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How We Trolled the Government’s Virtual NHS Suggestion Box

They asked for ideas to save the NHS, and the British public delivered

Sarah TC
Coping with Capitalism
6 min readOct 28, 2024

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Tins of Spam on supermarket shelves
Photo by Hannes Johnson on Unsplash

Faced with an ineffective government, I feel powerless. As a mental health nurse, I’ve seen a string of pretty terrible Health Secretaries come and go and rated them on a scale of incompetent to downright nasty — Victoria Atkins being an example of the latter, banning puberty blocker prescriptions for children in her last few hours in government. I’ve seen waiting lists increase and staffing levels decline to unsafe levels over the course of my career.

14 years of a Conservative government ended with a landslide victory by Labour in July. Surely, our National Health Service can’t be as bad with a change of government? It’s early days, but I’m not convinced. I’m considering a return to clinical practice after two and a half years in academia, but the thought fills me with apprehension. Why? Two words: Wes Streeting.

I’ve given Streeting a chance: just over 3 months, to be exact. He is considering proposals to implement more private finance initiatives (PFIs) to expand NHS capacity. These were popular during Blair’s government. Shiny new hospitals and clinics were built. It looked great until you realised these were paid for by the private sector, with NHS trusts paying to rent…

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Sarah TC
Sarah TC

Written by Sarah TC

I am a queer, neurodivergent mental health nurse, academic and PhD student. I write about the things that matter to me and my community.

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