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Sickest Way To Treat Ex-Pats

0 Comments | People (London, England), The, April 4, 2010

Byline: Nigel Nelson

THERE are 5.5 million Brits now living abroad, and if they left this country within the last 15 years they can vote in the General Election.

Yet thousands of these expatriates are not entitled to NHS treatment when they come home because they lack tortuous official documents that many will not even know about.

So if Health Secretary Andy Burnham – or his Tory shadow Andrew Lansley – want their support they should do something about it.

I was alerted to this outrage by reader John Taylor who moved to Greece two years ago with his wife after taking early retirement at 56 in 2002.

He paid National Insurance for 41 years and still pays tax in Britain.

Now knocking 64, he’s started thinking about healthcare.

As Greece is in the EU he assumed there would be no problem.

But the Greeks will not treat him under a reciprocal deal with the NHS.

That’s because John cannot get the necessary form E106 which – guess what – was not available until after he retired. And the NHS told him to go whistle because he is not resident in Britain.

And they told him to come back to them when he is 65 so he can fill in form E121 which entitles him to NHS access again.

In the meantime he’s too old to take out private insurance.

“I just hope my ticker holds out,” said John.

“They’re telling me to get stuffed just because I sleep somewhere else.”

Is it not scandalous that British citizens who have paid into the national health kitty all their working lives are treated the same way as foreign health tourists who come here just to sponge off the NHS?

In common with quite a few Brits I carry a European Health Insurance Card which John cannot get either.

It means I could go off to live in the sun and still get NHS treatment.

So while I was arguing the toss with the Department of Health I smugly reached for my EU card to prove just how ridiculous the system is.

Only to discover it has expired.

CAPTION(S):

WARNED: Supremo Andy

TVNZ’s youth crusade dumbs down

0 Comments | Dominion Post; Wellington, New Zealand, Jul 22, 2010 | by Jane CLIFTON

AT FIRST glance, this reviewer thought former TV current affairs reporter Janet Wilson was going a bit far when she blogged that TV news is overrun with cookie-cutter young blonde women with little in the way of journalistic chops.

Then the speculation was reported that Pippa Wetzell could replace newly resigned Sunday veteran Cameron Bennett as the show’s frontman, and I was forced to think again.

Let’s look at what we know about TVNZ and its corporate strategies for TV One:

A. It has vowed to “young-down” TV One, wishing to drive off older viewers.

B. It has made several staged cuts to its news and current affairs staff, because it regards them as too great an expense. The latest cuts have created a generic news staff who will not work for any particular programme, but whose work will be “repurposed” according to what programme news bosses decide should have each story.

C. News and other programming bosses are uninterested in qualitative criticism of its programmes, but rely solely on ratings to tell them whether it is serving its audience well. This was demonstrated by the public outcry against its TV anniversary trivia quiz.

D.TVNZ recently installed Alison Mau as a frontwoman on Fair Go, and indicated its veteran lead presenter, Kevin Milne, would be edged out. This is despite the programme’s ratings continuing to be strong, and Milne having registered in a recent poll as one of New Zealand’s most trusted individuals. It’s also despite the programme’s tradition of having active journalists present the show, rather than having a presenter-only role.

E. TVNZ has told other programmes, including even the mumsy 9am- noon Good Morning, that they too must work towards attracting a younger demographic, preferably at the expense of the older age- group, rather than in addition to it.

Considering all those clues, it would be naive not to expect that Sunday, traditionally a place for searching, grown-up journalism, is in line to be younged-down, and by implication dumbed-down.

While I still think Wilson was too harsh, in that TVNZ has some very talented young journalists, male and female, gorgeous and average- looking, it’s beyond debate that investigative journalism is done best by experienced journalists. There are few of these left, and clearly they are going to become rarer still.

There’s nothing inherently wrong, as Wilson suggests, with having young, presentable reporters. The young have to start somewhere, and, brutally, most of them are paid a pittance. They’re not hired because they’re young and pretty, but because they’re cheap.

What is highly questionable is this trend of having the young and pretty front meaty news and information programmes to which they do not otherwise contribute, just for the sake of having, as Wilson puts it, “eye candy”.

I don’t doubt Wetzell is a competent journalist
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