Michael Rosen backs campaign for big funding rise for NHS

[Northerner]

Michael Rosen, the poet and children’s writer and one of the best-known Covid survivors, is backing a campaign for a massive cash injection into the NHS and social care.

The New Deal for the NHS, organised by the patient-led pressure group Just Treatment, says the pandemic has exposed the need for “transformative investment” of £33bn a year in the NHS or 1.5% of GDP.

In foreword to a pamphlet setting out the plan, Rosen, who spent 48 days in intensive care with Covid, argues that the injection of emergency funding by the government in the economy in the last year shows that such investment is possible through the creation of government bonds.

He writes: “If we’ve learned anything from the last year, it’s that the government has levers which can literally ‘create money’.”

Michael Rosen backs campaign for big funding rise for NHS

Patient-led pressure group says Covid pandemic shows need for extra £33bn a year

www.theguardian.com

It strikes me that Johnson has already forgotten about his stint in hospital and what he owes to the NHS. A nice gesture might have been to give a bonus to all NHS staff at Christmas, but clapping is obviously cheaper

 

[mikeyB]

Well, that campaign will have no effect. The English government concentrates on the economy, building unnecessary railways, roads, and illegal nuclear weapons sand their delivery systems, and spending multimillions paying their chums to run the test and trace system which is an almost complete failure.

And when they won't feed hungry children outside of term time at a cost of a couple of million until their arms are twisted by a bloody footballer, what hope is there for the NHS?

And paying NHS staff more without increasing capacity is hardly a remedy.

 

[trophywench]

If staff employed by anyone else had had to work so long so hard without respite - the employer would have been forced to stop - and quite rightly too - by the same Government's authorities.

Merely chucking money at it (or anything usually) as a one-off is absolutely not a solution.