NHS crisis? Wait till the carer crisis hits!

Private Eye – you rock! In Carers Week your magazine  – alone – has identified the significant problem of Britain’s current care system.

In today’s issue (1368: 13 -26 June) M.D. writes as follows:

The NHS and social care system is crucially dependent on millions of unpaid carers, and the round-the-clock pressures and responsibilities they face are huge. If carers went on strike, the NHS and social care services would collapse overnight.

No shit, Sherlock!

Thank you thank you MD for saying aloud what we carers have been saying aloud over and over and over again to complete and utter  silence. Its amazing how loud you can shout when nobody is paying you. And  how little impact it makes when nobody is minded to hear.

Let us go back instead to the narrative of support and heroism and battling on and the ‘all in it together’ Blitz mentality that both Labour and Tory politicians have subscribed to because neither of them historically or currently  have wanted to help the carers to a better, more entitled life.

Heaven forbid that anyone should look at carers and see any need for entitlement. We save that for ‘workers’ don’t we?

Not only have we carers been saying this -in our own small way  caretostrike.co.uk has been trying to quantify the sums involved .

If the 489 24/7 strikers currently signed up  disappeared – or died – it would cost  the state £64 MILLLION to replace us.

So if the 1.5 MILLION carers disappeared, it would cost the state something like £197 BILLION to replace.

That’s hardly small potatoes.

So no more dicking about . Britain must start implementing the Carers manifesto now – those five simple cheap affordable proposals that will support this huge unpaid and invaluable army to carry on caring.

Before it is too late.