Why have successive governments failed to fund the NHS?

Reflecting about the virus , the basic problem seems to be that the NHS never has much spare capacity.

For years the NHS and indeed the police have had budget restraints, calls for greater productivity, and – in the case of the police – even staff cuts occasionally : very questionable while the population of the UK has been steadily and massively rising: 47 million people after World War Two, now reaching the near-saturation level of about 66 million, a huge number for a small land.

Full funding and staffing of the NHS has always been a contentious issue yet so many people seem to fall ill and there are far more people now, hence under-resourcing of it is clearly wrong .

So why have successive past governments only grudgingly funded it?

It seems that false priorities are the cause , for example the funding of the exploration of space .

It is of some interest to know that there is water on the moon, or some kind of wind on Mars, yet discovering these basically useless facts has cost billions of pounds over the years and been of no help to any family in making ends meet.

In parallel , massive problems persist and increase right here on Earth; crass pollution and desecration of nature is rife, jungle burnt down, Amazon Indians displaced and killed by illegal loggers, and health systems around the world creaking under pressure of work .

Local wars around the globe still cause chaos, killings, displacement of people, problems of refugees and starvation, as in Ethiopia now .

If just a half, or maybe even less, of the billions of pounds applied to non-essentials like space travel had actually been spent on these ‘here and now’ problems , the NHS would ensure spare capacity at all times and its staff would not need to work themselves to a standstill, even to the point of being unwell, in time of greater workload as caused by the virus .

Before Covid 19 , Boris Johnson’s fresh government was showing good signs of tackling the imbalances to which I have referred.

It can and must still do so (let’s face it there is no credible Opposition) , and with a much better use of cash than preceding governments, all of whom have let us down.

Whatever anyone may say full funding for the NHS has always been there, just so much money has been diverted to lower priorities and flights of fancy, be that space exploration or whatever else.