We ride at dawn - for the NHS

[GloGirl]

Seriously, are we the public going to do anything about this? Can we coordinate a mass protest/march? Mini protests outside hospitals? Has everyone been writing to their MP?

I can't read these headlines any more, it's breaking my heart. I was sure during covid it would force the govt to reconsider its treatment of the NHS - that it would force a change in priority for social care, pay, structures, staffing.

How did we hit a new low, and just keep going? Who is with me??

Again, you're ignoring the fact that the NHS is being run into the ground deliberately by s government that wants to get rid of it.

It's not an individual, health-based problem. It's a collective political problem.

I’m ok with more to social care, it was a shame it was reversed but that’s it

😳 at masks

I don't know what we could do to change things but I'd also like to do SOMETHING.
It's just terrifying. This government have the blood of thousands on their hands.

The TUC have just announced a day of protest on 1 Feb to defend the right to strike.

Because the government is passing a law to make it harder for workers to strike en mass (forcing some potential strikers to work instead, or risk the union being sued) to meet new minimum service levels.

Because withdrawing labour via a strike is really the only collective action workers can take to stop the deterioration of pay and working conditions that is going on in public services and beyond.

Something to think about.

It can be both

If you want to galvanise support to lobby the government to tell people to exercise more and eat healthy, I'm sure it would make great thread.

This thread is about saving the health service that the government is currently and deliberately destroying.

Why is it one or the other? Why can't it be both? Not everyone can get out to join a protest but they can avoid the second bag of crisps.

Does anyone have any theories as to why we in the UK are so angry and worried about this issue, but so unwilling to do more than voice support for NHS workers strikes?

Have we been neutered somehow? Scared off the streets since lockdown? Too absorbed in our digital lives? Too tired trying to handle the cost of living? Too scared of arrest? Convinced we can't change anything? Too much to lose?

It's a genuine puzzle to me, especially because I see it kicking off in many other places, even really hard-line authoritarian regimes where the price of protest is often death or injury, where there's little unionisation and no free press.

I'd love to hear from ex-protesters too, why did you stop?

Any ideas?

Are you kicking off - if not why not?

You could answer your own question

The sooner we move to a healthcare model more in line with France/Germany/Australia the better. I am fed up of paying high taxes for a system which doesn't work, wont get any better and it is a lottery whether I will get treatment if i get sick. You could divert billions, pour money into it and it still wouldnt work - there is a reason why no other country in the world has a NHS style set up.

I'm not supporting the nurses. Not at 17%. Not after all their dancing. Not after creating some of the waiting lists due to shutting us all out of the service. All complicit even if they didn't sign the papers. They are part of so many of the problems.

@Swimswam
Yes i'd like you to explain how we would move to their systems without wrecking what is happening in the NHS now?

...as your happy to explain more.

Thank you for your interest!

I find A to B marches in London quite disheartening, personally. After years of doing it, it feels like a walk to the park, with no real challenge to the status quo. Ever since millions matched against the war in Iraq and it did absolutely nothing to stop that slaughter.

I find extinction rebellion's methods of trying to get arrested were self defeating, because you can't "overwhelm" a court and prison system that simply expands to meet capacity, and people who are not white and middle class suffer disproportionate repercussions.

So how can we creativity creatively and usefully resist, that's what I'm wondering.

Over to you, @MarshaBradyo

It is permitted by the law (that Mumsnetters hold so dear) exactly because it will make no difference whatsoever.

My view was in pp, but I wanted the social care increase to go ahead - the only way was to vote in leadership race as a member, but as I wasn’t one I didn’t get a say

I felt it was a shame but not much stronger than that. The answer is I don’t feel as others do when they say why aren’t we rioting / protesting / doing something

So I guess it comes down to motivation

And I don’t want to see carnage from people kicking off. I was here in London riots, communities get trashed and it doesn’t help them

As much per capita as other comparable nations with a bit more to catch up.

I ride with you, OP.

What makes you think that's enough?

Yes, we do seem to be rather well "managed" in this country - most organisers submit their protest plans to the police well in advance, and ask for permission to protest. If the police say no, they negotiate a plan which the police do approve of.

Which makes it seem a bit more like a performance, than a protest.

It's hugely wasteful and* bureaucratic*

Do you have evidence of this huge bureaucracy?

2020/21 NHS spending was £172bn... its underfunded because for decades, we have spend 1 or 2 % less than countries like France Germany etc.

I guess posters with PHI.... wont be bothered about the NHS disappearing.

On protests, watch France as the Govt tries to increase retirement age from 62 to 64.......

While enough people get enough out of the system to allow it to continue, it will. Will we reach a point where enough people get so little that they want to collapse it and take risks (of punishment by the system) to try to bring that about?

I have no idea, but we might be closer to it now than at any other time in my not massively long life. Not saying "close" (I have no idea) but "closer"!

Sorting out social care has to be the priority. Just look at how social care funding has decreased while nhs funding has increased.

Yeah a friend of mine who is a generation older than me, and quite interested in this stuff, tells me the situation we're in now is worse than they've ever seen before. And yet at the same time, resistance is also lower than they've ever seen. Both of us puzzle over why exactly this is.

I suspect the smashing of union power and the success of the right since Thatcher (I would call it neoliberalism), plus the subversion of Labour into New Labour, all has a lot to do with it. I mean it was never perfect of course, but now it's a lot worse.