Mail helps fuel more anti-Roma attacks

The Guardian is reporting that last night there were further attacks on a Romanian family in Belfast, while the twenty families forced to move yesterday are now in a secret location with an armed guard.

Given the Guardian reports that 'the majority [are] from the Roma community', isn't it just the perfect time to go to the Daily Mail website and see this as the main headline:

Want to see a GP? Gipsies come first as NHS tells doctors that travellers must be seen at once

Googling the story brings up the Daily Mail version first, the Stormfront re-print second. The story is based on a Primary Care Service Framework document on the health of Gypsies and Travellers, that quite rightly points out that:

Gypsies and Travellers have significantly poorer health status and significantly more self-reported symptoms of ill-health than other UK-resident...There is now little doubt that health inequality between the observed Gypsy Traveller population in England and their non-Gypsy counterparts is striking, even when compared with other socially deprived or excluded groups and with other ethnic minorities.

So it only seems right the NHS should react. And given the lifestyle of Gypsies and Travellers, and the likelihood of moving to a new area, it suggests it is important, given their relative poor health, that they are 'wherever possible fast-tracked into primary care services'.

But the Mail insidiously twists this into them being given 'priority' and that they must be 'seen at once'. The report says no such thing. It suggests that:

practices should adopt a policy of not turning away any Gypsy/Traveller who attends without an agreed appointment

but not turning someone away is rather different to claiming they must be seen at once.

And nowhere in the article does the Mail make reference to the 'significantly poorer health status' of Gypsies and Travellers. They do include some comments from the Taxpayers Alliance (their second favourite rent-a-quote gang after Migrationwatch), who states:

The only priority should be how ill someone is, not their politically-correct concerns.

Which is exactly what the guidelines are trying to do - ensure people in poor health get the treatment they need.

The whole article reeks of 'look at these people who aren't like you getting preferential treatment' - if it's not Gypsies, it's immigrants or Muslims. And it's the type of article that (sorry to repeat, again) fuels the agenda of the BNP.