Racist incidents against UK nurses surge by 55%

I’ll never forget the day my wife came home upset that a patient had called her a ‘Stupid Paki’ and she was just… expected to accept that… and the patient was allowed to say it with no consequences.

The perk of having a monopoly healthcare system is that you hold the cards. Patients who racially abuse staff should either be kicked out (and whatever happens medically happens) or billed the full value of their medical treatment, with 30 days to pay, where failing to do so sees benefit cuts and assets taken. Would sort this crisis out very quickly.

We could clean house of these racists, using the might of the state, instead we make staff suffer.

Of course they will, when a racist Reform MP can say it upsets her that “adverts are full of black people” and not have to immediately resign in disgrace. Thugs and racists feel empowered to be racist as well.

Look at what the cowardice of people in power who will not directly challenge Racist Reform delivers to the country. Division, hate, and cruelty.

It is just as much the fault of those who will not hold Reform to account as it is those fascists themselves.

My father is currently in hospital, and I’ll be going to visit him later today.

The staff are generally great and I have no qualms over their medical competence, but of about eight nurses I now know by sight, I think only one of them is a native speaker of English. Several of the others do not speak English well enough for me to have an important conversation with them that I want to have. I’ve tried. They were confused. Several of them do, but they’re not always around. I’ve also had this experience recently with police officers and officials at a local council facility.

Now, let’s not get all excited about racism, because at least some of these people are – I would guess – Polish, or at least from eastern Europe, and are visually indistinguishable from people born and brought up in the UK. This is a concern about language ability, not anyone’s family background. My first girlfriend was Punjabi, so let’s get over that one.

The problem is that I suspect I’ll be decried for some sort of thought crime for raising this issue, and I wonder how much of that 55% is actually about language ability, not race. Do we know what the criteria were?

Because the elites wanted to put one group against another to evade being revealed as the true enemies of the people.

I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way, but the data starts in 2022. It’s probably the Halo effect of COVID (“NHS heroes”) disappearing rather than the UK becoming more racist. You’d need to look at the long term trend before COVID to know for sure.

My wife just got out of the ICU after 9 days, and the boomer in the bed opposite her having her leg chopped off was so fucking vile to any POC nurse. Just openly saying shit like “they’ll hire anyone who checks a box these days” because they were busy dealing with one of the other several beds instead of spending 20 minutes putting her in her chair before she changes her mind and wants putting back in bed 5 minutes later.

Totally nothing to do with Reform/Brexit/Ukip campaigning on barely disguised racism and rabid nationalism for the last 20+ years. Farage and his ilk have made it ok to be publicly racist again

So this is how far down the road to outright racism and xenophobia in the media and certain political ideology has taken many people. Some actually now feel that is acceptable to racially insult and slur the very people that are trying to made them better, fix broken bones and stitch them up.

There needs to be legislation that if such things happen, the doctor or nurse administering treatment can just walk away from that person – even if they will bleed out or die from a heart attack. It goes against the hippocratic oath that they have pledged to when becoming doctors. Nursing staff shouldn’t have to put up with such racism in the workplace.

It’s only going to get worse before it gets better I’m afraid. And not just in the UK. Once again the far right rises. This happens as a consequence of austerity, poor economies, and displaced migration. It’s easier to blame a group of people rather than look at themselves. I look around at Britain and it’s crumbling. Services are breaking, mistakes are happening. There is more cheer in a graveyard than a town centre. Immigration is a factor sure, but so is the amount of people who are healthy and of working age wanting benefits, huge amounts going on strike wanting more pay. We are SKINT as a country and underground tube workers want a pay increase. They earn more than some professionals in the country lol. It’s so pathetic. They have 3 buttons. Forward, brake, and mind the gap.

Duh obviously. Racists are now emboldened and there is a growing remigration movement that involves everyone who isn’t white.

I was in an area of Kent 2 weeks with my partner who happens to be Brown and Muslim. She was not with me at this exact moment, but I was stopped by a Reform leafleteer who I humoured for a bit. It ended when he said “look around mate what do you notice” to which I thought he meant the England flags everywhere. He said “nah mate, only white faces – it’s great isnt it?”.

2025 is gross.

Farage will be proud, but still looking to make things even worse.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Hostile environment, Windrush scandal, stop the boats, burn the asylum hotels… It has become more acceptable to be xenophobic, and it’s a short step from there to outright racism. 

It’s imbecilic to say that people who are abusive towards nurses should be banned from health care. And less patients would be abusive if they felt like the care was decent. You cannot ban a human being from health care. I agree with fining them, however, if they kick off in a really bad way. But you cannot ban them.

Being racist to the underpaid people working to save your life…

That is certainly a bold strategy.

I had to load up and take a patient to hospital once, they spat at me whilst I was trying to get them off the pavement, and then I found out they got arrested for masturbating publicly whilst racially abusing nurses. 

I didn’t even bother reporting the spitting because stuff like that just happens, the nurses didn’t bother reporting the racist abuse, they got arrested because a police officer saw the public masturbation in the ED, and the other stuff was “mentioned in passing” to the police. It’s so normalised now NHS staff only really bother reporting violent incidents most of the time.