NHS: Victory!

Good news. It looks like we may have nipped it in the bud. Jeremy Hunt has been forced to respond to our 180,000-strong petition. And he’s made a public pledge to “never” introduce a limit on the number of times we’re allowed to visit our GP.

Here’s what he said on twitter in full. He couldn’t resist being rude about us, but it’s still positive news:

On Tuesday, this was a serious Conservative Party policy proposal, being reported in national newspapers.  Now, it’s “never” going to happen.

That’s pretty extraordinary. By working together in big enough numbers, we’ve forced a leading politician to change his tune in just 48 hours. No wonder he doesn’t like us – ordinary people, working together, are limiting his ability to damage our NHS.

This is what 38 Degrees is all about. Jeremy Hunt may grumble. But he knows he can’t afford to ignore us. We’re independent. We move fast. We stick to our principles. And most importantly of all, there are thousands and thousands of us, all over the country.

38 Degrees works because it belongs to all of us. An important part of that is how we’re funded. To stay independent, we will never take cash from government, political parties, or big business. Instead 38 Degrees relies on people-powered donations from thousands of us, contributing whatever we can afford. Our donations policy is available on our website.

Would you consider making a regular donation, to make sure we can keep running campaigns like this one? It’s probably the last thing Jeremy Hunt would like you to do today. But it could be one of the most effective ways of keeping him in check.

Just 2 or 3 pounds a week makes a massive difference. And it only takes a few minutes to set up a direct debit.

The 38 Degrees way of campaigning is extremely good value. We don’t have fancy offices, big bureaucracy, layers of management or marketing departments – just a small committed staff team, lots of volunteers, and an amazing network of over a million 38 Degrees members like you.

It’s good value, but it can’t be done for nothing. More donations would mean we could do even more together – including more work to investigate and tackle threats to our NHS. Whether it’s access to GPs, A&E closures, or privatisation, we need to stay on Jeremy Hunt’s case. So please consider celebrating today’s success by chipping in to fund more work in the future.

Your voices

By the way, here’s how some 38 Degrees members are responding to Jeremy Hunt on Facebook:

Christian Cook: They caused a leak to test the water and were overcome by a tidal wave.

Kit Whitfield Thomas: We believe you, boys. As long as you don’t actually do it, we’re happy to pretend it was all our fault for getting our silly little minds confused. I’ll take insults over expecting poor people to die any day.

Talis Kimberley: Shame he couldn’t set the record straight without a bit of graceless snarking. ‘Neutral’…

Pamela Brooke: “nipped in the bud” then … for me, this was always “just in case they’re serious”

You can also join in the conversation on Facebook.