Don't Just Stand and Moan, Do Something

Lots of negative vibes today on the Health and Social Care Bill. There were two votes lost; one at the BMA yesterday and the vote on the Opposition Day debate today. Much moaning and ochoning about Hamish Meldrum and people feeling sorry for themselves is going on. One poster is even going round putting up 'NHS 1948 - 2011'. You could be forgiven for giving up, couldn't you?

Well, maybe you could, but it's not me that's going to do the forgiving. And I'm not down. I'm angry. At you. Yes, you in the white coats. Let me tell you why.


Things are tough just now. Sure, we'd all like to throw in the towel. That's how government works. They move fast to convince you that there is no point in attempting to counter them. Well, tell me this. Where the hell was everyone at the BMA's meeting yesterday? I've seen more people turn up at a meeting of the Tunbridge Wells Socialist Workers Association. Where were the rest of you to vote down Hamish Meldrum's appeasement policy? And if you couldn't get in, why were you not crowded outside the doors waving banners and shouting for the cameras? Do you think that it doesn't matter? Well, it damn well does. You lost one of the most important votes in the history of the NHS yesterday, because you didn't turn up.

Don't moan to me about Hamish Meldrum. Or Andrew Lansley. Or Nick Clegg. You have no one except yourselves to blame for the vote yesterday. And if you sit around moaning about how its all fixed and it's all going the one way, well, I've got news for you. It's always been like that. People only win against government when they do the one thing that they don't expect - they keep going.

This fight isn't over.The bill is still at committee stage in the Commons. It's got a third debate coming up and then it has to go through three debates and a committee stage in the Lords. There is still a lot to play for. And you've already given up, have you? You know,last week several thousand people died in a tsunami in Japan and they are facing nuclear meltdown. Whatever you are facing just now, it's not that. Get a perspective on the situation for God's sake.

What everyone has to do right now, is to do what they can.Get off your bums. Write those letters. Sack Hamish Meldrum. March on Parliament.Send a submission into the Parliamentary Committee here. Go and see your Lib Dem MP and threaten to disembowel them if they don't vote the right way in the next debate.Play the percentages and the cards you have, even if you think they're crap. If you think you're not going to win, then that means you've got nothing to lose by playing. Just do it.

This is the biggest fight in the history of the NHS. Are you really going to duck out of it? Are you going to go down without a fight? If it does go, in years to come, when your children asked what you did to save it, are you going to say, 'I gave up?' Are you going to sit and moan in a corner with your hands over your eyes waiting for the big bad privateers to come, or are you going to come out all guns blazing and fight them to the last bullet?

Let us go out and meet them. And the next person to moan about the BMA vote is going to get a copy of the White Paper shoved up where the sun don't shine..