NHS news is dominated by the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) ‘March for an Alternative’ march and rally event on Saturday. It is estimated that some 500,000 people attended making it the biggest march since the anti-war protest of March 2003.

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Health workers voice fear for future of NHS / Britain / Home – Morning Star

A huge contingent of NHS workers joined the weekend’s march to highlight the serious threat to our health service posed by the government’s cuts and sell-off plans.

Midwives carried baby-shaped balloons, GPs came in their doctors’ garb while thousands of nurses and health workers snaked from London’s Embankment to Hyde Park in a sea of green and purple – the colours of their union Unison.

The demonstrators issued a stark warning to the Tory-led coalition to keep its “hands off our NHS.”

RCN marches against cuts – RCN

Over 1,000 Royal College of Nursing members marched through the streets of London last weekend to campaign against cuts threatening jobs and patient care across the NHS. The march, organised by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), took protestors through Parliament Square and past Downing Street, to a rally in Hyde Park. The march was arranged to show the combined strength of feeling against cuts to public services.

RCN Chief Executive Dr Peter Carter joined trade union leaders at the head of the march before returning to walk alongside members. He said: “The fact that so many nurses marched together for the first time since the days of Margaret Thatcher is testament to the depth of their anger about these cuts. Nurses are facing a two year pay freeze and widespread cuts to jobs and services. On the ground, nursing staff are stretched to breaking point and we know that slashing huge numbers of frontline jobs is jeopardising patient care.”

Although the RCN is not affiliated to the TUC, it participated in the march to help expel the myth that NHS funding is protected, while nursing jobs are being cut and £20 billion in savings are sought in England alone. The RCN’s Frontline First campaign has already identified that 27,000 NHS posts are earmarked to be lost across the UK.

UNISON News | The public service union | Michael Moore backs NHS

American film-maker Michael Moore has produced a message of support for UNISON and our NHS.

With characteristic flair, Mr Moore tells viewers that:

* the NHS is “so precious” and something “that you really invented and gave to the world”
* “For anyone to take that away now and put it in the hands of profit-hungry corporations would be the absolute worst thing to happen”
* In the US “the whole system is set up to motivate them [US health companies] to every day say ‘how can we make more money off the sick?’ “
* “you will rue the day that you allowed this to happen” to the NHS
* On Cameron – “you’re stuck with a guy now who’s got nice hair and rides a bike but, you know, he’s up to no good”
* Signing off: “hang in there, I’m with you”

Unite coffin protest marks ‘death’ of NHS | News | Nursing Times

A coffin will be paraded outside parliament today to symbolise the “death” of the NHS as part of a union protest against the government’s health reforms.

Unite has collected thousands of signatures against the Health and Social Welfare Bill which the union said will lead to the privatisation of large parts of the NHS.

The union will present a letter to the commons health select committee, which is scrutinising the Bill.

National officer Rachael Maskell said in the letter: “We are writing to urge you to protect the NHS from the savage and unnecessary reforms put forward in the Bill.

Coffin symbolises coalition addiction to NHS privatisation

A coffin to symbolise the death of the NHS due to a surfeit of privatisation will be paraded outside parliament tomorrow (Tuesday 29 March 2011).

Unite, the largest union in the country, has collected 13,000 signatures to a letter to the committee of MPs scrutinising the impact of the Health and Social Care bill, currently going through parliament.

The coffin marked with NHS in white letters will be held by health campaigners mourning the death of the NHS at 12.30pm Palace Yard (next to College Green), Westminster SW1.

Greater Manchester hospitals ‘could miss target to save £1bn’ | Manchester Evening News – menmedia.co.uk

Health bosses fear Greater Manchester’s NHS will not achieve the government target to save £1bn by 2015.

In 2009, the M.E.N. revealed the region had to cut costs by £950m but Department of Health officials have now rated its savings plan and progress so far as ‘red’ or high-risk.

They also say it is crucial the health service in Greater Manchester and London hit their targets in order for the NHS as a whole to make £20bn savings in the next four years.

Many are expected to participate in the TUC’s March for an Alternative demonstration against public spending cuts in London today. Protests in UK are not that different to recent protests in the Middle East. Protestors protest to demand changes in government policy & they are attacked by government agents overt and covert. In UK there is the difference that it is more hidden – oppression is done more through ideological control.

Andrew ‘McShit & Kentucky Fried Crap‘ Lansley is in denial that there is opposition to his plans to destroy the NHS.

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Thousands protest in London against spending cuts – Channel 4 News

Tens of thousands of people are in London demonstrating against government cuts to public spending. Around 4500 police are on duty to try to prevent trouble.

Up to a quarter of a million people are expected to join the march and rally against spending cuts.

It is the biggest union-organised event for over 20 years and the largest in the country since the anti-war march in 2003.

Public sector cuts: Brain injury unit to close | Society | The Guardian

More than 1 million people visit A&E every year with a head injury, of whom about 135,000 have a serious problem. Treating such patients, and nursing them back to as close to full health as possible, is one of the NHS’s biggest challenges. Patients can receive care for many months, and permanent disability, rather than a full recovery, can be the outcome.

An network of brain injury rehabilitation units undertakes this slow, delicate work. London has five of them – three in the south of the capital and two in the north – but only until tomorrow. That is when one, the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit (BIRU), based at Edgware community hospital in north London, closes its doors.

BIRU has 15 beds, and patients stay for up to 18 weeks. During that time they receive therapy and support from a multi-disciplinary team of neuro-psychiatrists, neuro-psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, and specialist nurses.

