Meeting: Cambridgeshire Health Service in Crisis
Wednesday 24 February / 7 p.m. / Wesley Methodist Church, Christ's Pieces, Cambridge CB1 1LG
Addenbrooke's Hospital and the Rosie have been placed in special measures. The future of some clinical services at Hinchingbrooke Hospital is doubtful in view of a possible merger. And the £800m, five-year contract to provide older people's and community care services in Cambridgeshire, awarded to the NHS consortium UnitingCare after an expensive tendering process, has collapsed after eight months. The austerity policies of underfunding and marketization have left public healthcare in our county in crisis.
Read moreEmergency at our hospitals
The Cambridge Health Emergency campaign issued an urgent, informative leaflet this month explaining the situation at Addenbrooke's and the Rosie. We're glad to republish the text here with the campaign's permission.
Out of credit, out of office
Saturday 21 November / 12 midday / Market Square, Cambridge CB2
In July the chancellor George Osborne announced a 'new settlement' for permanent austerity, resting on an increase in the minimum wage alongside massive cuts to tax credits. Four months later that settlement is crumbling, in widening alarm that (according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies) three million low-paid families will lose an average of £1,000 a year: the alarm extends to Conservatives like Heidi Allen, the new MP for South Cambridgeshire, who used her maiden speech to criticize the cuts to tax credits, and to the House of Lords, which last month defied the Conservative majority in the Commons with a remarkable vote to delay and review the cuts.
Read moreCambridge Health Emergency organizing meeting
Tuesday 17 November / 7.30 p.m. / Alex Wood Hall, Norfolk Street, Cambridge CB1 2LD
The next meeting to plan the Cambridge Health Emergency campaign, founded recently to stand up for our local hospitals Addenbrooke's and the Rosie after their parent trust was placed in special measures, will be held tomorrow at Alex Wood Hall. Among other things it will hear a report from a public meeting of the trust's directors and start to plan a wider meeting of its own, to inform and organize patients to act against any threats to their hospitals in the form of cuts or private sector entry.
Cambridge Health Emergency organizing meeting
Thursday 22 October / 7.30 p.m. / Caroline Stephen Room, Friends' Meeting House, 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA
A meeting on 13 October founded a campaign, Cambridge Health Emergency, to stand up for our local hospitals Addenbrooke's and the Rosie after their parent trust was placed in special measures the previous month (see our group's statement). This means demanding three things.
- No financially-driven cuts.
- No privatization.
- Full funding of services.
The next campaign meeting will be held tonight. Apologies for the short notice!
Defend Addenbrooke's Hospital
Tuesday 13 October / 7.30 p.m. / Alex Wood Hall, Norfolk Street, Cambridge CB1 2LD
Join tonight's meeting to set up a broad campaign group 'to defend Addenbrooke's, its services, and its staff', following the imposition of special measures at the hospital's parent trust three weeks ago (see our statement at the time). The Cambridge People's Assembly will fully support this campaign.