Yup. I’ve been watching this in the US. My mother is a regular consumer of right-wing news. Before this news diet, she used to be a happy and cheerful personality - not uninformed, but choosing to be happy despite the information. This was despite the fact that she was born in Stalinist Russia and endured countless privations and outright racism in the Soviet Union for her entire childhood and for a huge part of her adult life. Her life has not been easy there, but she was always smiling in spite of it.
A few years of right-wing “news” watching, and she is now ranting in angry and terrified tones that I’d never heard from her before. She’s not any better informed than she was before - in fact, she now believes lots of outright lies. Her life is easy and comfortable here - much more so than it ever was in the USSR. She has a loving family, a comfortable home, sufficient money, reasonably good health for her age. No one is directing any racism at her here. And yet, she sounds like she’s living in an active war zone and “they” are going to swoop in and kill her any minute now.
She’d be infinitely better off without any news in her life.
I feel that.
I’m pretty much my dad’s full-time carer.
I have done some extremely hard jobs in my life, both desk-bound and outdoors, but nothing compares to this stress. (It’s impossible to explain, without a million paragraphs).
Anyway, that wasn’t the point: to @Meepster000001 , I get it, I really do, and good luck to you.
I tend not to discuss politics with my mum, but that’s because we mostly agree, and we both end up getting angry at the Tories (etc).
I’m dismissive of people who make out that “all the media in the UK is biased so we should ignore all of it”. It’s pretty similar to the US “both parties are as bad as each other” rhetoric, and I do wonder if this is a line that’s deliberately pushed to devalue left-leaning sources.
Does (eg) The Guardian have a bias? Yup, but they won’t distort the truth in the same way the Mail does on a daily basis, and once you’re aware of a bias, you can mentally subtract it.
The video above is not available to me, but I can tell you a true story about our free healthcare.
This started last Thursday.
My dad (86) has had a nasty cough for a few days. We rang our local GP. 45 minutes on the phone only to be told “we’re too busy to take your call, please ring 111”. (This is a general helpline, not emergency).
Two hours later, on our third callback, 111 says they are unable to help and we must contact our local GP.
So the following morning I went to the Health Centre in person, eventually managed to book him in with the emergency nurse at 3pm.
Turns out he’s got pneumonia.
We’re on day 5 of amoxycillin now. He’s better than he was, but by no means perfect.
So yeah, free healthcare.
Not very good healthcare, but it’s free.
