Banking on the NHS, Uncut action this weekend!
This Saturday sees the latest wave of demonstrations organised by anti-cuts network UK Uncut, this time targetting banks and turning them into hospitals as part of an action being dubbed “Emergency Operation“, which will highlight how cuts in the NHS are to blame on the banks for their behaviour and we won’t let them forget it! Globalise Resistance will be joining in, targetting HSBC for it’s role in buying up hospital PFI schemes–outrageous stuff, the details of which we’ll publish more of in our PFI work soon, althought we’ll be shouting and leafletting about it Saturday! If you want to join us email for the meet up.
“The NHS will last as long as there are folk left to fight for it.”
- Nye Bevan, founder of the NHS
“Andrew Lansley. Greedy Andrew Lansley. Tosser.”
- MC NxtGen
This is an emergency. The welfare state is in peril. Under the guise of ‘efficiency’ and ‘reform’, this government is plotting to cut the NHS and sell off what’s left. Andrew Lansley has claimed the government is in a ‘listening exercise’ about the proposed NHS ‘reforms’. But despite widespread outcry from doctors, nurses and the public the government isn’t listening to anyone apart from private healthcare lobbyists.
Let’s make Lansley listen. We want to keep our healthy NHS and fix our broken banking system. Whilst the NHS is being dismantled, the banks that caused this crisis in the first place have been left untouched. Reckless gambling, obscene bonuses and a global financial crisis are symptoms of a disease that requires a drastic intervention.
The banks are due a check-up. On Saturday May 28th, join UK Uncut’s Emergency Operation and transform your local high street bank into a hospital. Tell the government to leave our NHS alone; it’s the banks that are sick.
Turn HSBC into a hospital, fill Natwest with nurses, get bandaged in Barclays and operate in RBS. As usual, it’s up to you to organise an action in your area – so talk to your friends, your local union branch and anti-cuts group and then list an action on our website. All the resources you’ll need will be on our website, including a flyer to tell the public about the NHS emergency. Get organised, get creative and let’s make Lansley listen: leave our NHS alone and cut benefits to bankers.
See you on the high streets.
07415063231 / [email protected]
www.ukuncut.org.uk
UK Uncut targets banks in ‘emergency operation’ against NHS shakeup
UK Uncut, the anti-austerity action group, today announced plans to transform banks nationwide into hospitals, operating theatres and GPs surgeries on May 28th to demand that the government focus on reform of the banks rather than of the NHS.
The day of action, happening under the banner ‘UK Uncut: Emergency Operation’, will see banks up and down the country transformed to draw attention to the continuing state subsidy of the banking sector of up to £100bn/year [14] [1] and NHS reform plans predicted to have “catastrophic consequences” for patient care [2]. Activists hope to confirm the support of rapper MC NxtGen, whose ‘Andrew Lansley Rap’ has had over 368,000 views on YouTube [3], stars from medical TV dramas and doctors and nurses unions.
Despite a pre-election promise by David Cameron to ‘cut the deficit, not the NHS’, 50,000 NHS jobs will be lost over the next five years including thousands of doctors, nurses and midwives in a £20bn ‘efficiency drive’ [4] [5]. The Royal College of General Practitioners has warned that the Government’s NHS reform plans jeopardise the principle of universal healthcare, saying that “we are moving headlong into an insurance-type model” [8]. Meanwhile, taxpayers continue to subsidise the banking sector by up to £100bn/year, equivalent to the entire NHS budget [1] [6] [7].
The last nationwide day of action at the end of February saw high-street branches of bailed-out banks turned into crèches, libraries and hospitals in 40 different towns and cities across the UK [10]. The Uncut movement continues to spread around the globe, with US Uncut staging hundreds of occupations of tax dodging corporations across a four-day period in April [11] and Portugal Uncut holding its first actions [12].
“The banks are paying lavish bonuses and raking in billions in profit off the back of taxpayer subsidies yet the government tell us ‘there is no alternative’ to unprecedented public sector cuts. That includes the cuts to the NHS that Cameron promised would never happen,” said healthcare worker and UK Uncut supporter Jack Davies, 27. “The government should be cutting benefits to banks, not the NHS and other essential public services.”
UK Uncut supporter Sophie Healey, 33, said: “Whilst NHS satisfaction is at a record high, the banks are still costing us billions each year. It shows the government’s true colours that they would rather privatise the NHS than fix the broken banking system.”
[1] http://treasureislands.org/uks-implicit-bank-subsidy-cost-of-nhs/
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8441391/Half-of-NHS-cuts-in-frontline-posts-nursing-leaders-claim.html
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1jPqqTdNo
[4] http://www.channel4.com/news/50-000-nhs-job-cuts-hit-mental-health-services
[5] http://www.channel4.com/news/nhs-being-attacked-from-all-sides-says-nurse-leader
[6] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/12/how_to_curb_bonuses.html
[7] http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2011-04-20/uk-banks-still-too-big-to-fail?mod=sectionheadlines-home-IB
[8] http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/41884
[9] http://www.neweconomics.org/press-releases/response-vickers-commission-a-promising-start-but-fails-acid-test-say-nef-and-compass
[10] http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/actions/list?d=2011-02-26
[11] http://www.usuncut.org/
[12] www.facebook.com/portugaluncut
[13] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/lawyers-back-uk-uncut-on-taxes-2280762.html
[14] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/12/how_to_curb_bonuses.html
