The Daily Mail are sending free copies of their magazines to all our waiting rooms.

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I just heard this from one of my colleagues.

UGH!!! Are they trying to make our patients sicker?!?!?

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 09:49 (twenty-one years ago)

you should cut it into strips and hang them on nails next to the toilets

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 23 October 2003 09:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Did I mention that this hospital is in the Paddington/Edgeware Rd area, and our patients are predominantly Asian and Arab.

Does this seem like a bad idea to anyone else?

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 09:52 (twenty-one years ago)

you mean their Sunday supplement things? they are actually not as full of hysterical right-wing rhetoric as the actual paper itself at least.

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 23 October 2003 09:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Still, it makes me feel sick. I think I need to visit A&E, I am suddenly overcome with nausea.

The funny thing is, the colleague who told us was all "Oh, isn't that nice of them?" Errrmmmm...

(I just realised that it probably violates the confidentiality thing to have told you all this, but still. It's not like I told you any patient information or anything!)

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 09:54 (twenty-one years ago)

is Metro available at the hospital? surely this is no worse a situation than that

how are Mr Blenkinsop's piles btw?

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 23 October 2003 09:57 (twenty-one years ago)

Then again, when I was being treated at St. Leonard's, all they ever had in the waiting room were NHS Staff bulletins and crappy nursing mags. Sigh.

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:00 (twenty-one years ago)

The sunday supplement is full of women bashing and adverts for stairlifts and commemorative plates (limited edition of as many of these bloody ugly things as we can shift to the hard of thinking).

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, you do the math - but many NHS 'customers' read the Mail (as in fact do many of its employees, I recall). If it were G2 or the Observer magazine free in the waiting room that wd just be a bunch of overprivileged tykes sneering at the proles, rather than the Mail's equally nasty agenda.

― Enrique (Enrique), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:04 (twenty-one years ago)

the best thing to find in a doctor's/dentist's waiting room = either "hello" or "take a break" surely?

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:05 (twenty-one years ago)

Waiting room reading material is always rather strange. I was an outpatient at the Brompton Chest Hospital when I was a kid. The waiting room magazines there were Country Life and Omni. So one minute I could be looking at the picture of the young lady in her ball dress and pearls "Fenella Fraser Forbes is the daughter of Major Ronald Fraser Forbes and the late Lady Margaret Fraser Forbes" and the next I'd be reading about a UFO sighting over Death Valley.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:06 (twenty-one years ago)

metro is really pretty apolitical and the mail sunday supps are pretty inoccuous, if boring. you'll probably have plenty of patients pleasantly dozing off as a result of reading them (like i did reading david toop's bjork cover story in the wire a while ago!). look on the bright side - they could be sending you a consignment of evening standard ES magazines - then you would more than likely suffer a rash of people hurling themselves out of the waiting room windows.

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:06 (twenty-one years ago)

btw enrique is my new favourite friend on ile

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I dunno, I worry more about offending the majority of our patients here - my whole job is tracking medical interpreters, so I know the general cultural/racial profile of our "customers", and how much of the Mail's right wing garbage is going to be offensive to them?

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:10 (twenty-one years ago)

none really - the magazines are ok on that score. plus i am constantly amazed by how many young black and asian people i see reading the mail. the amount of women dumbfounds me, too. i put it all down to a mix of clever marketing and gross stupidity

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:19 (twenty-one years ago)

But the right wing garbage, as you put it, is generally not in the supplements as pointed out above. I would tend to say, isn't that nice of them - especially if they send the TV one.

No better place to find ads for chairlifts than in a waiting room.

Remember the Mail plays well to an immigrant population who are already here (they were the big Stephen Lawrence paper after all, they are anti-asylum seekers NOT because they are foreigners, but because they are lawless dole-scroungers who paradoxically also steal all our jobs. And spread SARS probably). Rule one about choosing your newspaper is "what did your parents read".

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh no, probably best not to put it in our SARS clinic, then!

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:24 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe their mum or dad needs a stairlift!!

