Open your eyes, our NHS needs you →
As we begin 2019, I want to give a shout-out to our amazing NHS - and all the fabulous and inspiring staff that keep it running - here in Sheffield and up and down the country, during the holiday period and throughout the year.
Last year the NHS, one of our country’s greatest and proudest achievements, turned 70. We must fight to secure its future for the next 70 years and beyond.
The Tories have wrecked and ravaged our vital public health and social care services for nine years. Their ‘10-year plan’ is a sham. There are a lot of digits being thrown around in their report, but on paper, all the numbers add up to is disaster - insufficient funds, inadequate staffing and lack of foresight.
As with many things, when it comes to the NHS, the Tories just can’t be trusted.
It has taken a government obsessed with slashing budgets and cutting corners, a government hell-bent on imposing deadly and devastating levels of austerity, a government slammed by the UN for its unfounded cruelty, for cracks to appear in our mighty NHS.
When A&E’s are overrun or forcibly closed, hospitals short-staffed and under-resourced, with patients lying in corridors and staff working incomprehensibly lengthy and agonizing shifts, I ask the government, how many deaths are okay for you to save an arbitrary sum of money so that you can carry on slashing taxes for your big business friends?
2019 must be the year we stop and reverse its sinister privatisation. It must be the year where we undo the deliberate underfunding and conscious mismanagement of this great institution, founded upon the essential and indispensable principle that access to good quality healthcare, free at the point of use, is a basic human right for all.
And to the home secretary - first of all, referring to yourself as ‘The Saj’ is genuinely weird. Secondly, your abhorrent and farcical immigration white paper, as well as your general attitude and use of language around migration and asylum, belong in the bin. As do you. The NHS depends on thousands of staff from a multitude of countries, and believe me every single one of them is highly skilled. It stands as one of the greatest arguments against your cheap, power-seeking rhetoric. We see right through it.
And while we’re at it, give those incredible staff an actual, meaningful pay rise!
Let’s make it absolutely clear. We as those who depend on the NHS, will not be fooled by the government’s attempts to pull the wool over our eyes. There’s a lot going on in British politics right now. We will fight to make sure the NHS outlives it all.
The NHS was there for every single one of us when we needed it most.
We must be there for it!
Magid 👊🏾💚