SOS: Who’s going to Save Our Services?

Nineteen NHS hospitals are set to close and the rest are under siege. Our precious medics are leaving in droves for better lives, more respect and increased salaries abroad. Social care is mostly not fit for purpose or non-existent.

Schools are in crisis. After years of demoralising, increased workload slog under Michael Gove, state school teachers have had enough and are leaving the profession en masse. Who can blame them when staff numbers have been reduced, class sizes increased and curriculums changed and narrowed?

Teaching assistants are regularly performing full teaching duties with no extra pay (See Your Shout, left).

Prisons are increasingly privately owned and run for profit above anything else. Prison officers are overworked, undertrained, under pressure and often under threat. In badly run jails, prisoners are brutalised rather than rehabilitated.

Our vital public services are being callously destroyed by stealth so privatisation can be flown in like a superhero rescue. It smacks of a Government that doesn’t understand the drudgery and hardship of everyday life – the frustration of struggling to settle inflated energy bills so shareholders can rub their hands as they line their deep pockets.

The them. And us. The them who have never been us, have never tasted real life, even though they legislate to dictate ours. More importantly: where IS the Labour party? It is truly a disgrace that they’ve left the room when we need them the most.