― mark s (mark s), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Pete otm regarding established immigrants as major chunk of Mail demograph.

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I have a real problem with the idea that you shouldn't read things that you disagree with. In fact, I think I have more of a problem with the concept of people only reading things they agree with. Isn't the former seeing the world as it really is, with all the bile and prejudice laid out for you to see and the latter dwelling in a cosy make-believe world where everyone thinks the same as you.

I'd far prefer it if lots of black and Asian ppl did read the Mail. And if they bombarded the Mail with large numbers of well-argued letters pointing out how they think the views expressed therein are wrong. Sure, they wouldn't get printed, but if the volume of them was great enough they would be difficult to ignore.

I'm not sure about stupidity, but you are certainly OTM about clever marketing, Dave. The Mail is advertised a lot on telly and billboards and it runs various competitions to entice its readership (perhaps more of this than other papers - not sure on that one, but certainly a lot, I know of several people who bought the Mail specifically because of a win a holiday comp they were running) and it makes a big deal of being "better" than the Sun and the Star. A lot of ppl see the Mail as being the tabloid its ok to like. Yes, scoff if you will - but this is a widely held view.

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:30 (twenty-one years ago)

i read the Mail a fair bit - KNOW YOUR ENEMY!

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:32 (twenty-one years ago)

precisely!

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Sleep with your enemy.

My enemy's enemy is my friend.

I am my enemy's enemy. I am my own friend.

― Pete (Pete), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Now my head hurts.

I wonder if I can go to the Head Pain Clinic.

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:36 (twenty-one years ago)

i've said it before and i'll admit it again. i worked at both the daily mail and the mail on sunday for a while and strangely enough, i saw a more pluralistic hiring policy there than in any other newspaper i've ever worked (and i've spent time at most major british ones, both tabloid and broadsheet) in interms of gender, race and sexuality. pete is spot-on about the establised-immigrant/second/third-generation demograpohic being important to both papers' marketing strategy. this is why i mentioned the stupidity thing - v much a case of "i'm alright, jack" in this instance.

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:37 (twenty-one years ago)

The sunday supplement is full of women bashing and adverts for stairlifts and commemorative plates
Is this really such a bad thing? I mean commerorative plates, dude, you gotta love them. (JK obv!)

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 23 October 2003 10:38 (twenty-one years ago)

a commemorative plate of the guy out of Jamiroquai?

― MarkH (MarkH), Thursday, 23 October 2003 11:49 (twenty-one years ago)

They send you the Daily Mail, you send them all the diseases you have to deal with on a petri-dish. It'kll still be them transmitting the most foul abominations, but you'll get your own back in a small, if mucousy, way.

― Mark C (Mark C), Thursday, 23 October 2003 11:50 (twenty-one years ago)

But I don't deal with diseases! I work in the PALS office, I don't think I've ever actually seen a real, live patient!

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 11:51 (twenty-one years ago)

The Daily Mail is tiny-minded and sends me into a frothing rage but it's hardly "racist". Pinheaded Little Englander opinions are held by people of all races, that's what multiculturalism MEANS.

― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

The PALS office sounds great - like its a place for old ladies to arrange to meet other old ladies to hang out and chat with while recovering from their hip replacement op.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Erm... no, not at all. It's a bunch of overworked temps telling bad-tempered little old ladies over the phone that they can't make appointments without GP referrals.

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:04 (twenty-one years ago)

You go Kate!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:05 (twenty-one years ago)

I could mug a little old lady for a decent cup of coffee right now, though.

― kate (kate), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:06 (twenty-one years ago)

*steps back*

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I fondly remember Paul Burrels etiquette column, iirc it failed to mention raking over corpses for cash.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:08 (twenty-one years ago)

That seems to be a recurring trait, hmm *ponders*

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 23 October 2003 12:11 (twenty-one years ago)

Sam, do you love Hitler?

― Mark C (Mark C), Thursday, 23 October 2003 14:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I was about to say 'Sam OTM' but now I fear being caught up in Mark C's nazi smear campaign.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 23 October 2003 15:38 (twenty-one years ago)

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