Care workers deserve equal treatment
As I write, in the UK we are entering our second month of lockdown. We still don’t know what the long term future holds but if there is anything positive to be gained from these challenging times, it’s that social care is finally being given some greater recognition.
I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole career: the moment where those working in social care are given equal footing to the health care workforce.
We’re not there yet but the media and government are starting to recognise the critical service that we provide.
People who work in social care change lives. Every day at the moment they are saving lives. We must never forget what key workers across the UK have done and continue to do; I know I won’t.
Lisa Hopkins, Chief executive, SeeAbility
and we are better placed than most countries to afford the extraordinary additional public expenditure now called for.
That is not an indictment of free market capitalism so much as a vindication of it.
The keenness of governments worldwide to lift the current restrictions and get their economies back to work proves, if proof were needed, that the enormous costs of providing public services, the hospitals, the schools, the welfare benefits, etc, can only be met by the payment of taxes by those who create wealth by working or investing in a thriving capitalist economy.
Labour councillor Murray should not seek to portray the response to this crisis as somehow heralding the new dawn of a socialist utopian society any more than she should suggest that Britain would be better off inside Europe at a time like this. Europe’s community spirit, when the chips are down, was well illustrated by its rebuff of Italy’s pleas for help with medical equipment.
Antony Ward