It really is not about Russell Brand: why we marched towards austerity

A march organised by the People’s Assembly attracted an estimated 50,000 to London on Saturday to protest against the coalition’s austerity measures. Speakers integrated Owen Jones, Caroline Lucas, Mark Steel and the comedian Russell Brand.

Sam Fairburn, the group’s national secretary, stated: “Cuts are killing men and women and destroying cherished public providers which have served generations.”

Guardian readers have been telling us why they attended the protest. Attendees who contacted us have been annoyed at the lack of coverage of the march in the media, with the BBC in distinct criticised for their lack of coverage.

Exactly where you at the protest? Include your very own accounts in the comments thread under

“I felt the march galvanised us”

I was there nowadays in the NHS bloc, the march was extremely various but variations aside we have been there to place on an united front and let our faces be noticed &amp voices be heard, younger and previous.

To be sincere for me this march was for the people, going down Regent Street I hoped the individuals we passed realised there were men and women standing up to the ConDems in the analogue world as effectively as the digital.

I was not amazed to learn the BBC ignored us once more as they did the 50,000 in Manchester when folks marched for the NHS outside Tory conference.

I never pretend to think that a bunch of speakers preaching to the converted will change the way we are but I felt the march galvanised us.

There are 10 long months until finally the election and those that marched today know that if the Tories continue to be in power which is the death knell of the public sector.

labmonkey181

“Even the outdated bill have been enjoying the environment”

It was lovely to see so numerous households taking part, with the young and previous marching collectively, and several men and women of distinct faiths and ethnicity joining in, assisting to develop a carnival environment.

Even the Outdated Bill have been enjoying the environment and the climate, with a few of them obtaining into the spirit, and chatting about the concerns such as their shrinking pensions.

I just hope that yesterday’s peaceful march will inspire 10 instances as several people to get element in October.

Stephen Porter

“This is individuals across the social spectrum”

Russel Brand was a single man at an occasion of thousands. He was one of a dozen or a lot more speakers.

This is not lease a mob. This is people across the social spectrum operating in the public sector, personal people who care about the services that the state supplies, and standing up for all of us so that we may possibly still have a good schooling, a welfare state when we want it, and help when we are sick or elderly.

jimpson

“Two of the best speeches came from non-celebrities”

Two of the greatest speeches came from non-celebrities campaigning in communities: females from East London fighting for properties for households, and wellness care staff from Bassetlaw fighting cuts.

It is that combine of local actions backing the inspiring ideas from folks like Owen Jones and Caroline Lucas that make this motion far more and a lot more crucial and Labour sadly significantly less and much less pertinent for the 21st century.

A meeting I attended at which Owen Jones spoke was between the most inspiring and optimistic I have skilled in 30 many years of political activity, sparking a broad range of actions by a quite varied group of folks. I feel a lot a lot more is going to come irrespective of national elections.

I tend to be sceptical about protest marches per se, but I have been impressed how an alternative coalition is developing in communities through the People’s Assembly, not only to argue against the impacts of austerity policies and practices, but also to propose substitute measures. I adhere to online groups which disseminate much information about local actions but also worldwide issues, raising awareness and solidarity.

I think this is forming an interesting counterpoint to the rise of UKIP from the opposite standpoint with its rhetoric of ”the people’s army.” It would seem the classic mainstream parties are caught in these two headlights like rather perplexed rabbits. They also have far fewer government powers offered the dominance of international capital, which movements like this are beginning to challenge in, I believe, some fascinating and new ways despite some traditional approaches like coming collectively occasionally in public events and protests nevertheless being component of the mix. But with out some visibility of program growth is difficult.

I am also sceptical about conspiracy theories, but I was surprised that The Guardian looks to have been the only mainstream media to cover the occasion, in spite of it becoming nicely organised, peaceful, humorous and non-threatening, nicely received by crowds of consumers in central London, and starting up right outdoors the BBC to make that level about their coverage of protests compared to the volumes about UKIP. I have manufactured a formal complaint to the BBC and could pursue that even more.

artery

It really is not about Russell Brand: why we marched towards austerity

Austerity or opportunity? How psychological health companies can thrive

The NHS spends much more than £12bn on psychological wellness but outcomes are bad in contrast with nations that devote significantly less, writes Mike Smith. Photograph: Mark Langridge/Mood Board/Rex

On my return to the United kingdom in 2012 to take up a position with the charity Substitute Futures Group (AFG), it struck me how folks doing work in the Uk wellness and social care sector have been seeing austerity as a challenge. Obtaining worked all over the globe, I know a lot of colleagues would welcome our circumstance in which healthcare has been ringfenced by the government from any real cuts in paying. In fact, the spending budget has simply been topic to a restriction on growth not like in other countries, the place there have been really savage cuts.

