Our big chance to pull together as a nation
THE Coronation of HM King Charles III is an unmissable opportunity to bring our nation together and make a difference.
It’s a chance to show our kindness, do good things and inspire community volunteering. That’s why we’re holding
The Big Help Out on Bank Holiday Monday, May 8. It’s about each of us doing our bit to change things for the better.
Whether that’s visiting a lonely neighbour, cleaning up the park or volunteering with Scouts or Guides, this’ll show just what a difference volunteering makes.
Organised by the Together Coalition, scores of organisations will be involved, but it’s what we each do that really counts.
We’ve seen how our nation pulls together: in good times like the Platinum Jubilee, and in tough times like the pandemic, and after the loss of our Late Queen. It’s time to summon that incredible spirit again.
To get involved, there’ll be a website that’ll match you to volunteering opportunities in your area. The Big Help Out will be a kindness revolution – and we should all be part it. Let’s have fun and make this the start of a brighter future. For more information, visit www.thebighelpout.org.uk
Bear Grylls, Chief Scout
NHS collapsing just like Soviet Union
SO, it looks like the NHS could finally be in a state of collapse, all too often unable to provide basic levels of care we should take for granted in a first world country.
It’s so similar to the old Soviet Union, which was suddenly and unexpectedly buried under its own weight more than 30 years ago.
Whereas the Soviets were forced to queue for bread at their state-run supermarkets, we queue instead for health care, whether it’s a much sought after GP appointment or a two-year wait for a hip operation. In both cases the over-bureaucratised state machine can’t keep up with demand. The NHS worked pretty well for the first two or three decades of its existence but as the population grows older and medical advances raise expectations it is struggling compared to better healthcare systems in comparable countries. Remember too that many well educated people in the West admired the USSR in its early years; for example, praising Stalin’s five-year plans for tractor production or steel making. They look like fools now.
Just pouring more money into the NHS isn’t working; we need a complete overhaul. My preference would be for a combination of state funding and social health insurance, as seen in France, Australia, Scandinavia, Spain, etc. Look at the data and their health outcomes (e.g. cancer survival rates) put ours to shame. People say radical reform would lead to a two-tier system, but we already have that, with those who are better off forking out privately to pay for treatment when failed by the NHS. I know many people who have opted to pay, rather than endure months of pain.
But it will be a brave politician who confines the NHS to history, and I don’t see one on the horizon. The most promising noises have come from Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting who said before Christmas that he wouldn’t “pretend the NHS is the envy of the world” and that it needs urgent reform. Sadly he’s gone quiet on the issue since then – can’t upset the applecart, can we?
Andrew Morgan, Bridgend
Just pouring more money into the NHS isn’t working; we need a complete overhaul
Andrew Morgan Bridgend
then subsequently to decide to make it available to the public, was clearly a premeditated and planned one, all of which is contrary to the purported “brief” and supposedly transient cognitive “error of judgement”.
In addition, the contrived and preventable party-political video behaviour of the PM was clearly contrary to good driving practice and police advice concerning the avoidance of in-car driver distraction activities.
PM Rishi Sunak’s supposed new broom promotion of personal accountability, governmental integrity and procedural transparency is decidedly bristle-bare, familiar, and indeed farcical.
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