[Mrs. Don-o]

Yes, this is the notorious Liverpool Care Pathway in its classic form: patient casually assessed as terminal without even a real g.d. diagnosis, heavily sedated, and then denied water so the diagnosis became self-fulfilling.

They've done this to thousands since the 1990's. It's not just Alfie. But God bless Alfie's father and mother forever, because they fought it. They did fight it. And it didn't have to turn out this way. The "health" "care" bureaucrats COULD have just said, "OK, just take your little working-class whelp and go."

But no. Because that wouldn't have made their point: "He belongs to us."

Remember that Orwell based 1984 directly on British bureaucrats, not Nazis or Stalinists.

[supremedoctrine]

VERY good point Mrs. Don-O about Orwell basing 1984 on the British Bureaucracies-—same with Kafka with the E. European bureaucrats.