The long march reaches its destination.

Looking back, we can see that things seemingly happening overnight were part of that late-recognised ‘long march’ through our institutions. Already well under way, it lengthened its stride in the 1960s, with its ramped-up attack up on the values underpinning Western societies, today reaching a peak of heavy bombardment by basically communist, cultural bullies – assisted by the epidemic of moral cowardice afflicting our hierarchies. Their folding under pressure from noisy, subversive minorities should not have them consistently miscalled our elites, when bearing no resemblance to the time-honoured concept of genuine elites.

The basic target has been Christianity, emphasising the personal responsibility of individuals. And with the problematic Pope Francis sowing confusion with his extraordinary attack on traditional Catholic teachings, the long march nears its end in the chaos and confusion caused by the sheer madness of ‘transgenderism’ – that absurd claim that individuals can be whatever sex they choose, regardless of the one they were born with.

It’s over twenty years since I flew to Christchurch hospital for a proposed biopsy. Arriving at visiting time, conveniently dressed in a suit and carrying an overnight bag, I was ushered by a nurse into a small, eight-bed room, and met with a sudden silence. Four men in various stages of disarray with open pyjama tops watched from opposite me while I was shown to a cubicle where what appeared to be tattooed gang visitors, keeping a very large, groaning young woman company, had spilled over. They reluctantly vacated as this nurse crisply addressed me by my name and loudly told me to get undressed – pulling the curtains across. The silence was almost palpable.

I felt utterly incredulous. ‘Not on your life,’ I said, picking up my bag and following her out. She was not pleased when I asked her where a women’s ward was, telling me the hospital board had decided the new policy to provide mixed wards for men and women patients was a progressive concept.

Obviously, this would be to the embarrassment and mutual discomfort of both. Growing up with brothers and sons of my own, I certainly wasn’t feminist, but both genders are more comfortable with members of their own sex when privacy issues are involved. Looking back, one sees the usual pattern –the Cultural Revolution’s apparatchiks pressuring the usual ‘useful fools’ who so often can be persuaded that a brave new world approach is superior.

When she gathered I had no intention of going back to that room and asked if there were others available with more privacy, she said that if I thought I was special I should have taken out private medical insurance. I had, but, as so often, it does not cover the cost of so many procedures. However, I pointed out that everybody was special… that nobody should be subjected to such an invasion of privacy. I then asked to see the specialist with whom I had an appointment. Apparently, he would not be available for some time. I could wait in a single room temporarily vacated while a patient was away having an operation.

I waited for two hours, apart from a visit from a nice house surgeon who said his wife would feel exactly the same. Then, realising there was going to be no satisfactory resolution, I decided to discharge myself and leave – which I was told I couldn’t do. However, I politely said that I could, and did, calling a taxi to take me to the airport where I was fortunate enough to catch the last plane home. By the time I arrived my doctor husband had already had a call from the specialist, who wasn’t impressed, and was thoroughly supportive.

Twenty years on and a young woman admitted to the local hospital in a critical state has been put into a small room of largely men, not one of them wearing a top. An elderly woman, obviously in pain and understandably depressed is nearby, as is an old man with a painful, hacking cough. Exhausted and worried, she has been unable to sleep at night because of others’ heavy snoring.  Explaining why, she asked to be transferred, which apparently wasn’t possible, according to a tart-tongued nurse.

However did it come to this, that people, who, on holiday, would not share their hotel room with total strangers, are dumped together in a communal room with a total lack of privacy when they are ill – a time when we most need it? Not only are the curtains in this room not pulled around the beds, in flagrant contradiction of our privacy laws which state a patient’s medical information is private – between the patient and doctor –when a doctor or nurse comes to discuss their situation with a patient in the room, everyone overhears what is said. But who voted for poorhouse conditions? Moreover, we know well that if, for example, an important politician or celebrity should be admitted to one of our public hospitals, a private room would be found.

Ironically, in Britain, the suggestion is to plan for hospitals in future to provide rooms for one patient only, to help limit the transmission of viruses.

About the same time as these changes, women’s and men’s hairdressers became unisex, not to everybody’s taste when a woman can find herself placed next to a male acquaintance. I left my own hairdresser when he decided to seat his waiting women clients on a bench in the front window of his salon – surprisingly evocative of women prostitutes in Amsterdam displaying themselves behind street front windows. And now we have unisex toilets where even little girls can encounter what are obviously males using the same facilities… men pretending to be ‘transgender’ – or deluded enough to believe that by ‘self-identifying’ as women they also have a right to be housed in a women’s prison – or to participate in female sporting events. And shockingly, children are now being told in school that they can choose what sex they want to be – and to consider being bisexual.

That all this has happened with such little effective opposition is an enormous indictment on those holding traditional conservative values who have not spoken out. But what happens when their children and grandchildren ask them, in future years, what they did to resist or fight back?