Blackpool NHS
As you can see, Blackpool Fylde and Wyre NHS trust are well aware that banning smoking on their grounds is entirely unenforceable by law. They admit that smoking in the open air is legal and that there are no plans by government to change that.
Instead, they have taken to enforcing their own made-up laws on the basis that taxpayers are NOT entitled to set foot on property for which they have paid handsomely.
They threaten legal action if their self-important, righteous rules are contravened. And the reason that they feel this is justified should stagger anyone who has ever believed that the NHS are a service, that we are the ones who pay them for that service, and that therefore we should have some say in the matter.
This is because as the legal owner/occupier of the hospital site the Trust is allowed to impose conditions on the use of its premises.
The legal owners are not those who pay for it, according to the NHS.
They take our money, at pain of fines and imprisonment, and then say that those premises are not legally ours. Instead, an unelected body of administrators have installed themselves as legal 'owners' and are dictating what can or cannot be allowed on property which has been built, maintained, staffed, and equipped with our taxes.
They then go further and state that treatment will be withdrawn from those who disobey.
A patient who refuses to stop smoking outside can be advised that they could be asked to leave the hospital; this would be carried out in accordance with the Trust’s policy on withholding/withdrawing treatment from difficult patients.
See, you thought that by paying national insurance contributions, you were entitled to healthcare. After all, Gordon Brown is always saying that the NHS is free to everyone at the point of delivery.
But you were wrong, it seems. The premises your taxes pay for are not property of the taxpayer, and the treatment you have paid towards for all of your life can be withdrawn on the whim of NHS bureaucrats, without any law saying that what you were doing is illegal.
This is just one of the many ridiculous, wriggling replies that NHS trusts up and down the country have been coming out with to justify making illegal what is perfectly legal under law laid down by government.
It was always assumed that by paying NI contributions (along with those paid by your employer), you were entitled to avail yourself of free healthcare when you need it. Not so. According to this document, your local NHS trust can wipe out your years of contributions and the entitlement which that should entail, for whatever reason they deem fit.
No-one voted these people in, yet they are making up laws that go beyond the ones from parliament. We pay their wages yet they ignore us when we don't like what they are doing. We pay for treatment yet they, unelected, have decreed themselves able to deny us what we have paid for. They revel in spreading vile hatred on national radio too.
