I never looked after David Cameron’s son Ivan who died 2009. But colleagues did.
The Guardian wrote in an editorial the other day that “Mr Cameron has known pain and failure in his life but it has always been limited failure and privileged pain.” Well, I knew this already. At the paediatric hospital where I soon after Mr Cameron’s family trauma occurred was going to do a seven-year stint as a recovery nurse, it was well known that poor people experienced more pain when their children suffered – than rich people did.
One ward sister observed that “while all parents obviously suffer when their children get unwell and maybe even die, you can quite easily see that the poor mums reach another level of despair.” “Yes, mums from an estate, they kind of give it some as they howl – in a way mums from Kensington just don’t, if you know what I mean” added a recently qualified staff member.
After a hectic weekend when the retrieval ambulance had gone warm, transporting small sick darlings from the less affluent backwaters of Kent, full of East European apple pickers and the sorts, the hospital consumption of tissue, designed mainly for tear wiping and nose blowing, skyrocketed.
At King’s College London, which shares its academic facilities with the paediatric hospital, a large, still unpublished, study was made. It concluded that while we all suffer excessively when losing a child, rich people actually seem to suffer less. “If your life is cushioned, your experience of pain will be softer. It’s not rocket science,” one lecturer explained.
Privileged pain. It’s what a wealthy person experiences when they lose a child.[1]
The Guardian has now removed this piece of journalistic insight (but you can read it here) which would have been cross checked by the editorial team before publication and written by its most trusted journalists whose opinions are tried and tested to be of the right kind. An editorial is a paper’s own opinions, its heart and soul.
This censored reflection by a national newspaper’s inner mind is not just a mistake or an error. It’s symptomatic. Like a Freudian slip it reveals what’s going on under the surface.
[1] Until here, this article falls into the category of satire.
In my opinion a loss is a loss and pain is pain no matter what is your social standing. .The only difference is when the more affluent parents can access specialists quicker and pay for care which the less fortunate can’t. Equally the despair of a wealthy parent losing a child cannot be less than than that of people of low income. Care may be different but the loss is the same. There are things that money can’t buy and health is one of them! I feel that the article was crass and in poor taste.
Xx