{"id":1555,"date":"2012-02-16T11:45:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T11:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2012-02-16T11:45:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-16T11:45:58","slug":"nhs-protests-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=1555","title":{"rendered":"NHS Protests Continue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pressure is mounting on the UK Government to abandon its ‘reform’ of the National Health Service, which many see as privatisation, and it has become something of a scandal with the revelations of the extent of involvement of a discredited US healthcare company in its planning.<\/p>\n

As someone who grew up with our Welfare State, I was with the protesters both physically and in spirit as they held a mock trial of\u00a0 Andrew Lansley, the minister responsible opposite parliament as the debate continued inside over the Health and Social Care Bill. The trial wasn’t really very visual, though at least in street theatre if no longer in courts judges do come with very splendid wigs.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

I’d tried to photograph a group of pensioners in the protest, but hadn’t been very happy with the results, but standing to one side while a colleague went in close and made a portrait of one of them gave me the time to think more about it. After he had finished I moved in and made a few exposures, including one that I was pleased with.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Probably the most news-worthy aspect of the was perhaps rather less interesting, with Diane Abbott MP, Shadow Minister for Public Health coming to support her constituents who had organised the protest. I didn’t manage to find any way more than a workaday image showing her holding the banner with parliament in the\u00a0 background.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

I was on my way to another protest and had stopped to talk with the three people at Brian Haw’s Parliament Square Peace Campaign, still keeping up a 24\/7 vigil there – now for 10 years 8 months – despite the police removing Barbara Tucker’s tent, other personal possession and anything else that could give her comfort or shelter in mid-January when I saw the NHS protest was continuing and dashed across the rather busy road to photograph a small group now touring around Parliament Square.<\/p>\n

There were six of them, equipped with placards ‘Save Our NHS’, ”No US Style Healthcare Here’, the four letters ‘S’, ‘T’, ‘O’ and ‘P’ (which they sometimes got in correct order) and a bedpan with its own placard ‘There’s Nothing Wrong With The Health Bill Except It’s Full of S**t’.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

I didn’t have long to work, as they only stopped on the crossings while the green man was showing and were being urged to move along by a couple of police.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

This was perhaps the best frame, as not only are all the placards more or less readable, but I liked the woman with the bedpan and placard apparently doing a little dance on one foot in front of Big Ben.<\/p>\n

More at Stop NHS Privatisation – Kill Lansley’s Bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

My London Diary<\/a> : Buildings of London<\/a> : River Lea\/Lee Valley<\/a> : London’s Industrial Heritage<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.<\/small><\/p>\n

To order prints or reproduce images<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n

________________________________________________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pressure is mounting on the UK Government to abandon its ‘reform’ of the National Health Service, which many see as privatisation, and it has become something of a scandal with the revelations of the extent of involvement of a discredited US healthcare company in its planning. As someone who grew up with our Welfare State, … Continue reading NHS Protests Continue<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}