Love the NHS!

Visitors come from all over the world to The House of Stories. I have a very British story to tell you today, but wherever you come from, you will understand it.

It's the story of a country where every single new mother can be attended by a well-trained midwifery team, and it won't cost her a penny. It's a story of a baby boy in pain getting the operation to make him better, and growing up to be a normal active boy who occasionally had sports-related injuries but always got them sorted straight away. When he woke up one Christmas Eve - and it was a Sunday - with an appalling ear infection, the duty doctor came out to the local surgery, checked his ear, and personally dispensed the meds, all within a couple of hours of the phone call. And all of it was free, just as his granny's pacemaker and his Mum's migraines have been treated for free. It's the story of the NHS, the UK National Health Service, the envy of the world.

It's free at the point of need. We do pay for it, we pay through our taxes, but if you're too young, old, or disadvantaged to pay tax you get NHS care free anyway. But this Grand Old Lady, the NHS, isn't very well herself just now. NHS budgets have been cut, over and over. Smaller hospitals have closed. And increasingly, work which should be given to NHS teams is being contracted out to private concerns who care about profits, not patients. As I remember, the first thing that happened is that the standards of hospital cleaning fell. The NHS has never been about profit, but now sections of it are sold off to whoever can make as much money as possible by cutting corners. Dedicated, highly skilled staff struggle on through too many hours and not enough money. It's supposed to be about health. Increasingly, it's about money.

So today I was one of thousands of people all over the country standing near shops and meeting places with badges and petitions, asking people to help save the NHS. The '38 Degrees NHS' petition to keep the NHS out of private hands, true to its original ethos, is to be handed in to all candidates standing for election so that they know how important it is to us all. I wouldn't stand out in the cold for just anyone, but for the NHS? No question. I thanked people for signing, and they thanked me for asking them, because they understood. Life and health are precious, too precious to be bought and sold.