Twitter

An extra special bonus blog up today! 2 Blogs in a day! Imagine! Or, actually, don’t, just read it, imagination not required for that. Being a nerd, I like computers, and the internet, and some stuff on the internet, I really enjoy. Twitter is one of those things. It allows for brief updates on what my friends are doing and I’m also able to keep tabs on what’s happening with various people whose work I enjoy, mainly comedy types and writers. I find it both useful and entertaining. And last week, I hugely enjoyed what happened. Briefly, Graham Linehan, the writer behind the IT Crowd and Father Ted had read about an article from America that criticsed the UK National Health Service. It’s most outrageous claim was that if Stephen Hawking lived in the UK, he’d be dead now!

He does live in the UK and he’s not dead.

Now, we in the UK all know that the NHS is not perfect. I would argue that it does the best it can with the resources it has and if we want a better health service then the priorities of government money is the place to start, but that’s a digression and a whole other set of arguments. The real point is that in this country, we have a system where there is healthcare available to anyone who needs it. So we then see it criticised by people who want their country to maintain a system where healthcare is available to anyone who can afford it.

So Mr Linehan gets onto Twitter and organises a new trending topic, #welovethenhs. With only minimal encouragement, soon people are tweeting their experiences with the NHS and within an hour, it’s the top topic. The number one thing on twitter that everyone was talking about was their positive experiences with the NHS. I tweeted a reference to an operation I’d had. Other people tweeted that they or someone close to them owed their continued existence to the care of the NHS. People tweeted a mix of interesting, amusing and touching stories of how this country’s free Healthcare had benefited them. It was actually an amazing thing to behold. From one outrageous article, suddenly thousands of people were standing up to defend the NHS, and organization that in the general media in the UK, we only ever hear criticised. But then, when someone goes in for a routing operation, experiences good care and attention and then leaves, it’s not an exciting story in the tabloids. But when thousands of people all at once stand up and tell their story, it’s almost overwhelming. You suddenly realise how fortunate we are to have this free healthcare service, and how much they actually get right, while we only normally hear what they get wrong. It was also so much better than a long string of sniping about the article itself. A much nicer approach than hundreds of people saying ‘Hawking lives in the UK, this was written by idiots!’ over and over, people actually all united to tell really positive tales and show their appreciation. I hope that everyone working for the NHS got to see it.

I’d recently become deeply frustrated with the way a mob mentality would develop over issues in the news, as people seemed more and more willing to shape their opinions based on what the tabloid papers would say, rather than using their brains and thinking about things or checking for accurate information. Last week showed me that mass communication can be used in a marvelous way. Rather than everyone subscribing to one viewpoint decided in the media, people came forward with their own stories. It’s a shame we can’t do this for more things. There are a huge amount of other agencies working very hard to help improve the quality of life for a lot of people in this country, but are massively underappreciated and often vilified for it. Maybe if every child who was saved from abusive parents or carers tweeted appreciation, or victims of crime who had their property recovered by the police all told their story at once? It’s not an easy thing to organise. Graham Linehan already had many, many followers and was able to demonstrate an unfair criticism to spur people into action, which then snowballed. But when it did happen, it was something that made me feel a little better about humanity as a whole.

Shame that for some, it’s a prompt to have a go at something they don’t use or understand. http://bit.ly/i2thA But, considering everything I’ve said, all in all, it seems nicer to be a twat than to call people one.