To worry people don’t care enough about politics?

[sweetvanillacream]

I met up with a couple of old friends at the weekend and was really taken aback by the conversation. I mentioned DH has been on a NHS waiting list for 2 years, friend 1 immediately blamed immigrants and friend 2 quickly agreed. I was shocked and said I completely disagree, but they brushed it off, saying they “don’t really follow politics.”

I pointed out that if Farage ever got his hands on the NHS, it would be a slippery slope to a privatised health care system. Friend 1 said “I guess that would be expensive” and friend 2 replied it would be fine because “insurance covers it.”

I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the weekend, and it’s honestly worrying me. If people like them, well educated people, who don’t consider themselves especially right or left leaning, genuinely believe immigration is the route of our issues and don’t feel concerned about losing the NHS, what does this mean for us?

Is this the new normal now? That we’ll let far-right politicians get into power while most people can’t even be bothered to skim their manifesto? It really worries me.

I’m also annoyed with myself for being so caught off guard that I couldn’t make a stronger argument. In the end, all I managed to do was plead with them to at least vote.

farage thinks we should have a European style system whereby healthcare is funded primarily by employers paying towards insurance with contribrutions from employees and the state paying for people not in work.

@Octavia64 but how will he get business to contribute more? look at the outcry over labours NI increases, I have pointed out in many threads that European countries often have higher social security taxes for employers to fund healthcare etc but people think it's the wrong thing to do.

I agree with some of the comments above - if I was chatting to you and you were starting to bring those issues up, I’d feign lack of interest to close it down and move onto something else. I have my politics, it’s my business, I don’t discuss it with anyone else. It’s between me and the ballot box, as they say.

As the saying goes.. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

But I didn’t bring it up.. my friend was the one who brought up immigration and retreated as soon as I questioned her on it.

This makes me feel you've immediately decided who's good and bad

To me, that's a very clear signal that we can't have a discussion. I would be moving the conversation on by any means necessary.

if they are telling the truth about not being register registered to vote and not having heard of Nigel Farage, perhaps it's better if they don't vote! It's a very long journey from there to actually getting informed and then voting.

there is a huge amount of division around at the moment, but I think it's a great shame to lose friends over it.

She was probably expecting you to agree with her, and then backtracked when she realized you didn’t.

I’ve used private healthcare abroad, it was great, yeah the excess cost me a bit more but it meant DD had her surgery for something which was not strictly an emergency but massively improved her quality of life within 2 weeks.

It’s a bit insane to me someone would rather wait 2 years for a hip operation. Plus most people who want a different system talk about european systems not american ones.

Aside from that I tend to avoid people who I know are just going to be very entrenched. It’s always interesting talking to someone with a different perspective if they don’t set about lecturing. Thats just annoying.

I work in the NHS. Have done for nearly 30 years. 75% of my ward is now, generally, made up of non British women.
they have a point….

So if someone you knew said something bigoted you wouldn’t challenge it? That’s interesting.

What bigoted thing did they say? You are rather burying the lede here.

if it reassures some, I watched a video from the FT last night showing that social media is declining in popularity and has been since 2022, measured jn the time people spend on social media platforms.

they identified exactly what you say- it’s not fun, it’s not engaging, it’s not educational, it’s not connective, it’s doom scrolling videos whose only purpose is to lock your eyeball in.

its sort of literally dying at as so much social media particularly that full of the politically mad ie Facebook is used by older people.

I didn’t say my friend said anything bigoted. A PP said she finds bigots more of a concern than those with no opinion (like my friends).

Politics is on a sliding scale for most people. Just because they aren't in total agreement with you, it doesnt mean they aren't somewhere on that scale or don't care. You have your opinion and they have theirs. They may think you are wrong for all you know.

I agree with you OP.
It is not about anyone backing another party if they really believe in their principles and manifesto. But it is about people getting some bits and bobs from social media, the press... and so on and going with that blindly.
Farage knows very well how to utilise the poor informed vote. A slogan here, another one there. You look like the winner without actually doing anything. Just get a headline here and there.
The worst is to start calling people names, like fascist or idiot or racist.
Because you then give them a real reason to stick to that side of the argument.
Farage managed to get UK to vote and go through Brexit and I am still waiting to see any benefits. He is very intelligent.
Sadly, labour is not as good as presenting themselves doing the right thing. But they have to get good at it. Now.

