#i hate this shortage and i need to fill out that survey for the government and hopefully theyll do something about it Please im Begging

[lemonsandmorelemons]

Damn menstrual cycles really do have an impact on how and when ADHD meds work... No wonder sometimes when I take them they seem to do barely anything

[newstfionline]

Britain braces for an exodus of E.U. doctors and nurses feeling hurt by Brexit

By William Booth and Karla Adam, Washington Post, March 4, 2018

BETTYHILL, Scotland--From his wind-scoured bungalow, Andreas Herfurt overlooks the village cemetery, an end place in his line of work. For almost 20 years, the German has served as the town doctor here in the woolly wilds on the north coast of Scotland.

“Those are not just my former patients,” Herfurt said of the graves surrounding the old church. “They are my neighbors and my friends. I have learned the hard way the whole truth about cradle-to-grave medical care.”

Herfurt is the National Health Service’s family physician for 850 souls in a 400-square-mile rural practice. This is a place where the cozy village pub--the Farr Bay Inn, known with a wink as the FBI--has a public room the size of a walk-in closet, the only restaurant option in winter is a fish-and-chips shop, and sheep outnumber humans by thousands to one.

Herfurt, 53, who never became a British citizen, says he has loved his life in the NHS, the United Kingdom’s much-admired, oft-derided, state-run universal health-care system. He has made decent money, by European standards. And he digs living in the middle of nowhere, with his Scottish wife and their big, slobbery dog.

“But I don’t know how much longer we will stay,” he said recently, taking a break at his clinic in nearby Armadale.

“In the simplest, most emotional terms, because I am human, I wonder: Am I wanted?” he said.

The German doctor is not alone in such feelings--which could spell disaster for the British health service.

Like Herfurt, many of his European colleagues in the NHS say they were stunned by Brexit, the vote by Britain in a June 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. The exit, which was not backed by most voters in Scotland or Northern Ireland, is scheduled for March 2019.

In a survey at the end of last year, the British Medical Association discovered that almost half of the European doctors working in Britain were considering leaving following the Brexit vote, and that nearly 1 in 5 were taking concrete steps--selling homes, looking for jobs.

If Brexit was driven by strong emotions, so is the reaction to it by some European doctors and nurses in the NHS.

In interviews with The Washington Post, several of those who are thinking about leaving didn’t point to overt acts of xenophobia. They acknowledged that nobody is kicking them out of the country.

But they are taking Brexit personally, expressing indignation at the prospect of having to be vetted in post-Brexit Britain. Many said they would refuse to stand in line for a work visa or submit to a criminal-background check--not after years of overseeing life-or-death decisions and emptying bedpans for British patients.

They noted that when they came to work here, they were Europeans coming to a member state of the European Union. They didn’t see themselves as “immigrants.” They were Europeans exercising their right to free movement in Europe. They were wooed by the NHS.

Many never sought British citizenship because they didn’t have to. They assumed they could spend their careers, perhaps their whole lives, here.

Daniela Schulze-Henning, 43, an NHS psychologist, recently put her house on the market and plans to move back to Germany with her husband, a general practitioner, or GP, and their two children.

“We’re not the only ones. We have GP friends going back,” she said. “It’s everywhere.”

She said that 70 percent of the people in her London suburb voted for Brexit, including a neighbor who had a big “LEAVE” poster displayed in her window.

“I hated that, coming home, seeing the ‘Leave’ sign,” she said.

If the European medical workers do exit in large numbers, they will be missed.

This month, Parliament published new statistics on NHS staff from overseas, revealing that in Britain, about 139,000--or 12.5 percent of NHS staff--are from Europe and elsewhere. Europeans dominate in the most skilled jobs. About 10 percent of doctors and 7 percent of nurses are European nationals.

The study did not publish figures for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland because of differences in reporting, but health experts say the numbers are similar to England’s.

Brexit was propelled by disparate goals: Voters wanted to slash immigration, not only from countries such as Bangladesh or Ukraine but from the E.U., as well. They were also promised a windfall in NHS funding after payments to the bloc ended--$500 million a week, the Leave campaigners vowed, a claim that was later debunked and disavowed.

The NHS faces crisis-level staff shortages and relies heavily on Europeans to do the jobs that British nationals either can’t or won’t do.

European doctors interviewed by The Post say their fealty to the United Kingdom swings with the headlines.

One day, they read that Prime Minister Theresa May has promised Britain will always welcome “the best and brightest” from the continent. The next day, they see hard-line Brexiteers in her cabinet insisting that annual net immigration must be slashed from current levels of hundreds of thousands of newcomers to a post-Brexit goal in the tens of thousands.

Many wonder how their children will fare. They are unsettled, too, by the tabloid rhetoric branding Brexit opponents “enemies of the people.”

