Vocal Voices

Honestly if this hospital has had issues with patients harassing our armed servicemen and women, then they should call the police and have them dealt with.

Apparently they can have a zero tolerance attitude to patients abusing staff but they can have an appeasement attitude to people who take offense to our armed forces.

If people have an issue with our armed forces, then they should consider finding somewhere else to live than the UK.

But this is the policy. Everyone has a "right" to their attitudes except the silent majority. That silence is going to become a deafening howl if this continues.

Well now.... I have some sympathy for the hospital - damned if they do, damned if they don't.

The airman had damage to his eyes so probably could not see clearly. Had some nut-job decided to take him on he would, literally, have been fighting blind. He could have been badly injured before anyone else stepped in - nurses, doctors, security or other patients.

I do agree that it should not happen, but we have to live in the real world.

The real world being that the aggressors and intolerants get their way, unless they are attacking hospital staff. The rest of us just have to put up with it.

Not my definition of a world I want to live in.

I was stationed in Germany when the "no uniform off camp" order was issued. We could have been targets for the Red Army Faction, Bader-Meinhof and the IRA. Those who had to travel to and from married quarters had to remove all insignia, ties and epaulettes while travelling.

Was that appeasing or sensible?

If I was still in the mob and had to attend A&E in uniform I would be more than happy to be treated in a side room. If they also threw in prioritising of treatments for uniformed NHS staff, Fire, Police, Coastguard, Armed Forces etc. over the drunks and druggies, so much the better.

Whilst serving in Germany, of course, there was the whole thing about Uniform and terrorism and also the issue of culture where we were living in someone else's country. That I have no issue with.

I also understood that there were places in the UK where it was inadvisable for a squaddie to go, mainly due to the antisocial drinking habits of some regiments and the way they trashed pubs etc when drunk.

But, at the same time, were I to be injured in uniform in the UK and be shunted around a hospital because a German patient caused trouble because he (it's almost always a he), didn't like the fact that our troops were in his country? No way. Not then, not now, not ever.

The difference is that then the German would be told to shut up or be restrained by the police for hassling a sick person.

Of course they could do that to a German because that German would almost certainly be indigenous European.

It is the attitude. It's wrong and, in this case, sick.