Here in Ghana people are stunned by the announcement that a bond of £3,000 will have to be submitted by visa applicants to the UK, redeemable on return.
It is unpleasant for a nation to be singled out as comprised of particularly untrustworthy individuals against whom special measures are needed. Theresa May appears quite deliberately to be singling out countries whose citizens are normally black or brown – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Ghana and Nigeria. They are all citizens with extremely close ties to the UK. For example, all of those countries supplied large numbers of men to British armed forces in two World Wars; with little resulting gratitude.
The true level of Britain’s regard for the Commonwealth is disclosed in all its arrogance; citizenship of the Commonwealth countries with the longest link to the UK will become a positive disadvantage in visa application. Israeli settlers living in Occupied Palestine on the West Bank, incidentally, will still be allowed to enter the UK without any visa at all, despite membership of neither Commonwealth nor EU. Paradoxical, isn’t it?
The measure shows the arrogant British disdain for these countries – of which India pre-eminently but also Ghana are fast growing and important trading partners. Undoubtedly Ghana will retaliate with measures which hurt British businesses; many of my good friends are senior Ghanaian politicians, and they are all furious. The rhetoric the British employ about transformation from colonial status to a modern partnership of equals is exposed for the tissue of lies it has always been. This is a straightforward racist measure, aimed at securing the racist vote to the Tories.
Not does it make any sense. If you are intending to enter the UK under false pretences, and have the intent illegally to settle and start a new life there, then £3,000 is scarcely a deterrent given the substantial economic gains you intend to make over the long period you intend to stay. It will rather seem a good investment; people will find the money. The people it will deter are those who never intended to overstay. The extra cash upfront, to the businessman for a business trip, for the student coming to study, for the tourist will drive them to go elsewhere, to the UK’s net loss.
More cruelly it will deter decent middle class people from coming to see grandchildren in the holidays, from going to the niece’s wedding, from going to graduation. Those things will become the prerogative of the wealthy, those with plenty of cash to spare.
This does nothing to deter illegal immigration. It merely demonstrates populist racism, demonstrates contempt for some of the UK’s best-disposed friends, and demonstrates that the government thinks the right to travel is only for the rich. It is contemptible.
Agree Suhayl. Yet another stick to beat already demoralized staff. That is the Con Dem agenda
Mechanisms for collecting the cost of treatment from patients not entitled to NHS care already exist. Hospitals have finance departments for that purpose.
Some of the ‘foreign patients’ aka ‘migrants’ or even ‘immigrants’, come from countries we have destroyed or pillaged incidentally so we shouldn’t be too hard on them.
The BiBiCee said this morning that unpaid bills for treatment amount to £24m. They did not say what period was covered. I think they were quoting the Mail!
A message here this morning from a medic I know.
‘Estimated cost of NHS services for foreign patients – 0.05 to 0.2% of total.
Estimated cost of Health and Social Care Act ‘reforms’, not announced in any election manifesto – £3 billion which is roughly 3% of the total NHS budget.
Bill for treating road trauma – £several billion. Hospitals can claim up to £1,300 from insurance companies (when I was working), when claims were settled – ie after several years. Few hospitals had the oomph or back up to follow these up. I encouraged the ‘managers’ to go for it.’
~~~
And a ps. Don’t have an accident or get ill in Cornwall. Their services are in chaos. There has already been a scandal about the privatisation of their out of hours GP services with the provider altering statistics and providing poor or non existent care. Now the NHS 111 service there is in limbo –
NHS Direct pulls out of Cornwall NHS 111 helpline
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-23113571
and the board members of the trusts are resigning. Imagine working in the system at the moment with this scenario likely to spread round the country,
Cornwall hospital trust chairman resigns after less than a week
Royal Cornwall Hospital Mike Higgins said he resigned because he could not unite the hospital trust’s board
Related Stories
New interim health chair announced
Chairman of hospital trust resigns
Hospitals chief ‘distressed’ at row
An interim chairman appointed less than a week ago at a hospital trust, after the resignation of the previous chairman, has himself resigned.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-23086746
~~
Jeremy Hunt better head for the hills.
Good to be in fucking Australia and waxing lyrical about bollocks as ever. what if the ill “immigrant” were to be struck with Lassa fever, Yellow fever, or any of the other contagions of highly dangerous pathogens? Yeah, hate can have awful consequences and come back to bite the hater on the arse really hard.
