The Socialist 11 October 2017

Nasty party imploding...drive out the Tories

Nasty party imploding...drive out the Tories

Major attacks 'Universal Credit', half a million more face poverty

IMF helps cause inequality it slams

NHS meltdown - fight the Tory cuts

Hundreds of torture victims wrongly detained

Them & Us

Catalonia: Workers can finish what Puigdemont won't

The fight against racial discrimination is tied to the fight to defeat capitalist austerity

Royal Mail workers fight court attempt to stop national strike

Boeing bust-up threatens thousands of skilled jobs

Who's watching who?: The fight for justice, trade union and democratic rights

Workplace news in brief

Housing crisis: Corbyn's positive measures blanked by Labour's right

No more fire deaths - ensure safety now!

Don't wreck our rec! Campaigning to save green space in Standish

Carlisle NHS campaigners hand in petition to MP

Cardiff Socialist Students confront 'Parasite' Jacob Rees-Mogg

Manchester rally discussed unionisation and nationalisation

Join the Orgreave Halloween rally

Too much to cross the Mersey

Poverty, repression and fightback on the docks

Theresa May, Frida Kahlo and turning women into wares

Shocking insight into Isis

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NHS meltdown - fight the Tory cuts

NHS in crisis (Click to enlarge)

There's more evidence that the National Health Service (NHS) is in meltdown. This time it comes from the Care Quality Commission inspectorate.

Its report identified: massive staff shortages, with vacancy rates in the NHS rising by 16% over the last two years; hospital bed shortages, with occupancy levels being consistently above recommended levels since April 2012; decreasing numbers of nursing homes beds - down by 4,000 in two years; more people not getting support for their social care needs; a 20% increase in people detained under the Mental Health Act.

This crisis is the result of successive governments' toxic policies of cuts, underinvestment, Private Finance Initiative (PFI) privatisation and outsourcing, rip-off drug prices and medical supplies costs, and several disastrous reorganisations of the NHS into competing trusts.

All this is set to intensify with the Tories misnamed 'sustainability and transformation plans' (STPs). Under STPs a further £22 billion of cuts are being rammed through the NHS by 2020. All trusts - many saddled with enormous PFI debt - will have to clear their accumulated deficits by then. If this happens then more A&E and ward closures with the loss of hospital beds will follow, along with unfilled nursing posts, and cuts to GP services.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell's call to scrap PFI and bring health services back in-house is therefore welcome. However, patients and health workers can't wait for a future Labour government. Industrial action by healthworkers, along with community protests and a mass trade union organised national demonstration, is needed now to stop the cuts.

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Nasty party imploding...drive out the Tories