Rochdale wants Social Care not Nuclear Weapons
Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group have stepped-up their campaign for the government to start spending money on social care not nuclear weapons. They took their peace stall to the bottom of Yorkshire Street on Saturday morning (28 June 2008) and asked people to sign letters to the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson.
Philip Gilligan said,
“People in Rochdale are in no doubt about how they want their taxes spent. They don't want money squandered on nuclear weapons of mass destruction. They want decent care services for their parents, their grandparents and for their children. People were, again, signing letters as fast as we could produce them. In a week when the Pennine Acute Trust has admitted that it could be stopping key services at Rochdale Infirmary as soon as autumn this year, this is obviously a crucial issue for all of us. It is no surprise that we have another large bungle of letters to send to the Secretary of State for Health.
We are all likely to need medical and social care in our old age. The government has already forced through the closure of many services at our local hospitals. Now, Gordon Brown and Alan Johnson are threatening us with compulsory private insurance schemes which will force everyone to pay for social care —regardless of income or need. They say that we need to plug a gap of £6 billion to pay for essential non-medical care for vulnerable older people. We are reminding them that there is a very obvious and very popular solution to this problem. Scrapping the existing Trident nuclear missile system would save £1.5 billion per year, and scrapping plans to upgrade these nuclear weapons of mass destruction would save another £76 billion. We shall be campaigning on this issue throughout the summer. If the government would just halt its nuclear madness, we would soon have the money to provide decent care for our elders.”