Further, as your kind of Jayne Mansfield supporting fossil would not have time to learn, or begin to understand; the right to food, and the right to shelter, which ought to have been amended to the universal human rights charter, if it were not for the objections and the veto of the “freedom lovin democratic” US efforts in the UN.
How about a far more simpler solution to your xenophobia? Stop your “governments” fucking around in the far off lands and nicking the chattel and wares of the would be immigrants? These would be “immigrants” lacking any means of supporting themselves in their own countries of origin, up sticks and set off on the road as itinerant labour prepared to do any kind of work. Included to put up with playing punch bag to the bigots and politicians alike. There seems to be a lot of pleasure derived from abusing these immigrants, by certain cretinous elements in every society. Fact that these would be “immigrants” would far rather stay with their own families and circle of friends and enjoy their lives, instead of setting off on journeys in search of jobs and a better life, because their own country has been sucked off dry by the sanctimonious bastards who keep abusing them in the first place.
Stop meddling in other nations affairs, and let the people of the world have the opportunity of earning a livelihood in their own lands wherever these maybe. Whilst Syrians are getting “helped” to be “free and democratic”, Iraqis are too busy coping with their “freedom an democracy”, same as the Afghans, Yemenies, Libyans, Somalians, ………. there will always be a stream of vulnerable butts to be kicked by the likes of you and your mates, the suck up and kick down wankers who can hardly fight their way out of a fucking paper bag, getting pleasured playing the master race.
Jemand, it depends what kind of society one wants to have. There’s always lots of money for dropping bombs on foreign people, it seems to me. People who live here or who become ill while visiting should be treated, free of charge. We all pay for one another. But whatever, I do not think that health professionals should become border guards. If they want us to start checking ID cards, insurance details, etc,. like in the USA, then the authorities can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.
“If people are entitled to ‘free’ healthcare, surely they should be entitled to ‘free’ basic food and ‘free’ accomodation. How are these any different?”
No different.
They are entitled to those as well.
*
Hospital doctors announce decision to ignore the Ministry of Health directive and to continue treating undocumented migrants
Prior to the May 6th elections, the minister of health, Loverdos, announced undocumented migrants were to no longer receive any treatment in public hospitals in Greece. In response, hospital doctors issued, through their union body, the following statement
source in greek
Doctors: “We will treat undocumented migrants. No to Loverdos’ credentials to the [Nazis of the] Golden Dawn!”
http://blog.occupiedlondon.org/2012/05/17/hospital-doctors-announce-decision-to-ignore-the-ministry-of-health-directive-and-to-continue-treating-undocumented-migrants/
Thanks, Fedup. Well argued with not a scintilla of sneering, psychotic rage and inane hostility. *hug*
Suhayl, you said medical care should be “free” and then say “we all pay for one another”. May I suggest that both statements are incorrect. Inasmuch as you acknowledged that it is not indeed “free” but must be paid for and also that the burden of the cost is not equally or universally distributed.
Furthermore, this issue has nothing to do with dropping bombs, directly, although the misallocation of resources does in fact impact on the quality of social services such as healthcare. When it comes to issues of finance, we can look at all wasteful expenses and say that they have the same financial impacts – ie money is fungible.
I also think it is an exaggeration to say that health professionals will be required to act as border guards any more than bus conductors are tax collectors. They have a responsibility to account for their services and not simply bill the public for “free” delivery of unprovided services to anonymous or fictitious patients.
Like I have said previously, if you all want to impose a moral obligation on yourselves to meet the burden of improving the lives of others, then you’d better back up your moral posturing with the means of delivering on your promises. Otherwise, you’re just writing blank cheques that bounce.
PS – the above exchange is another example of conflating personal preference with observation and extrapolating all sorts of nasty character traits.
Flaming June 30 Jun, 2013 – 10:41 am
“Jeremy Hunt better head for the hills.”
Yes he had. The (refreshingly radical?) pensioners group DAGE are so angry that Hunt will not talk to them they are organising a coach trip to visit him at home.
DAGE broadcast on resonance. They are on at 14:00 today. It’s great radio.
http://www.resonancefm.com
Cornwall again. Poor man. Hope he has entitlement to NHS care and treatment. If not I hope he had his credit card handy as he was stretchered in, just like in Amerika (and Australia I believe?).
Prussia Cove cliff fall man airlifted to hospitalA man has been airlifted to hospital after falling from cliffs in Cornwall.
The man, who is in his 30s, fell about 35ft (11m) at Prussia Cove near Porthleven on Saturday evening.
Falmouth Coastguard co-ordinated the rescue involving a helicopter from RNAS Culdrose and the Penzance coastguard team.
