AIBU to think asking for 100,000 volunteers to help out the NHS is a bit of a con?

[longwayoff]

I'm not against voluntary work, thank God for everyone who willingly gives their time to help others, we'd all be far worse off without them. This, however, looks like nhs on the cheap. All kinds of low paid but necessary jobs could go this way, portering, cleaning?, transport, others? I'm very suspicious of it. Am I wrong?

I agree with you. The nhs is a wonderful thing. It needs to be properly funded. And yes I wouldn't mind lay in slightly more tax for it, if it wasn't wasted on managers and vanity projects. I think the whole system needs a shake up. We need to stop funding some things, controversially I mean Ivf, sex reassignment, cosmetic surgery etc...... and actually just look after ill people.

Volunteers is not going to work in the long term is it? They are all retired people at our local hospital as everyone else local has to work or look after kids etc......

No one in government will tackle this though. They want it to fail so it can be sold off.

I did a weekly volunteer ‘shift’ at my local hospital for several years - I made cups of tea, chatted with patients and helped out with any non-medical requests.

To be honest, there are lots of retired people these days who are still relatively fit and able, so I think volunteering just once a week is a great way for them to help out the NHS, especially given that they’ll be needing its services probably sooner rather than later.

Of course the NHS should be better funded, but we all know that’s not going to happen any time soon, so if we can help out by providing non-medical services for free, I think we should.

Depends what work you ask them to do, and how much reliance you place in them.
They are volunteers, their time is free and they can just not pitch in when needed.

The NHS has a long history of volunteers who make tea, chat to patients and take patients to church services at the hospital. I think chatting to longer term lonely patients is important and is a perfect job for volunteers. But no they should not be doing jobs that have been paid.