As a boy growing up in Majorca, Spain, Carlos Hoyos remembers being fascinated by British inventors. England embraced openness, he believed. When he visited London as a teenager, something clicked: “I thought, ‘This is where I want to live.’”

It has now been 27 years since Hoyos moved to the U.K. He lives with his British wife and their two teenage daughters in Southampton, on England’s south coast, where he works for the NHS as a child and adolescent psychiatrist.

“It’s emotional that these people I have admired all this time actually don’t want me here,” Hoyos said. “It’s a sense of rejection.”

Harry Quilter-Pinner, a research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London, said, “The influx of workers from the E.U. are vital to keeping the show on the road.”

He added: “If the government said, ‘Okay, let’s train up new doctors,’ you wouldn’t get any payoff for 10 years. The only way to fill that gap is through immigration.”

The problem, said Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst for the King’s Fund, an independent health-care think tank, is “the worrying trends emerging that show these staff no longer want to work in the U.K.”

He pointed to sharp declines in the numbers of European nurses and midwives coming to Britain at a time when the country needs to hire tens of thousands of nurses.

Joan Pons Laplana, 42, is from Barcelona and works as an NHS nurse in Chesterfield. He has lived in Britain for 17 years and has three children, all born in England.

“Despite my family, despite paying taxes, despite working hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime, like everyone else in the NHS, I feel like I don’t count for anything, that I am invisible,” he said.

“There’s the younger generation, who have been here for less than five years. All of them are packing up. A lot of colleagues are going,” Laplana said. “There’s the second group, like me, it’s not that easy, because of my family, my kids, my career of nearly 20 years, my mortgage, my friends--where do I go? I don’t have anything in Spain. I have my mom and dad, but Spain is not my home.”

The NHS has buckled under the strain during the current flu season, with hospital corridors crowded with gurneys and 12-hour waits in emergency rooms. Heart and cancer surgeries have been postponed.

Herfurt has continued his usual house calls, his visits to elder-care residences. He said, “I am a dinosaur,” and added with a flash of frustration, “Good luck finding my replacement”--someone who will work long hours in a remote rural practice.

If he stays, it will be because of his patients.

For 19 years, he has spent his days here giving howling 6-week-old babies their first checkups; seeing snotty-nosed kids through childhood vaccines; helping mums with pregnancies--then shepherding the older folks through the middle and final years of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia to death.

“It has been a privilege to practice this kind of medicine,” Herfurt said.

Annie Hall, one of his patients, shook her head and said, “No, no, no!” when asked what she thought about Herfurt leaving.

“He can’t go,” she said. “He’s a local, almost.”

[samanthasroberts]

‘They’ve brought evil out’: Hungary’s poll on migration divides a nation

Violent language and bitterly contested claims mark Viktor Orbns referendum campaign to combat EU plan

The Hungarian governments map of Europe is dotted with stark warnings of no-go zones it claims are patrolled by violent immigrants, six in the UK clustered around London alone.

The poisonous graphic, in a leaflet handed out to voters ahead of a controversial referendum on refugees, pays no heed to facts or geography but its message is clear. It forms part of an expensive and expansive campaign by authorities in Budapest that is whipping up xenophobic sentiment at home, and sowing tension far beyond Hungarian borders.

The ballot, conceived and championed by prime minister Viktor Orbn, is ostensibly about whether parliament should allow the European Union to set a quota for refugee resettlement within the country. But critics contend that he is using groundless fear to bolster his position at home and shore up a challenge to Europe.

They point out that the ballot comes as Europe is backing away from the mandatory quota system that officially inspired the campaign: there are just a few thousand refugees in Hungary today, and that number is unlikely to rise. Syrians, Afghans and others crossing into Europe are not drawn by dreams of a Hungarian future.

One has the suspicion that this referendum is not about the refugees, that it is rather about the manipulation of the voters, and some kind of strengthening of positions within the EU, said pastor Gbor Ivnyi, a one-time ally in the anti-Communist movement who baptised two of Orbns children. Hungary is not a target country in this refugee crisis.

A campaign that is already spreading hate at home risks having serious fallout for Europe as well, further fracturing leaders already split over everything from the refugee crisis to the euros woes, and potentially consolidating Orbns efforts to challenge the status quo with a bloc of other eastern nations.

The language has been so violent that it fuelled demands from one European leader that Hungary be expelled from the union for stirring up hatred.

Even stalwart supporters of Orbns initiative often admit they have had no interaction, much less trouble, with outsiders. Ive only met foreigners who are tourists and not had any problems, said cheery retiree Lszl Czeto, 87, firmly committed to supporting the government. I just dont want a lot of people to come to Hungary. I think they are not real refugees.

Yet there are clear political advantages to focusing on refugees a target largely absent and unable to respond at a time when Hungary is grappling with concerns from rampant graft to failing public services, critics say.