The man was flown to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth with serious, but not life-threatening, injuries.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-23117205#
~~~
The next move will be to exclude NHS patients from care if the injuries arise from sport or leisure activities.
So while the government is throwing disabled people out of their homes for having a bedroom too many they have given the security services a 3% above inflation rise in their £1.9 billion budget.
Thanks Phil I will try to catch it later.
http://resonancefm.com/schedule
The Lewisham hospital group who have their A&E and maternity services threatened have a ‘Hunt for Hunt’ campaign going, They recently went down to Farnham in Surrey, which is in his constituency, to beard him in his den.
He picked up the poisoned chalice fron Lansley who now sits on the Front Bench organising the business. Milton, one of Lansley’s ministers, has been made a junior Whip, Burns has gone to Transport and the useless Burstow was kicked out of the government. He has the chutzpah now to concern himself with planned hospital closures in his constituency, afraid that he might lose his seat on the gravy train come 2015. I called him useless but he was not useless to his masters, at whose bidding he aided the imposition of the H&SC Act 2012 on the populace.
Couldn’t make it up.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/9528849/Paul-Burstow-criticises-dangerous-and-flawed-plans-to-close-hospitals-after-being-sacked-as-a-health-minister.html
Flaming June 30 Jun, 2013 – 12:17 pm
“They recently went down to Farnham in Surrey, which is in his constituency, to beard him in his den.”
OK that’s presumably what I heard DAGE talking about. Great stuff.
Jemand’s posts are convincing and he has had the better of his critics – the post at 11h30 is especially hard-hitting and, I think, unanswerable by any reasonably same person who approaches the matter with an open mind rather with the intent of sumply seeking to find fault in every single thing the UK govt. does.
While on the subject, I refer to the following, posted at 10h41:
“Mechanisms for collecting the cost of treatment from patients not entitled to NHS care already exist. Hospitals have finance departments for that purpose.”
________
If that is the case, what is the poster complaining about wrt to these tightening up measures? And secondly, yes, there are finance departments, who seem unable, inter alia, to recover a deal of money from people who’ve had treatment and then buggered off abroad again.
“if you all want to impose a moral obligation on yourselves to meet the burden of improving the lives of others” – we already have this obligation. It’s called ‘humanity’. It’s also, as Suhayl points out, entirely selfish: we all share the benefits.
Of course, if you’d rather have a system where the efforts of the many increasingly and disproportionately benefit a very rich few (feudalism, I believe it used to be called, or slavery), then you seem to be in tune with government thinking.
“then you’d better back up your moral posturing with the means of delivering on your promises” – syntactical confusion aside (is ‘posturing’ the same as ‘promising’?) are you really trying to address this to a doctor, among other people?
Why on earth should we pay for these bloody foreigners to get free healthcare when its so much more efficient to bomb them to smithereens in their own lands?
And its for their own good of course.How else would they receieve Freedom and Democracy??
I jest,tragically,of course.
“Cornwall again. Poor man. Hope he has entitlement to NHS care and treatment. If not I hope he had his credit card handy…”
(post at 12h02 from she whose name one should apparently not mention)
____________
He will most certainly have entitlement if he is lawfully resident in the UK or a bona fide visitor.
Most govts advise their citizens to take out insurance when travelling abroad to top up medical cover and to ensure that treatment where required is financially affordable.
Hope this clarifies.
Phil
29 Jun, 2013 – 1:09 pm
“So, what do you think of Left Unity? I am no particular fan of Loach but considering the labour party is lost, is this the only game in town?”
You could be right Phil but without the financial backing of the unions I fear it will fail.
Well done. As usual, emotional resonance takes precedence over logical coherence – because it feels good.
An intellectually poor attempt was made to falsely imply that I am advocating a bad system over a good one. If I am going to advocate for any particular system, it would be one that simultaneously delivers high quality health care and is fully paid for. Not one that promises quality and then delivers excuses because of financial problems.
But the reality is too much to bear for fantasists. You can spend your whole GDP on health care and people will still be sick and dying. How do you explain that?
Dream on dreamers, and whinge and whine all you like because you can’t change a basic fact of humanity – we don’t work for “free”.
‘….we don’t work for “free”.’
You would be surprised at how many people in the UK work for free, either as volunteers or actually in employment on rock bottom wages. Have you heard of workfare?
“we don’t work for “free”..
We can. All that is required is evolution in our consciousness. Dollars destroy everything. An RBE will hold back our end of life.
