Farage: How low will this man go?

Many hoped, including myself, that National Health Service, without doubt the Jewel in the United Kingdom crown with its philosophy of caring for those who need it from the ‘cradle to the grave’ would be somewhat immune from the worst aspects of racist electioneering.

After all, walk into the majority of urban hospitals and many doctors' surgeries and you’ll find those wonderful careers and auxiliary staff such as; orderlies, nurses, technicians, cooks, cleaners, doctors and surgeons are from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

In fact if there was a story to be told about immigration in the UK, one should look no futher than the NHS for a narrative of dedicated individual arriving from far flung places taking up vocations to care for the sick, which has ensured the NHS in the eye of many to be the envy of the world. My own mother was one of those unselfish carers who came to the UK in the late 50’s and dedicated her life to caring within the NHS.

But head of Ukip Nigel Farage has other ideas about how to view our national treasure. Unlike my mother Farage seems to have dedicated his life to poison British society driving anyone who will listen to him to literally hate foreigners. Like a rat in a sewer Farage sniffs out rotten meat and turns it into a political banquet.

In a interview with Sky News he told the reporter GPs who “don’t speak very good English” is “something that people out there are talking about”, adding that “ non-English-speaking health workers shouldn’t be employed and scandalous that we are not training enough nurses and doctors in our own country”.

At a time when Accident and Emergency units in many hospitals cannot cope, primarily dealing with the elderly sick, most people would be concerned about being able to see a caring doctor. Not so according to Farage. His race hate lie is that many doctors ‘don’t speak good English’.

According to Dr Chandra Kanneganti, chair of the British International Doctors Association (BIDA). All doctors who qualified outside Europe and apply for registration to work here have to satisfy the General Medical Council that their English is up to scratch. This means passing the “academic version” of the globally recognised International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test in spelling, listening, reading and writing.

Sadly the Ukip leader Nigel Farage is not interested in facts. A racial anecdote will be enough for him to go on the airwaves and proclaim this is what the British people think.

What is most depressing is the fact that over many decades there have been many hundreds of thousands of carers and nurses like my mother who have actually helped make the UK a very special place to live. In many countries across the world if you’re sick and poor you’re more like to die, including the USA.

And yet in the historical blink of an eye, Farage has set out to pull down the building blocks which make a society decent by pitting one against the other: Native against foreigner, Black against white, patient against doctor.

I hope we’re strong enough to push back on his race hate politics that has even seeped into some Black people buying into the Farage narrative of hating the other-East Europeans.

Come on, we’re bigger and better than that.

Simon Woolley