Going Public...

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Never mind the knee-jerk vacillations of this month's Prime Minister over COP attendance, the saddest, but frankly inevitable news of the day is the now definite national Nurses' strike: the first ever such action. Sad, because no-one in the nursing and medical professions would ever want truly to withdraw their labour; inevitable because of the financial stress the profession has been under for so very long, mostly on the watch of successive Tory governments. A toxic mix of ignorance, prejudice and inaction on this revolving-door administration's behalf has seen to it that our health service, and its benighted cousin, social care, have been forced to their respective knees through neglect and criminal under-investment.

As Polly Toynbee astutely pointed out in yesterday's Guardian newspaper, further austerity is the polar opposite of what is actually required to drag us out of our current economic death-spiral: investment and spending on public services, fair pay and an equitable tax system are what are required: without these, our economy is in the toilet, and most of us with it: got no second (or third) home in Monaco or the Caymans? Tough shit, then, pleb... So let's support those that ultimately support us most in our times of need, and make sure that they can function at the level they so dearly want to: let's bring the NHS, properly integrated with a real, functioning social-care system, back into the public fold. And while we're at it, the railways, power and water, too...

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