Andrew Lansley sees no change in mood on NHS reforms | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional

Health secretary Andrew Lansley said that he does not accept that there has been a change in mood among health professionals and government ministers over his plans to reorganise the NHS.

In an interview with medical professionals’ network Doctors.net.uk, he rejected claims that doctors’ voting for a halt to the health bill at an emergency meeting of British Medical Association earlier this month represented a deterioration in support of his plans.

Lansley also said that by and large Liberal Democrats support the bill, but delegates had voted against the plans at its party’s spring conference because they didn’t agree with certain aspects of it. The main opposition had come from trade unions and the Labour party, he added.

SOUTH LONDON PRESS TODAY | NEWS | ‘Patients will suffer if GPs run NHS budgets’ | 2011

A FAMILY doctor has joined protests over Government plans to give GPs the freedom to buy services for patients.

Lewisham GP Dr Brian Fisher spoke to more than 100 people from the Lewisham SOS group at Ladywell Leisure Centre in Lewisham High Street on Thursday.

He described the proposals as “reckless”.

Long-serving nurse among a thousand from region on TUC spending cuts protest (From The Northern Echo)

ONE of the region’s longest serving nurses says she is joining thousands protesting against the cuts today because of her fears for the future of the NHS.

Cate Woolley-Brown, from Billy Row, near Crook, County Durham, has worked as a nurse in the NHS for 44 years.

She says she is joining today’s TUC-organised march against spending cuts in London because of the impact the cuts are having on the health service.

“I can honestly say that I am more worried than I have ever been about the future of the health service,” said Mrs Woolley-Brown, who works at Sedgefield Community Hospital, County Durham.

MC NxtGen’s Andrew Lansley rap. Certainly heartfelt with ageist insults.

NHS news is dominated by a forecast reduction in real-term’s financing of the NHS. It is expected that coalition imposed cuts generally will start to be experienced soon with the start of the new financial year. It is unlikely that the rich will be affected. We are most definitely not all in this together as – heir to the Osborne baronetcy – Chancellor Osborne claimed yesterday while presenting his budget. He’s taking the piss.

A few recent news articles concerning the UK’s Conservative and Liberal-Democrat coalition government – the ConDem’s – brutal attack on the National Health Service.

Public sector cuts – the truth | Society | The Guardian

A week today the cuts will start to bite. As the financial year ends, grants will run out, contracts will wind up, and charities and services will begin to shut their doors. After months of anxiety about the impact of the cuts, the consequences of the government’s rapid deficit reduction programme will begin to be real.

The Guardian gives a slice of what this will mean across the country, highlighting a cross-section of 50 services that will shrink or cease to exist from the end of this month. Most are unglamorous, obscure, unfeted projects, staffed by employees who are not very well paid, but hugely committed to what they do. All of these losses come as a result of the government’s decision to cut spending by £95bn over five years.

Their disappearance may not be noticed by anyone with a good income, in secure employment, in sound health, without caring responsibilities – anyone who does not look to the state for support with life’s problems. For the more vulnerable, the decision to close these bodies and cut these jobs will be sharply felt. They will be more acutely obvious beyond the south-east, in areas that are more dependent on government grants. Women, parents, carers, disabled people, teenagers and elderly people are likely to be the most affected.

Wiltshire NHS is forced to cut £34m (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Despite an increase in funding NHS Wiltshire has to make savings of £34.6m.

Its allocation of funding from the Government for 2011/12 is 2.2 per cent above the previous year but NHS Wiltshire is still paying off debt run up by its predecessor primary care trusts.

The PCT’s budget for 2011/12 is £656.2m. Inflation costs will amount to £17.2m.

New Statesman – Osborne set to break pledge to protect NHS spending

The oracle has spoken. The key finding from the IFS’s traditional lunchtime briefing on the Budget is that the coalition is at risk of breaking its pledge to protect real-terms spending on the NHS. At the Spending Review, George Osborne announced that health spending would rise by 0.1 per cent a year, or 0.4 per cent across the economic period. But as the IFS slide below shows, higher inflation means that real-terms spending will now fall by 0.1 per cent over the next four years.

Based on current trends, spending will be frozen in 2011-12 and will fall by 0.1 per cent in 2012-13. Had it not been for lower-than-expected spending in 2010-11, the IFS points out, there would have actually been a small real-terms cut in 2011-12.

The coalition’s pledge to ring-fence the £99.5bn health budget had everything to do with politics and nothing to do with economics. During the Labour leadership election, Andy Burnham, then shadow health secretary, persuasively argued that it was wrong to spare the NHS from cuts. He pointed out: “The effect is that he [George Osborne] is damaging, in a serious way, the ability of other public services to cope: he will visit real damage on other services that are intimately linked to the NHS.” But Cameron refused to abandon what was a prime piece of detoxification.

Budget 2011: coalition criticised as NHS spending power cut by £1bn | UK news | The Guardian

The coalition is embroiled in a row over its health pledges after it emerged that the budget contained a cut in the NHS’s spending power of almost £1bn.

Labour accused ministers of reneging on their repeated promise to increase the NHS’s budget in real terms every year throughout this parliament.

Revised upward predictions of inflation in the budget by the Office for Budget Responsibility show that the NHS in England will undergo a cut of £1bn in its spending power by 2015. It also reveals that its budget will be cut in each of the next two financial years, alleged shadow health secretary John Healey.

BBC News – Downing Street rejects £1bn NHS Budget cut claim

The NHS budget in England could be topped up to prevent a real terms cut in health spending, government sources have indicated.

Labour claim Wednesday’s Budget contained a £1bn cut in NHS funding – breaking a key coalition pledge.

But government sources told BBC News the Budget figures were “just an estimate”.