‘ONLY the little people pay taxes, said Queen of Mean; Leona Helmsley, the American Hotel Tycoon.

The Panama Papers show how tax havens let the rich amass wealth whilst dodging their dues.

Wealth is ever more concentrated in fewer hands.

Eight people now have half the world’s money.

Such inequality impacts on mental health, directly through poverty and indirectly through a culture saturated with competitiveness and consumerism that fails to satisfy the basic human desires for meaning and friendship.

Mental health is worst in unequal societies like U.K./U.S.

Now by a cruel twist the cuts caused by the gambling debts of the private banks are paid for with austerity cuts to public health service.

This is a national plan, not dreamt up by local teams. It is clear in that A&E units and maternity wards are being slashed up and down the land. A coordinated blow at the heart of the NHS. In Weymouth, which has high rates of ill health, we are to be robbed of an inpatient unit of 12 mental health beds alongside 36 elderly care at Westhaven and 12 on Portland.

Substitutes are uncertain and certainly cheaper. Good care in the community is costly.

The BMA news review reports a Health Foundation working for the BBC found mental health hospital funding had shrunk by 150million over the last four years. So much for parity of esteem.

Here is the reality; Cuts.

Remember which parties voted to cut NHS and social care funding.

The NHS needs you to stand up now so that it is still there when you need it.

DR JON ORRELL

Crescent Street Weymouth

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