#14

Yeah, my grandparents are the same. Obviously not comparable to Calais but they asked my wife last time we saw them if they’d “had any trouble from those junior doctors” at the hospital she works at. Like they hadn’t even contemplated that she might be in favour of the strikes. They obvs voted Brexit.

#15

I’ve got a friend who has one Syrian parent, but it isn’t obvious to people, because their name doesn’t strike people as being obviously arabic. So they have to put up with people talking all this crap, and then when they say “err, you know I’m Syrian too, and have extended family members still stuck there, right?” people go all silent and evasive and “oh I don’t mean you, I meant them, over there” and get increasingly uncomfortable when they say “actually you did mean my relatives”.

#16

LOL. The strikes only went ahead because of the near-unanimous support from them across the NHS - wouldn’t have even been strikes had consultants/surgeons etc. not agreed to cover.

#17

It’s remarkable and very saddening how easily manipulated people are on this issue. The Sun in the space of a year went from “cockroaches, let them drown” to “Look at this poor Syrian child who drowned, we must help them” to “they’re dodgy and Gary Lineker is a cunt for sticking up for them” and a worrying number of people have swallowed it. It’s deeply dispiriting, especially when it comes to the welfare of vulnerable children.

#18

My older sister has gone full Daily Mail lately. I don’t know where it came from, as she used to be nice.

I’ve had medical problems this year, and was on and off sick leave earlier this year, stuck at home and feeling pretty gloomy and broke, and she had the cheek to say to me “oh it must be nice to be ill, I’d love to be ill and not have to go to work” and “I don’t think you deserve to get any benefits, it’s all just scrounging” while boasting about how she’s going on an expensive holiday. She has a reasonably well paid job (as does her partner), and owns a house, yet felt hard done and like I was cheating her somehow by the fact that I was getting measly statutory sick pay and just about managing to pay the rent on a shared flat with no living room.

Needless to say, our relationship is definitely not the same any more.

#19

Word. It was revelatory to them that a junior doctor could be in their 30s. And revelatory how much junior doctors earn. And revelatory that there might be statistical bias in surgery outcomes at weekends because routine stuff isn’t scheduled for the weekend. These are intelligent people, just fed a bunch of nonsense. Eugh.

#20

:disappointed:

#21

What gets me is the lack of comprehension/reporting of the utter complexity of these situations. Whilst one is pissing into the wind complaining about tabloid reporting of this particular case - it’s been especially galling. You think it’s possible just to go over to Calais and go “right - everyone who’s under 18 come with me!” and everyone just gets onto a bus in orderly fashion and they all have the correct documentation with them and they all have total comprehension of what’s going on and… yeah, there we go.

What fucked me off about last weeks coverage is… what’s the worst case scenario being reported here. Oh, a scattering of people over 18 MIGHT made it over as well. That’s it. That’s literally the worst thing that’s happened. We’re talking, what, a handful or so of people here? Who cares. Really - who cares.

#22

Yeah the Gary Linekar thing was pretty sinister, especially them campaigning that he should be fired and shamed for showing humanitarian views. That’s normally the kind of demands you get if a public figure’s done something really bad like vile racism or sexual abuse or something. Not sticking up for some vulnerable people.

6 Likes
#23

Or the miscomprehension that Junior Doctors ARE Doctors. They are ACTUAL Doctors. The word ‘Junior’ is unhelpful in this context but, still.

#24

I saw a thing going round on Twitter “Man how awful would it be if we thought we were helping a 17 year old flee war and we were in fact helping a 19 year old flee war!”

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#25

Yeah exactly, did we have this attitude in for 40’s to refugees when we were ‘great’? Probably not.

The other thing I saw was a response to all the ‘where are the little kids’ (the cute photogenic ones that look at little scruffy that people expect) that was 'they’re dead or trafficked, those little kids don’t tend to survive these things :cry:

#26

i saw someone arguing this point quite sensibly the other day on some telly debate thing, and then that terrible woman from UKIP started going on about the the ‘men’ ending up in school with young children - so like a primary school? liek what the fuck?

#27

Also people don’t think the best hope for their 7 year old is to send them away without their family. If you’ve got a 15 or 17 year old son who you think might be forced to fight as a soldier, you’re more likely to send them off to a far away relative. Or if you’re a teenager whose family have died, the same.

In the 90s there were a group of Kosovan boys who were sent away by their families in the same circumstances, and put up in my hometown as a temporary measure. People treated them like total dirt and started using the word Kosovan as an insult like it meant scum. It was really depressing, even though I already knew there were a load of knuckle-dragging EDL/UKIP types there (hey, they even voted in a UKIP MP).

#28

They did in the 30s, the Daily Mail campaigned against receiving refugees from the Nazis (as well as supporting Oswald Moseley). I’ll try to dig it out.

#29

Oh yeah, I think I’ve seen some stuff from the mail about Jewish refugees from then. But was the general public so anti refugee like now? Maybe they were.

#30

Daily Mail has always been a huge selling paper.

1 Like
#31

I think the attitude to refugees/‘foreigners’ in general has always been there.

I don’t think brexit has really altered the way many people think, it’s just given them the confidence to speak out thinking their regressive world views and fear of change/foreigners are held by the majority.

4 Likes
#32

The scale and nuances of the crisis are lost on people, but they also don’t want to know or understand them. Banging on about how they can’t possibly be actual refugees if they don’t seek asylum in the first country they set foot in, as if those few countries could handle the millions of displaced people in one go without leaving them open to abuse and exploitation (already happening in some of the Turkish camps I believe). Dismissing anyone who isn’t from Syria itself because obviously the horrific human rights abuses in Eritrea or the continual looming spectre of the Taliban in some parts of Afghanistan are totally fine, and obviously people who turd off about moving house because of a new runway would definitely stick around if they found themselves caught in those situations. Being furious that refugees can’t work in many countries until their asylum requests are granted, and equally furious when they are allowed to work and do start working. Etc etc.

The hypocrisy, inhumanity and territorialism makes me sick.

3 Likes
#33

3,649 people dead or missing after trying to reach Europe by sea so far this year.
Our country doesn’t give a flying fuck.