“It doesn’t feel right to me that discussing politics in real life should be off limits. Social media already traps people in echo chambers, so face to face conversations matter more than ever.”

The actors Henry Fonda and James Stewart were close friends for decades, from their “struggling actor” years through to Fonda’s death in 1982. Fonda was a liberal Democrat and Stewart was a conservative Republican. Stewart maintained that the two never talked about politics once in fifty years. There’s a possibility apocryphal story that once they did, but it ended in a fistfight, after which they agreed to never discuss the topic.

I agree that media echo chambers are a problem, but you were there to catch up with old friends - it sounds like you haven’t seen them in at least a few years? This wasn’t a good opportunity for discussing politics. This was a good opportunity for talking about what has been happening with your families, jobs, holidays, hobbies, et cetera.

They mentioned politics first because they made the erroneous assumption that you were going to agree with them. (I don’t believe they were being honest about never having heard of Farage.) Then when they realized they were wrong, they backtracked, probably because they’d rather spend the time having a nice conversation with their old friend than arguing politics.

It sounds like your friends are very interested In politics and are happy to discuss it with each other, they just tried to politely shut it down when they realised you had different opinions to them (because, at the end of the day OP, you only have opinions. Nothing to determine that you are right and they are wrong after all)
I have a feeling that I would disagree with you on many things related to politics so if we were talking to each other about it I would definitely come across as uninterested.

I wouldn’t say we’re partly there. I would say the number of (usually older) people who can spend £16k on a hip replacement (plus the risk of limitless spends if something goes wrong and they end up in icu) is relatively small.

I do think at the cheaper end the market (pregnancy scans, cancer checks, physio, SEN diagnosis’) people are paying out in much higher numbers. But they are much lower value transactions

I see.

On the one hand I agree with you that it’s worrying how little people often know about how politics and major policies work, even in outline. I think it’s natural, but it’s still a worry.

On the other hand, I think people who recognise their limited knowledge are better than people (and this might not be you, so apologies if not, but your post did have a hint of it) who seem to think that the main reason other people have different policy preferences or political instincts must be because they are ignorant or bad or thick.

Net migration is a big issue for the NHS. I don’t think it’s the main one (that’s demographics and the funding model, imo), but the fact your friends named it doesn’t make them thick or bad, any more than if they’d named any other single factor. If they’d said “Tories, innit?” I doubt you’d be on MN telling us how worryingly uninformed they are, though that’s also an incomplete explanation.

Maybe they really are ignorant and incurious, but the way you described it reads more to me that they were looking to avoid a political debate or a lecture at a social occasion (I love political debates on social occasions, but I’m the weirdo there).

Depends how you define bigoted

Some people think I'm bigoted. Some people call me a coconut. Well, not to my face, but it's kind of happened on here.

But the thing about evil and good seems incredibly simplistic

If someone is anti-abortion, I tend to just think we've got to agree to disagree. (for example)

I helped with a bit of campaigning on an issue, which I know my parents were uneasy with. I think they're entitled to their view.

Very few things fall into a bracket of being simple. I change my mind about things too. I think most people do.

My best friend was incredibly pro-lockdown and had to be talked around the issue of forced vaccinations. We don't really talk about it much, but she realised it was an issue of bodily autonomy.

But yeah, we don't talk about it much because we'll never agree on it. And why throw away a friendship over that?

Are stats kept on ethnicity of patients / waiting lists etc?

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/hospital-admitted-patient-care-activity/2020-21/summary-reports---apc---patient

I do follow politics, but I never need “educating” from any side about who I should be voting for. 🙄

Actually, the way Farage talks, his proposals do sound very aligned with the US. Tying the insurance system to employment is a very American thing. That's one major reason people fear losing their jobs, especially if they have underlying conditions. There is no such thing as a European system by the way, as France, Germany etc all differ quite strongly. As far as I understand, the French system is quite expensive too (tax-wise) even if some parts of it are covered by insurance, it is heavily subsidised by the state across the board, regardless of your income.
I also think the loss of the NHS as a meds and supplies buyer will impact on the price of meds- the NHS is I believe one of the single biggest buyers in the world. I was told by a friend whose DH works in big pharma in the US that ending that clout would be good news for American corporations. Not sure it'd be good news for UK patients.

Can you say they don’t care if they just wanted to swerve that discussion? Maybe they do talk about it.