Jeremy Corbyn today hits out at Boris Johnson’s inability to provide enough support to the weak and vulnerable people affected by the coronavirus outbreak and targets the bosses who aren’t scrupulous for cutting off employees.
The report in The Sunday Mirror, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says it is the everyday workers from Britain as the unnoticed heroes of the current crisis.
Mr Corbyn says that if the State is able to spend money in an emergency, it is able to also do it at other times as well.
Who do we have the least capacity to live in the event of a crisis? cleaning service or billionaire hedge fund manager?
The coronavirus epidemic has forced us to reconsider what we consider important. It’s bringing us an appreciation for the unnoticed heroes who keep our society running such as the posties, shelf-stackers and delivery drivers as well as refuse collectors.
The tragedy is that years of cuts and austerity made their job more difficult and has left us unprepared for the epidemic we’re now confronting.
Our NHS is in a state of decline. We have fewer doctors or nurses per capita than other developed nations and only one quarter of the essential ICU beds per patient which Germany has.
And even Jeremy Hunt, who imposed severe austerity measures on our health care system has admitted that he regretted some of the cuts he made.
The least we can do to protect the brave NHS employees is to give them a essential protective equipment.
“Test, test, test,” the World Health Organisation told us However, NHS employees are just beginning to undergo tests. Social workers are in urgent need of tests, too.
Distancing physical stifles is correct. However, it also means that all kinds of people – from childminders to cabbies as well as plumbers and actors everyday people are told to do something different to stop earning an income.
The government has a huge responsibility to ensure they don’t get into financial difficulties and there are many flaws in the plans.
Many are struggling financially right now, however payments for self-employed workers won’t be made until June. Statutory sick pay has to increase and rents need to be suspended for those afflicted by the virus.
These remarkable times are something of the years when we were told that there was no way to solve the problem. Now, funds are being discovered to be used for action.
If we discover it during a time of crisis, we will be able to find it at other times as well. Once this has been resolved it’s impossible to fall back to the old ways of thinking.
We need to learn from our mistakes and ensure that in the near future, society will be built on compassion and solidarity rather than fear and insecurity.
