By Ayesha Begum, Senior Editor
With headlines praising 100 year old Captain Tom Moore and an upgrade to colonel position commending his valiant efforts in raising almost £33 million (at the time of writing) for the NHS (a state funded institution not a charity), the attention of the public seems to be quietly redirected away from the failures of the governing party regarding their capabilities to increase the wages of key workers in the health service and provide adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) and funding for the public service.
Strangely, this philanthropy is being encouraged. Of course, services that are under strain during this difficult time need our support as consumers and users, but what about the services that the public are funding voluntarily that are actually the responsibility of the state? The NHS is funded through income taxation - the irony is that by 2023/24, the current government is on course to have handed out almost £100 billion in tax breaks and corporate giveaways to the more wealthier of us. It seems as though the government is not as fond of public services that are free at the point of use as some may have naively assumed.
The even bigger irony is the rise in the amount of people taking part in Virgin’s Run For Heroes challenge that involves running 5k, donating £5 and then nominating 5 more people to raise money to go towards NHS Charities Together which states that it sets out to support the welfare and wellbeing of NHS staff on the frontline of this pandemic. It just really is unfortunate that Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, is a tax exile (an individual who leaves a country in order to avoid paying income taxes in another country) as for 14 years, he has lived on his own Carribean island and has not paid UK income tax. The misplaced support for Virgin’s charities (and charities dedicated to the NHS in general) even extends to the realm of YouTube, where prominent British YouTubers participated in a live stream where all proceeds would go to Virgin’s NHS Charities Together.
Both the current government and past governments since 2010 seem to have intentionally set the NHS up for failure. With the constant allowance of income tax loopholes and general underfunding, the government seem to be doing everything in their power to avoid granting adequate protection for NHS staff and pumping reservoirs of tax evasion money hidden in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands into the service from introducing a weekly 8pm clap of appreciation to badges with the word care on them; if anything, the Thursday clapping seems to be a way of boosting public morale rather than actually showing appreciation and changing things up, with NHS staff still being spat on and still being removed from public spaces as some individuals fear they will infect everyone.
Yes, this pandemic was unprecedented but with the journey it was making around the world, it was only time that the UK was attacked, and attacked harder than any other European country with the government opting for a ‘herd immunity’ strategy - this refutes claims that the government weren’t to have known that the NHS would be in danger and would require charity from those who probably already pay income tax.
If that’s not a big enough indication that the government had time to adequately prepare the NHS, then one should look at Exercise Cygnus, an exercise carried out by the NHS in October 2016 where a flu pandemic was simulated in order to discover and remedy any shortcomings within the NHS. The conclusions of this exercise were not revealed to the public even though it emphasised shortages of intensive care beds, vital equipment and mortuary spaces. Although the flu is inferior to the coronavirus in respect to the dangers and such, the principles remain the same as not only are they both contagious viruses, they also require similar medical equipment, equipment that the government was notified were in deficit yet did not appear to do anything to resolve this issue and continued to reduce corporation tax and increase tax giveaways.
This article was in no means intended to discredit those who have donated to the NHS but was created more to draw attention to the fact that a vulnerable, elderly veteran shouldn’t have to walk up and down his garden as a result of government and state inadequacy. It is a dangerous idea to consider the NHS as voluntary charity as every charity is a failure of a government’s responsibilities and a failure of the state to fund what is needed.
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