Obsessoes Britanicas

Fiz muitas coisas em Londres. Ou seja, no que se refere a ingressos financeiros, a sobrevivencia, a experiencia e a trabalho (que, pelo menos na minha experiencia londrina, foram coisas bem distintas) estive envolvido com uma realmente ampla lista de atividades. Muitos imigrantes – de longa ou curta estada – tambem estiveram, mas nao acredito que em tao intensa variedade. Barback, entregador de pizza (de bicicleta em pleno inverno), jornaleiro, bartender em casamentos judeus e bar mitzvah, garcom de restaurante japones e grego, vendedor de cerveja em jogos de futebol e de rugby, jornalista de revista brasileira, interprete, tradutor, editor de base de dados para canal de televisao, investigador em agencia de cooperacao internacional e, por fim, nos meus ultimos meses na capital britanica, estive num contrato temporario no setor administrativo do NHS. Esta eh a sigla de National Health System, uma versao de primeiro mundo no nosso SUS, que eh ao mesmo tempo uma instituicao e obssessao britanica. Trabalhei no Islington Primary Care Trust junto a equipe que processa o pagamento dos oftamologistas.

Todas essas atividades nos meus quase tres anos na Gra-Bretanha nao estao em ordem cronologica e algumas se sobrepoem. Assim, ja tinha tido desde o primeiro ano uma nocao do comportamento britanico em escritorios, o conhecido e tipico jeito dos office people, (e soh isso renderia um post exclusivo sobre tamanha peculiaridade) mas foi interessante, vamos colocar nestes termos, ver NHS por dentro, ainda que bem limitadamente. Como nos conta o texto abaixo (desculpem, soh em ingles) de uma jornalista alema em intercambio no The Guardian, o NHS eh uma verdadeira obsessao britanica. Eu diria que este tema faz parte de um grupo de tres assuntos que os britanicos adoram: NHS, Clima e Celebridades.

A jornalista comenta aqui com precisao como os ingleses reclamam e se importam com seu gratuito e irritante sistema publico de saude. Para imigrantes, como foi para ela, pode ser um saco essa obsessao. Isso porque a questao circula por diferentes abordagens, mas sempre esbarra num tema essencial da cultura inglesa (que ela tambem comenta) que eh grana. A Inglaterra gosta de dinheiro, faz dinheiro, quer dinheiro. Entao, os taxpayers, os pagadores de impostos, nao querem que seu rico dinheirinho seja usado para manter um sistema de saude gratuito para nao-britanicos (leia-se imigrantes de todos os lados, mas hoje com atencao muito focada nos do leste europeu) que muitas vezes nem impostos pagam. Londres, para nao dizer o Reino Unido, nao se importa com os imigrantes e faz toda a cena de cidade/pais tolerante e aberto sempre e desde que o assunto nao interfira no bolso dos taxpayers. O NHS mexe no bolso, logo, torna-se obsessao.

A jornalista ainda menciona, tambem acertamente, que numa cultura de obsessao por dinheiro e classe social seria dificil imaginar que alguem como o ex-premier alemao Gerhard Schroder chegasse a tal posicao de poder. Isso porque ela eh alema e nao precisa lembrar de Lula da Silva.

Nesse interim, eu daqui do meu novo meio, cidadao documentado com cidadania confirmada, no pulgarcito de America, lembrei de que esse era um assunto de registro essencial para as memorias sobre o mundo afora. E isso porque ainda nem precisei usar o sistema de saude de El Salvador.

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Beware those great British obsessions

*Susanne Lang, is a journalist for Tagestszeitung, a Berlin-based newspaper. She is currently at The Guardian on an exchange programme. (16/01/08)

Since I arrived in London from Germany in November, I’ve frequently been asked one question: have you ever needed to use the NHS? At first, I thought this was because I looked stressed out, or sick – although I felt quite all right. Almost two-and-a-half months later, I think I know why people asking: it’s because the NHS is a huge obsession for the British.

No, I haven’t needed the health service, but I have read a lot of stories about it. Not enough doctors; poorly performing doctors; doctors paid too much; premature babies dying unnecessarily because of mismanaged reform of neonatal units; unacceptable standards of food in hospitals; mental health units being closed down; hospitals failing to meet government targets for tackling superbug infections that don’t work, and so on. Hopefully, not even half of those media stories are true.

Brits may be proud to have a health system free for everyone, but they rarely stop complaining about how badly it performs. In Germany, we don’t live in a health paradise either, and people do worry about the sustainability of our health system. But we Germans, on the whole, do not worry about the quality of our healthcare, which we consider to be very good. We are willing to pay for medicine and healthcare services in return for maintaining that high quality. In England, it seems to be just the opposite: nobody has to pay, but they moan all the same. My impression is that things for free are rarely assigned value in British society.

But then life in Britain, especially in London, seems to be a matter of money. Making money. Making more money. I read that a huge percentage of the wealth of England belongs to just a few per cent of people. Such a huge gulf between the rich and the poor would cause a social revolution in Germany. Although the wealth gap is widening in my country, it feels that there is more social mobility. It is hard to imagine, in a Britain obsessed by class and money, a working-class boy like Gerhard Schroder, the former German chancellor, becoming prime minister.

Work is another obsession. But this seems intimately connected to the money thing – and to another obsession, housing. Your job does not bring enough money? Well, just take another one. But then affording even necessities such as housing, especially in London, is a struggle. In Britain, high earners even in their 20s aspire to buy their homes; renting, which is common in Germany, is regarded as the oddest thing in the world.

If you don’t earn lots of money, then you must share not just flats but rooms. Yes, rooms! Have a look at the Gumtree website – as I did when searched for somewhere to stay in London – and you’ll find many adverts offering these. Polish people, and other migrant workers form EU accession countries, it appears, commonly share rooms, four or five beds together. (By the way, I was shocked when Gordon Brown, a Labour prime minister, declared his aim for the next term of government: “British jobs for British workers”. If any leading German politician said this, there would be a huge row about nationalism.)

So far, so bad? Well, of course there are also aspects of the English society I did, and still do, enjoy. For instance, English society seems to be a strongly caring one – another obsession, I think. “Mind the gap” is just one of those “caring” impulses you are confronted with in a daily life. Getting on and off a tube train in London, you’ll hear this friendly demand over the public address system over and over again.

Everywhere you go, whatever you do, someone tells you nicely how to behave and survive: how to queue correctly; how to store the food in your fridge; not to scream at the staff in your bank; not to smoke in public. You British are so very helpful!