Justice for the dead

If terrorists killed 120,000 British people, the UK would be trying to bomb them out of existence.

If another country killed 120,000 British people, we would be at war.

In both of those scenarios, the right wing press would be screaming for blood and retribution.

It is equally true I think that if a private company, a food, a procedure or anything of that ilk was linked to 120,000 deaths there would be public outcry, investigations, prosecutions. The perpetrators would likely be shut down.

The British Medical Journal has explicitly linked government policy to nearly 120,000 deaths in the UK, with the over sixties and those in care being hit worst. More details here – http://blogs.bmj.com/bmjopen/2017/11/15/health-and-social-care-spending-cuts-linked-to-120000-excess-deaths-in-england/

The BBCs didn’t really run with it as a story, for reasons. I have no idea what the reasons were. To the best of my knowledge, there is no criminal investigation under way. No one in government has resigned over it.

The dead deserve justice. I don’t see any difference between killing people via terrorism and killing them via government policy. Not when those policies are designed to harm and obviously going to hurt and clearly putting the most vulnerable at risk for political reasons. Terrorism is violence with a political agenda. Austerity is a political agenda that kills. Unfortunately we’ve no mechanism for dealing with political violence when it comes from the establishment and kills on this scale.