Face Palm of the day, “Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K.”

Face Palm of the day, “Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K.”

August 11, 2009  |  General

In a ill thought out, incor­rect and frankly insult­ingly wrong art­icle the Investors Busi­ness Daily have lowered even the low stand­ards required by Amer­ican Journ­al­ism.  Amongst the detritus of para­graphs, claim­ing at one point that a group of NHS thugs decides who lives and who dies, comes a legendary statement.

Here it is:

“People such as sci­ent­ist Stephen Hawk­ing wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Ser­vice would say the life of this bril­liant man, because of his phys­ical han­di­caps, is essen­tially worthless.”

For those people who live on the far side of the moon, or the US, there are a couple of mis­takes in that com­ment. Essentially:

  1. Stephen Hawk­ing is Brit­ish and lives in the UK.
  2. Stephen Hawk­ing is Brit­ish and lives in the UK.

I appre­ci­ate that this is really only one point, but it is such a big one that it was worth men­tion­ing twice.  As one inter­net wag put it, “Well, they prob­ably couldn’t tell he was Brit­ish from his accent!”

Another puts it this way:

Stephen Hawking

Hawk­ing, his face a mask of ter­ror, wisely cov­ers his genitals

while NHS thugs pelt him with fruit. Tra­gic­ally, Hawking’s

con­di­tion could be cured by only an apple a day…

I don’t know much about the cur­rent US President’s plans for the reform­ing of the US health ser­vice, but I do know that before I would com­ment on it I would at least check my basic facts.

Regards,

Basho

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  1. In a fant­astic adendum to this story, Pro­fessor Hawk­ing has spoken out in favour of the NHS. While col­lect­ing a medal from the US Pres­id­ent he took the opor­tun­ity to put this record straight. Little did they know that Hawk­ing is hardly the quiet Cam­bridge Don and was by accouts, ‘big man on cam­pus,’ until his con­di­tion struck him down. The fact that he is alive at all is thanks to the NHS not des­pite it. Truly owned.

  2. I like that fact that Amer­ic­ans change their mind so often. A couple of years ago we were its “staunchest allies”.

    Today they claim that “I don’t want this coun­try to become like Rus­sia or a Social­ist state”, insinu­at­ing by proxy that the UK is akin to Rus­sia. I don’t think so.

    Land of the free indeed. (Well it is free if you have the money to pay for it. Ironically)

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