The NHS spends far more than £12bn on treating psychological well being concerns, however we truly feel so poverty stricken. What is even more regarding is that our outcomes are so poor when compared with individuals of nations that spend a lot less.

There is no doubt that the fiscal difficulties ahead will have an effect on future mental wellness companies. Whoever is in government right after the 2015 general election will still be taking policy choices to reduce the deficit. Andy Burnham MP, shadow secretary of state for health talks of a entire person technique to care and repeal of the Wellness and Social Care Act 2012. But is this radical sufficient for the services and/or workforce re-layout which I think is essential inside of our sector?

Poverty of pondering, poverty of creativity and a poverty of action appear to colour mental overall health companies in the Uk. This absence of new considering along with tradition suggest there is an obvious lack of political will to radically alter the way we do items. We have a huge quantity of money invested in classic structures and there is significantly emotional and personal investment in the status quo which is hampering our approaches.

As mental health solutions adopt an ethos of recovery, development and aspiration rather than servicing and stability alone, they are seeing the changes that are required to transform expectations, providers and people. The very good news is that some of the greatest techniques of carrying out things need not be expensive. Hertfordshire partnership NHS trust assistance family placements, as one option to hospital, supporting crisis resolution solutions.

Option Futures Group has a two-year partnership with Mobee, a charity in West Africa that is creating local community mental wellbeing practitioners to support the polyclinics in Gambia. The neighborhood staff are trained in self-assist and in personal and local community capacity creating techniques. The self-support resources are based on man or woman-centred counselling and remedy-centered therapy but use written queries and little group workout routines run inside colleges and polyclinics, as effectively as local community groups and postnatal courses etc.

Two groups of assistance workers and senior personnel from our organisation have visited Gambia to share excellent practice and produce new expertise and strategies in an setting exactly where there is small resource, fiscal or otherwise. We have also formed sturdy back links with mental overall health service specialists in Italy and Denmark to find out how they are dealing with austerity inside of their nations and communities.

In Trieste, the significance of a whole method response to psychological distress rooted in the local community not inside the patient is highlighted. This strategy and the need for powerful and effective situation management has proved a accomplishment.

One more, maybe even a lot more radical, technique focusing on workforce modifications has been adopted at Lyngby Tarbaek Kommune in Copenhagen. Right here they have changed the thinking that underpins their provision. They have completed away with personnel meetings and handover intervals in all forms.

In the United kingdom, we need to use austerity to seem at how we deal with chronicity, stay away from producing dependency and a hopeless model of servicing by finding out from other nations and providing alternatives for alter.

Mike Smith is vice-chair of the Worldwide Mental Well being Collaborating Network (IMHCN) and clinical director (psychological health) at Alternative Futures Group.

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Austerity or opportunity? How psychological health companies can thrive

NHS will "struggle to survive" on austerity budgets, warns outgoing chief

But without having them potential NHS leaders would preside in excess of a ”managed decline”.

Sir David explained: ”I will not consider the wheels are going to come off tomorrow. But we’ll see a position the place people have to reduce the quantity of nurses on the wards and have to lessen the drugs that we give to men and women.

”I can see all of these factors occurring unless we embrace this modify.”

The reformation – to delivery of care rather than the construction of the overall health service – is crucial to make sure the NHS can cope with increasing demand, he said.

Among the crucial alterations is the require for a significant centralisation of hospital providers to improve top quality of care.

Sir David suggested that rather of each hospital obtaining a classic accident and emergency unit, there would be ”between forty and 70 main emergency centres across the country, with all other centres feeding into them in a network”.

That would not mean people other hospitals losing their emergency departments altogether, he explained, but they would no longer deal with the most significant of circumstances.

”The other individuals will (nevertheless) take 70 per cent or 80 per cent of the sufferers who at present turn up at A&ampE units and deal with them as normal.”

The 300 organisations that offer specialised NHS solutions, such as cardiac or cancer care or organ transplantation, should be reduced to among 15 and thirty.

A big proportion of hospital care ought to also be transferred to local community settings to support the NHS cope with an ageing population, a rise in patients with one or far more lengthy-term issue this kind of as asthma or diabetes, and demand for new remedies. GP providers should also be accessible every hour of each and every day.

Sir David advised the Guardian: ”We know this modify can be carried out. And we know that a lot more preventive operate in the community decreases demand on hospitals and that concentrated specialised solutions prospects to much better outcomes for individuals.

”But it’s tough to picture carrying out all those issues without having some monetary flexibility to allow us to do that, some type of adjust fund that would allow us to do that.”

This further funds would permit existing hospitals to be run whilst new solutions are designed in the community.

Sir David stated that without having the overhaul there could be a decline in quality in the NHS, which could lead to a collapse in public support for the well being support and a rise in private healthcare.

He explained it was ”unavoidable” that the up coming government would have to uncover extra funds to fund the adjustments.

