflicted on itself.

A 93 year old woman…screaming in pain…waiting25 hours…for an…ambulance? Tell me your stomach doesn’t turn. It doesn’t, because most of us are moral, sane, decent people. But Britain’s leaders appear to be no such thing. They appearnot to care at all.

So, like I said, welcome to Dickensian Britain. It’s not just about the dire, head-spinning, stomach-churning distress people are going through, the mind-blowing descent into impoverishment.

It’s also about the other half of what Dickens dramatized. Indifference. Cruelty. Scorn. From the very top. The really shocking part of the story isn’t just that the poor old lady was screaming in pain, waiting more than a day for an ambulance…it’s that Britain’s leaders essentially just say: “What’s the problem? Suck it up!”

It is nothing short of astonishing. Words fail me at this point, and that rarely happens, but this, it has. What can you say when a nation’s leaders literally…don’t care…about this extreme, off-the-charts level of ruin? When they have no apologies to offer, no plans to put in place, no course to correct…when they think that grandmas screaming in pain waiting more than a day for an ambulance…isn’t even a problem? Shrug — hey, grandma, I don’t know, take some aspirin. Ambulances? Those are only for people who deserve them. Not you. Sorry, grandma, if you die, you die. Did you really deserve to live anyways? Happy Christmas!!

That’s what Ebenezer Sunak’s government is practically saying to Britain. They’re not being told, for example, oh God, what an emergency, don’t worry, more are on the way, we’re fixing it. They’re being told not to even callthe emergency services. You die, you die. Happy Holidays, from Ebenezer Sunak and the Team at Brexit, Inc! Good luck, you’re going to need it. If the lack of heating doesn’t kill grandma, well, I guess the lack of doctors, nurses, paramedics, ambulances, money, and everything else basic in a society just might. Hey — remember — Ebenezer Sunak loves you. Grin.

What do you even say to that? Tell me, because I’d like to know. I’d like to say just that, but even I’m speechless, because this level of neglect is absolutely unprecedented in the modern history of rich societies. I have never seen it happen anywhere else, because it hasn’t. But before I continue that part of the story, let me tell you how bad it really is, because we’ve only — I know, it’s crazy — just begun.

You might think to yourself, well, surely that’s an isolated incident, right? That can’t be…the norm? Old women screaming in pain for over a day…waiting for help, any kind of help, to arrive. Surely that’s an exception.

You’d be wrong. don’t take it from me. Take it from paramedics themselves. Ask one, and it seems they’ve all got a story like the above.

Tom, 33, who also did not want to give his last name, has worked with East Midlands Ambulance Service for five years and said he would be striking on Wednesday if he was on duty. “I’ve attended elderly patients who have been on the floor with broken hips for over 20 hours.”

Or take this example:

Former GP receptionist Deb Robinson, 53, said her son and his partner called 111 at 6pm on Tuesday and were told their newborn, struggling with his breathing and coughing, needed an ambulance. The parents of the baby, who remains in A&E waiting on a bed, were forced to rush him to the hospital themselves at 11pm.