Flaming June
29 Jun, 2013 – 5:59 pm
“I am sending it to my MP, who is a Conservative, with a plea to Cameron not to supply further arms or weaponry to the rebels.”
Take care Mary:
“The Malicious Communications Act. That Act, from 1988, says that someone who sends another person material which is grossly offensive or indecent and is sent in order to cause the recipient distress or anxiety is guilty of an offence. The offence can apply to letters, email and other forms of communication.”
http://www.out-law.com/page-7803
Good luck with your system of volunteer doctors, nurses, anaesthetists, orderlies, cleaners, technicians, administrators, ambulance drivers etc etc. I should imagine service quality will improve with having volunteers too.
Obviously you will save some money by eliminating the accounts department, obviated by your “free” system of health care for anonymous patients because everything is “free” and service delivery cannot be traced to an end user. I think astronomers call that a ‘black hole’.
“emotional resonance takes precedence over logical coherence – because it feels good.”
please demonstrate the ‘illogicality’: please also clear up your syntactical confusion earlier?
nothing necessarily wrong in ‘feeling good’ by the way – as your like-minded poster, Habbakuk is consistently underlining. Of course, since life is nuanced, it all depends on what makes you ‘feel ood’: I wouldn’t advise it for a psychopath.
“Not one that promises quality and then delivers excuses because of financial problems” – do you know anything about the appropriation of NHS funding by managers and PFI schemes? I think you cannot. Please read up.
“But the reality is too much to bear for fantasists. You can spend your whole GDP on health care and people will still be sick and dying. How do you explain that?”
Is this meant to be logical? People will always get sick and, yes, we will all die. The issue under discussion was the refusal of medical intervention to a certain section of people: the Greek doctors in the link I gave above had a word for them. Incidentally, I admire the conflation of doctors and bus conductors earlier: have met many decent bus conductors who have let poor people on without paying. Less able to do so now, of course, thanks to surveillance by much richer people, who one rarely sees on public transport.
correction ‘good’.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)
29 Jun, 2013 – 8:50 pm
“Doug Scorgie. 1.58pm Radonski Caprile is a bad loser.”
“Thank you for reminding us that the full name of the losing candidate in the recent Presidential election in Venezuela is “Radonski Caprile”.
Playing games again HB.
You “forgot” to state that the message you referred to was from Flaming June but implying it was from me.
My post:
doug scorgie
29 Jun, 2013 – 1:58 pm
The Venezuelan right-wing only accepts democracy if they win:
“As part of ongoing attempts to prevent President Nicolas Maduro from consolidating his leadership in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, right-wing forces at home and abroad have reissued false claims that he was born in neighboring Colombia.”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/9771
You have to laugh really.
June’s post:
Flaming June
29 Jun, 2013 – 6:13 pm
“Doug Scorgie. 1.58pm Radonski Caprile is a bad loser.”
You’re not as clever as I thought you were HB and you underestimate people on this blog.
Were the parasitic elites not continually fleecing us, there’d be plenty to go around.
A system which is little more than skimming, numbers and protection rackets should not be expected to provide good outcomes.
Another heart-wrenching, gut-churning glimpse of our Uzbek “friends”
Indie Article
Letter to our Dave
Jemand: George Monbiot’s The Captive State v good on the insane and destructive extortion created by PFI hospital schemes, also Alyson Pollock, Private Eye etc etc etc.
Nevermind
29 Jun, 2013 – 11:13 pm
“I’m appalled at the impotence of the UN and the ease by which its various hands are being corrupted and bend over to suit crooks.”
I have no doubt that all the senior UN officials have been spied on and blackmailed by the west’s security services. That is how they operate.
@ Doug Scorgie :
My sentence read as follows :
“Thank you for reminding us that the full name of the losing candidate in the recent Presidential election in Venezuela is “Radonski Caprile”.”
_____________
From where do you deduce that the “you” in this sentence referred to you and not to Flaming June/Mary?
As my post quoted the first line of Mary’s, I think most normal readers would probably be able to figure out to whom my comment was addressed. But do please tell us why you think otherwise (if you “could be arsed” to do so, of course).
‘The issue under discussion was the refusal of medical intervention to a certain section of people’
Trans- The issue under discussion is whether the delivery of healthcare in the UK should be via a ‘National Heath Service’ (as recommended by Jemand) or via an ‘International Health Service open to all comers(as recommended by FedUP, Technicolour and any other Mrs Jellaby thinkalikes on this thread).