Are you an English speaker? Get to the back of the queue...

You're quite right. They are shuffling patients around so as to manage the costs better, but these costs are at least somewhat avoidable in the first place.

I have experience of all three, although not in recent years. In Spain a friend needed medical assistance and it was serious enough for a doctor to be called. When the doctor arrived the language barrier was an immediate issue. Because we couldn't speak Spanish the doctor almost walked away until a passing Spanish woman who saw what was going on stepped in an acted as translator. The point being, the Spanish authorities do not provide interpreters and are unconcerned about it. 

I remember, few years ago now, this isn't medical. In France (I cant speak French btw) I attempted to get something sorted in a bank, because I couldn't speak French I was thrown out, not litterally, but I was escorted to the door. The attitude was, if you don't speak French fuck off. My son married a French girl and lives in France, he speaks fluent French but he says the French will not speak anything other than French and they don't care what anyone thinks about it.

I lived in Germany for about 11 years, albeit in the army so not exactly as a civilian however, I found the Germans to be more forgiving than the French or Spanish. Probably half of young Germans spoke English and would happily speak English, however as the demographic got older the willingness to speak English was less obvious, and that was fine. I picked up German fairly quickly, I was never fluent but could scrape through a simple conversation. If that conversation was taking place in a pub which was often the case it's amazing how beer improved my German vocabulary. 

That was mine too, but I spoke french (badly) as a teenager and improved over time.

I know you can find English speaking doctors in Spain when on holiday, because the clinics you attend when covered by your medical insurance to which your reps point you are private ... Try getting that when you are working there !!

Yes lefty you have a good laugh,but how long for?

Those who have sat in Westminster for decades have created what we are seeing now and continue regardless.

As Vinny quite rightly pointed out in a post yesterday about the elections in Austria which have seen what really is a far right party take the lead,not the fake ones they love to try and frighten with but a real type with people who have connections to what was the Nazi’s.

And there’s more and more appearing across Europe and if you have to ask yourself why then you are monumentally stupid,we can and have absorbed migrants for centuries quite successfully but the numbers now are too much.

Sit back smugly with your lol but there are some very unpleasant people out there,not the Farages of this world or the Rackhams they love to portray as far right but those who may well come to power by default and then you really would see the far right.

Laugh away but the conditions that have caused all this have been created by an open border policy and a flat refusal to listen to ordinary reasonable people worried by what they see.

This of course is why I fail to understand the mentality of some ex-pats. And I do mean SOME

As a tourist spending my disposable income to boost a country's otherwise shitty employment figures I expect the locals to understand me, or I bugger off elsewhere. In France I noticed the impact of the 'rosbif' bigotry by pure accident. I switch from English to french almost like an automatic timezone widget. In France my kids then not quite teens were in front of us gibbering away to each other and of course the metro ticket office jerk (they still had staff then, god knows if they do now, probably not) initiated the default 'awkward bastard' mode they always do / did with the English, only to be confronted by a rapid fire demand for tickets in his own tongue but with the accent of a Picardy Peasant.

It quite threw him off his pedestal, I could see the cogs cranking thinking WTF. When Mrs JoG joined me you could almost see him click 'ah I see, local boy crosses channel to repeat the Viking raids of his forefathers'....

But it really did throw him off balance. He even stood up straightened his tie and almost bloody saluted.

Bless you, France Telecom. Five grand for four weeks work and a chance to refresh the vocabulary !!

Belgium is utterly different. The Flemish Belgians hate the bloody French. Staying there in the hotel near the EU Parliament almost everyone spoke perfect English and it was no surprise to any to see me perusing a copy of Le Monde. What I found wired was how easy it seemed to be to read Flemish if you read it in the accent of some mad rabid Scotsman. It seemed to translate rather well. Honest !!

Anyway one evening some bloody bigot of a waitress on hearing the kids in English goes off on a rant about us English gits not stopping to think I understood every word. The woman running the place knew I would come and ask for a french newspaper with my after dinner coffee so SHE knew I knew what was going on and she initially looked quite worried ... Until a few hand signals from me suggesting she let this bitch rant and hang herself ....

She really was worthy of Marine Le Pen's Dad's old Front Nationale. The longer it went on the more I feared the Maitre 'D would lose her straight face so I decided enough was enough.

I came over to order coffee and asked if they had a newspaper. Cue this bigot telling me they were awfully sorry the only papers they had were French.

'Oh that's no problem' I said '"Le Monde" will be quite acceptable' and I picked it up, read the front page main story and immediately called out to my eldest 'oh dear, we will have to postpone the trip south, look, the Mont Blanc Tunnel is closed after an avalanche blocked it damaging several cars at one entrance.....'

I pretty much translated that story and two others for Sarah, expressing the punctuation and so on as if using it to teach her the language, which to be fair, was exactly what I was doing.

Three of the staff who knew my bilingual ability were wearing grins a foot wide at this point. T's fair to say they had all been keen to help Sarah with the language....

Bigot Bitch went bright red, sort of squeaked, sort of coughed and ran off. Didn't see her again. The staff were falling over themselves to apologise, I said don't, that was bloody good fun....

It was my uncle the Merchant Navy Chief Engineer who bought into a villa in El Capistrano with his fellow officers who taught me the advantages of speaking the local lingo. In his case all the thieving rats he had to deal with in port and on the ship spoke Arabic or Spanish and he spoke enough of both to get along.

As he said, if you didn't, how the hell would you know what their next scam was.

And that's why I simply cannot understand ex-pats who don't speak the local language. How the hell do they Sus the stunt the plumber is pulling right in front of them .......

The English are famous as migrants for not learning the local language. I mean dordogne in France , and the south of Spain are well known for it. I think it's largely down to laziness , as American English is the economic language of the world . Ive noticed a hell of a change in France over the years with many young French kids being fluent in English .