NHS will "struggle to survive" on austerity budgets, warns outgoing chief

NHS will not survive soon after 2015 if austerity continues, warns chief

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson: ‘We know alter can be done. But it is difficult to imagine undertaking all these items with out some monetary flexibility.’ Photograph: David Levene

Billions of further funding will be necessary for the NHS to assist push via “unpleasant and unprecedented” modifications for the duration of the following parliament, the outgoing boss of the health support warns.

In a frank interview with the Guardian, Sir David Nicholson mentioned that whoever formed the next government would need to give the NHS extra funds simply because it could not survive if it had to continue to be in the straitjacket of austerity-era flat budgets following 2015.

The income would be necessary so the NHS can dramatically rationalise hospital providers, and concentrate its expert and GP solutions – enabling an NHS Nicholson calls “unsustainable” to ditch its outmoded reliance on hospital-based remedy and switch to a new model of neighborhood-primarily based care.

Nicholson declined to say how a lot far more cash he believed would be essential, but an additional senior NHS leader privately advised it could be up to £5bn additional a 12 months for several many years.

The NHS chief executive’s call for a “alter fund” on prime of the service’s present £110bn spending budget has sparked a renewed debate about no matter whether the NHS should continue to be a unique case for ministers confronting additional many years of tight public finances – and how much it wants to cope with the ongoing and long term rise in demand for healthcare.

Hospital services would also have to be centralised on a massive scale, he warned. GP surgeries essential to give up their part as the NHS’s equivalent of “corner stores” and a huge proportion of hospital care ought to be delivered in neighborhood settings if the NHS is to cope with the pressures posed by the ageing population, rise in the amount of sufferers with a single or much more lengthy-phrase conditions this kind of as asthma or diabetes, and demand for new remedies, Nicholson mentioned.

In long term there needed to be no more than 40-70 major centres of A&ampE care, even though the variety of organisations providing specialised services like cardiac care and transplantation had to shrink from 300 to just 15-30, he explained. He declined to put a figure on what would be the perfect quantity of GP surgeries in a streamlined organisation.

“We know this change can be completed,” he mentioned. “And we know that much more preventive operate in the local community minimizes demand on hospitals and that concentrating specialised solutions prospects to much better outcomes for sufferers.

“But it truly is challenging to envision doing all these issues without some monetary versatility to enable us to do that, some kind of modify fund that would enable us to do that”, explained the NHS boss, who leaves his publish at the end of the month soon after eight years to be replaced by Simon Stevens, former adviser to Tony Blair and Alan Milburn.

The further funds would enable the NHS to run existing hospitals although new solutions in the community had been created and created up with the intention of supplying a big sum of care.

It utilised a “adjust reserve” when it moved psychological well being care in the 1980s from standard asylums, which were closed, to new neighborhood-based providers – and that proved effective, he explained.

With out the NHS undertaking an overhaul in the way it delivered care it would encounter “managed decline above a period”, with fewer nurses on wards, rationing of medicines, longer waiting occasions for treatment method and a general decline in the good quality of care, he mentioned.

The alterations required had been important but are also “enormous, massive [and] unprecedented industry-broad change”, and would be “unpleasant for workers” and tough to persuade the public to accept. But failure to push them by means of could consequence in a decline in the high quality of NHS care – triggering a boom in personal healthcare and a collapse in public support for the support, he warned.

It is “unavoidable” that the next government would have to supply additional money to smooth that transition, he mentioned.

Paul Burstow, a Liberal Democrat health minister in the coalition right up until late 2012, explained that Nicholson’s message was “a reasonable evaluation of what’s essential to make change occur” but “will be unwelcomed by folks in all the events responsible for Treasury policies”.

Nicholson’s intervention comes as the tightness in the NHS’s finances will be illustrated when Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, announces on Thursday that all NHS staff will not be getting the 1% across the board spend rise from subsequent month promised final 12 months by the chancellor, George Osborne.

It is understood that the well being secretary, Jeremy Hunt, determined to block the award because he believed the NHS could not afford the expected £600m expense involved. Some workers are still expected to get an enhance.

Christine McAnea, head of overall health at the Unison trade union, stated: “If this rumour is true, NHS employees will be really angry. Their spend has fallen behind above the previous number of years and they deserve a respectable shell out improve and not to be treated with contempt by the coalition.

“I cannot feel that the government would be so foolish as to deny even a paltry one% to nurses, paramedics and therapists – it would be electoral suicide.”

Professor Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund overall health thinktank, also backed Nicholson.

“Our examination confirms that it is now inevitable that the following government will require to discover added funding for overall health and social care. The substitute is to accept important cuts to solutions that will harm care,” explained Ham, a former adviser to David Cameron on the NHS.

NHS will not survive soon after 2015 if austerity continues, warns chief