Viktor Orban has been accused of stirring up hatred. Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images

A recent survey found that four in five young Hungarians think the state is riddled with corruption, and more than half have encountered it themselves. The country comes 50th in Transparency Internationals ranking of corruption worldwide, and the state has been taking power away from anti-corruption bodies.

They dont want people to speak about problems like corruption, and healthcare, they want people to talk about the nonexistent migrants, said Gergely Kovcs of activist group Two-Tailed Dog, a party originally launched as political satire that put pooches up as candidates, with manifestos promising free beer and eternal life to mock empty promises.

But as the political landscape in Hungary grew bleaker, its founders were forced to become more serious, although humour is still used as their main weapon. Ive never seen so much hate in this country before, said Kovcs. They have brought evil out and thats why we felt we should do something.

A crowdfunded advertising campaign uses ridicule and well-chosen statistics to show up government fear-mongering. A poster warning that a million people in Libya want to come to Europe is matched by one reminding voters that a million Hungarians want to go to Europe; others warn of dangers ranging from the risk of drinking water spiked with LSD to medieval bear attacks.

There is also a more serious campaign to persuade voters to spoil their ballots, perhaps the only way to fight back against Orbn because, in a country with a long history of unease with migrants and extensive government influence over the media, he is guaranteed an overwhelming majority.

The only way that victory will be undermined is if turnout fails to meet the relatively high threshold needed for it to be legally binding. A history of voter apathy may be one reason for the aggressive campaign, opponents speculate.

The government denies allegations of racism, and says the campaign is strictly factual. Yet it struggles to defend many of its claims, among them the no-go zone allegations which have echoes of claims made about Paris by US news channel Fox. Questioned about the map, government spokesman Zoltn Kovcs claimed it was based on public statistics, but could not provide them to the Guardian and admitted it was deceptive.

It relates to London. The picture is a bit disproportionate, he said, when asked about which areas were covered by the warning signs on the UK, sprinkled roughly from Peterborough to Southampton. He went on to cite riots in Londons south-east in 2011, before the Syrian war had begun in earnest, much less the refugee crisis it has sparked.

And the campaign is already spreading poison across the country, said Demeter ron from Amnesty international, who leads a group of charities monitoring hate crime. One young boy, 14, from the poorest part of the country said migrant had already become the playground insult of choice, replacing anti-gay and anti-Roma slurs, he said.

And it has made many of Hungarys small minority population even more uncomfortable, both on the streets and in a society they already felt was ambivalent. I dont want to pay tax so people throw a referendum against me, said Iranian refugee Behruz, 31, who has lived in Hungary for the past five years. You are serving a society that is arming against you.

Immigration offers more opportunity to Hungary than its government will admit, because it has developed a labour crisis more or less in parallel with Europes refugee crisis. With hundreds of thousands of young people heading west, there is a huge shortage of workers. Andrs Kovts, of charity Menedk, which has been working with refugees for more than 20 years, says that for the first time there are no problems finding jobs for new arrivals. This is not about moral obligations, businesses need workers.

But immigration sits at the heart of Orbns challenge to Europe, and so economic growth is not a priority. We dont want to fill [jobs] with migration from other cultures, Kovcs added.

Orbn has emerged as the most high-profile leader in a group of eastern European countries known as the Visegrd four Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They have a combined population equivalent to that of the UK and are increasingly vocal about their frustration with the status quo.

In the continents current struggles with Brexit and the refugee and economic crises, Orbn has seen particular opportunity, talking openly this summer of an eastward shift in Europes centre of gravity.

If there is such a thing as an old Europe, it is here, he told a student conference. If we talk about how we envisage the capital of Europe, Budapest comes to mind more often than Brussels does.

Perhaps one reason that seems plausible is Orbns own dramatic political transformation, a full 180-degree turnaround from when he was a firebrand liberal opponent of communism and critic of Moscow, to a man whose economic and political project aligns closely with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

I think he is pretty much aware of the fact that this referendum can contribute to the destabilisation of the EU when it is not in a good state and he knows that Putin will be grateful for that, said Pter Krek, an analyst with Hungarian thinktank Political Capital.

In October, Orbn will be claiming a victory of sorts, even if his opponents or apathy manage to keep turnout low, as the majority polls show he is virtually guaranteed victory. But it will have come at the price of Hungarys social fabric, and may prove dangerous for Hungary as well as Europe.

The main message of Christ was against hatred and fear, said Pastor Ivnyi. Someone who is building on these evil feelings is unleashing things which he or she will not be able to manage.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/05/27/theyve-brought-evil-out-hungarys-poll-on-migration-divides-a-nation/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/05/27/theyve-brought-evil-out-hungarys-poll-on-migration-divides-a-nation/