Friday 19 June 2009

Are They Trying To Recreate The Recent Belfast Scenes Here?

Because it certainly seems like it:
Gipsies and travellers should be given priority in NHS hospitals and GP surgeries, doctors have been told.

They will be fast-tracked for doctors, nurses and even some dentist appointments above all other patients.
Are they insane? This couldn’t be worse timing…
GPs have also been told to see any travellers who simply walk in without an appointment, even if all consultation times for the day are full.
It gets even better worse…
They will also be given longer consultations than other patients. Five or ten minutes is the average but travellers will be given 20 minutes and allowed to bring relatives into the consulting rooms.
And don’t think it’s just the patients who will have to put up with this.

They have plans for the staff too:
Staff will be given 'mandatory cultural awareness' training so they can fully understand what it is like to be a traveller or gipsy.
Oh, ffs…!
The guidelines have been introduced because, under race laws, gipsies and travellers are defined as minority ethnic groups and the NHS is obliged to consider their special needs and circumstances.

Yet no special treatment is promised for other groups such as those from the Asian sub-continent or Africa.
So, will common sense prevail, and these guidelines therefore be scrapped?

Or will this be an excuse for those aforementioned groups to start saying ‘Hey! Us too!’?
Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'No one should get priority treatment in the NHS apart from our Armed Forces, to whom we owe a special debt of gratitude.

'Decisions about who should be treated first should be based on a patient's medical needs, not their ethnic group.

'NHS managers need to get off doctors' and nurses' backs and start letting them get on with what they do best - looking after sick people.

'Such a policy of fast-tracking one section of society over another goes against the founding principles of the NHS’.
Well said. No ‘Ah, but…’ from Call-Me-Dave’s mob here. Makes a nice change…
Traveller spokesman Gratton Puxon, from the illegal camp at Crays Hill in Essex, welcomed the initiative.

He said: 'The problem stems from years ago when there was simply no access to healthcare, but things have greatly improved. Health workers visit the site quite regularly if people have chronic problems.'
I bet, in true NHS fashion, they urge their customers to abstain from alcohol, cigarettes, bareknuckle figting and dangerous sports like buggy-riding on motorways.

Don’t they?
The Department of Health said: 'We are aware that gipsies and travellers have experienced tremendous difficulties in accessing primary care.

'Partly as a result, community members experience the worst health inequalities of any disadvantaged group.
Hmm, could that be lifestyle related?
'The framework suggests fast-tracking for two reasons. First, as a matter of urgency, inroads need to be made into the health problems of gipsies and travellers.

'Second, if mobile community members are not seen quickly, the opportunity could be lost as they move on or are moved on. This should not be to the detriment of service provision to the settled community.'
How is it not to the detriment of the ‘settled community’ if these people are to be given priority treatment under the NHS…?

I’m really beginning to wonder if there isn’t some agenda driving this.

Perhaps, as Leg-Iron has often suggested, they truly do want ‘a summer of discontent’?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

During a recent hospital stay, a relative of mine was shocked by the dirty and untidy state of the ward showers, despite the seemingly conscientious cleaners on duty.

Over the next few days, she noticed that a large family visiting another patient would slip out one by one and return with wet hair and that, after visiting times, the showers had been visited by enough people to use up a stack of clean towels.

I'm not saying they were travellers, of course; just that someone seems to feel the NHS owes them special treatment.

Incidentally, it's a small town; my relative later heard on the grapevine that every patient on the ward at the time went on to develop MRSA.

Von Spreuth said...

There IS one way to cut this RIGHT in the bud. BUT the bloody idiot British general public could not protest their own death sentence if they were supplied with 1000 of the best barristers in the world free.

As SOON as this happens what the TAX paying patients need to do is to immediatley jump up and cause such a fuss that the doctor either gives in and sends the "traveller" to the back of the queue OR calls the police. At THIS point, when the police turn up, the TAX payer needs to start screaming one word "DISCRIMINATION!!!!!"

It seems to work for them

And a repeat of a point I made yesterday;

WHAT "traveller community"??? The PERMENAT SITES of these tinks and gypoes are springing up like fucking MUSHROOMS (Which I think these councils may have partaken to readily of). How does THAT qualify them as "travellers"?

You can not have it BOTH bloody ways arse holes.

THIRD point. IF they are an "ethnic minority" except for the fact that there will be damage shown by in breeding, I challenge ANY scientist to show us the gene that makes people live in a caravan, tar mac driveways, wreck local pubs, leave piles of shite wherever they go, drive round in brand new 4X4s from the earning on door to door joint casing.... oh sorry, I mean "clothes pegs selling", and "fortune telling", and half inch anything not actualy welded to the ground AND pad locked.

Von Brandenburg-Preußen.

Angry Exile said...

As I said in response to Julia's other post, there's a lifestyle choice going on here. If people want to live in such a way that accessing the NHS and other services (and I won't even go into the pros and cons of them being there in the first place) that's their choice. But why the fuck should those who choose to live in such a way that the can get services easily be inconvenienced? Can't have your cake and eat it.

North Northwester said...

"It will go on trial for between three and five years, Although PCTs do not necessarily have to follow the guidelines, they could be breaking human rights law and the Race Relations Act of 2000 if they do not."

So, voluntary but compulsory as usual in New Labour's Britain.

I guess this disproves the 'intimidated by Islamist violence' theory of officialdom's dhimmi appeasing of Muslim requests for privileges, huh?
Travellers have no history of violence against the authorities or each other at all, do they?

By the way , a lot of these 'gypsies' are merely foreign-originating travellers not gypsies at all and are soundly hated as nomadic semi-criminals by the Romany gypsies who tend to work for a living and look down on doleys as chavs.

I have a millionaire gypsy friend and he got rich by trading and other productive work - not lifting others' valuables.

Still, another score thousand BNP votes for the main parties to be utterly disgusted and mystified about, eh?

Macheath said...

I don't like the sound of 'allowed to bring relatives into the consulting rooms'.

While I'd like to think that the majority would not abuse this privilege, there is surely a risk that staff will be intimidated or worse.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Oh God.

Rob said...

Labour's latest wheeze - don't pay taxes and get priority treatment over those that do, just because you are part of a pet minority group. I now hate this country so very, very much.

They should be prosecuted under incitement to riot for this.

Dr Evil said...

The problem with the NHS is the numbers of adult patients that are treated who have never paid tax or national insurance. If they all did or had, no problem. These pikeys are notorious for paying no tax at all. there are very few real gypsies. most travellers are what were called Irish tinkers (not a separate ethic group at all in reality) and I know where I would send them given the chance and sod the EU law.

JuliaM said...

"...just that someone seems to feel the NHS owes them special treatment."

Well, it's 'free' after all!

Except, it's not, and never has been...

"As SOON as this happens what the TAX paying patients need to do is to immediatley jump up and cause such a fuss that the doctor either gives in and sends the "traveller" to the back of the queue OR calls the police."

If enough people started to stand up for themselves, we'd soon have less of this.

But the British piublic is too apathetic. It seems only celebrities and football, and maybe reality tv shows, gets them going now...

JuliaM said...

"So, voluntary but compulsory as usual in New Labour's Britain. "

Yup, well spotted. The proverbial offer you can't refuse.

Isn't it always the way?

"..there is surely a risk that staff will be intimidated or worse."

I can't see any other reason for this, frankly. It can't be a language barrier thing, surely?

"The problem with the NHS is the numbers of adult patients that are treated who have never paid tax or national insurance. "

The increasing numbers...