Save the NHS

Drawing on an excellent article about COVID-19 and American exceptionalism by the anthropologist Wade Davis for Rolling Stone, I look at the crisis of leadership in the US when it comes to dealing with the unprecedented challenges for our economic future caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and compare how similar failures of leadership also plague the UK.

In my latest article looking at the drastically changed coronavirus world, I flag up the dangers of the massive shift from employment to unemployment, call for rents to be written off for the duration of the crisis, and refer to a study in the journal Science to demonstrate that we need to be thinking about living with the coronavirus for years, and not just a few more months of lockdown.

100 days since the existence of the coronavirus was first announced to the world, I look at some of the many ways in which it has changed life forever – primarily by establishing that our societies’ obsession with corporate profits above all else has now been revealed as empty and worthless, when what truly matters is our health, and those who look after us. I also look at some of the many ways in which our economies, and our economic priorities, will need to change.

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.   Seven years ago yesterday, I was admitted to hospital after suffering for two months with severe pain in two toes on my right foot. As a human rights campaigner, it was, I thought, somewhat ironic that I was in such pain that […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator.   Exactly six years ago, my life changed drastically when I was hospitalised, for 12 days, as doctors with the NHS tried — and eventually succeeded — in working out how to save a number of my toes, which, over the preceding months, had […]

See my photos on Flickr here! Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator.   On Saturday March 4, 2017, tens of thousands of campaigners marched through central London to defend the NHS from the Tory government, which has been responsible for alarming cuts to NHS funding since first getting back into […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator.   Please join the march for the NHS in London this Saturday! Four years ago, I was involved in a struggle to save Lewisham Hospital, my local hospital in south east London, from destruction by senior NHS managers working closely with the government of […]

Please support my work as a freelance investigative journalist and commentator.   The NHS faces an unprecedented crisis, and it’s all the Tories’ fault (with the help of some senior NHS officials). A new report by the National Audit Office, the government’s official auditor, has found that “[t]wo-thirds of health trusts in England are now […]

Please support my work! Exactly five years ago, I was hospitalised — with what turned out to be a blood disease that, manifesting itself via a blood clot, had cut off the blood supply to two of my toes to such an extent that they had turned black, and it was debatable whether they could […]

There are so many horrible aspects to life in the UK under the Tories that it’s sometimes difficult to keep track of them all, unless you’re unfortunate enough to be affected by all of them — the unfettered housing bubble, for example, and the similarly unregulated private rental market, coupled with a sustained assault on […]