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Anorak News | Hungary Mouths

Hungary Mouths

by | 19th, February 2004

‘GIVEN the shortage of teachers, nurses, engineers and dentists in this country, the Express’ headline that “MILLIONS OF IMMIGRANTS TO FLOOD IN” seems pretty good news.

On the look out for asylum seekers in even the most unlikely of places

Problem is, at least as far as the Express can see, that most if not all of these new arrivals are scroungers, and if there’s one thing we‘ve got plenty of, it’s those.

The Express’ surgically-enhanced sister paper, the Star, even uses the word “scroungers” in its headline on how gypsies are on their way.

Gypsies are a favourite bugbear of the Star and Express newspapers, and today we learn that a guide, called Emergency Multilingual Phrasebook, is being issued by the British Red Cross Society, giving medical phrases in 36 languages.

This seems a less than sensational thing, until the Star’s editorial column asks: “But isn’t it funny that this book arrives just weeks before millions of eastern Europeans get the right to come here?”

It’s only funny when you laugh at such a loaded question, coming as it does in the same section as the use of the phrase “foreign ‘health tourists’”.

And this is where we of a less parochial view of life realise that the Star is reading the phrasebook the wrong way round.

The book is not a translation service for wily scrounging foreigners but intended for use by British people who can’t find a native doctor who speaks their language.

It will also serve our own so-called “health tourists”, who seeks treatment for their teeth when they travel to places like Hungary.

As the Sun reports, many British dental patients find it cheaper to fly to places like Hungary to get their teeth fixed than they do to seek private treatment in Blighty.

Sure they pay when they are there – much less than they would fork out for the same treatment back here – but what with them being Britishers abroad, fears about them smashing the locals’ teeth in cannot be easily dismissed…’



Posted: 19th, February 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink