In a deskilled import dependent Britain, a search reveals that at present Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Breas Medical is the UK’s only manufacturer of medical ventilators. 

Since the 70s there has been a process of outsourcing the manufacturing of goods we use and a procurement of our food from lower-wage countries, ignoring our own unemployed and failing to educate their children.

Retribution has been gathering pace

The transport of goods and food criss-crossing the world has vastly increased the emissions of greenhouse gases and – in Britain – a demoralised 10% are seeking solace in prescribed or illegal drugs, tobacco and alcohol, mind-numbing or pornographic TV – and a few perhaps subconsciously exacting revenge through crime and violence.

Is the tide turning? Make life-saving equipment instead of armaments?

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, urges the country to pull together like it did during the Second World War, and says firms “cannot make too many” ventilators – which the Government will commit to purchasing. Government is pleading with industrial. giants like Rolls Royce to turn from arms manufacturing for a while and start to learn how to make life-saving equipment

He also said that “our generation has never been tested like this” and the Prime Minister has asked manufacturers to transform their current production lines to help produce ventilators as part of a “national effort” to tackle the virus.

And as European countries fear shortages and requisition domestic production, China is both able and willing to lend a helping hand, donating medical supplies, including 40 ventilators, to Italy. Stop Press: thanks to NATOWATCH mailing, we see this item: “China has also agreed to supply medical equipment Italy desperately needs to boost its treatment capacity. That includes contracts for 10,000 pulmonary ventilators, 2 million face masks, and 20,000 protective suits”.

Due to a WordPress malfunction images can no longer be embedded in the appropriate locations. Here are (left to right) Matt Hancock, Somini Sengupta and Colin Hines

Somini Sengupta in the New York Times refers to ‘the big unknown’; she asks “Will the effort to revive the global economy after the pandemic accelerate the emissions of planet-warming gases, rather than avert climate change? That depends on whether the world’s big economies, like China and the United States, use this moment to enact green growth policies or continue to prop up fossil fuel industries”.

Hines advocates taking the “first step on the green bridge from tackling coronaGND groupvirus to tackling climate chaos”

As Hines points out: “the huge cost of propping up care and health systems and supporting a generalised weakening of the economy will need massive increase in government borrowing and doubtless the need to resort to coronavirus QE (quantitative easing)”. He advocates such investment in green energy to meet climate change targets.

For years the GND group, of which he is convenor has advocated a nationwide training and works programme to make all the UK’s 30 million homes and workplaces energy-efficient. Such a massive green programme would generate jobs in every constituency, and business and investment opportunities countrywide.

A huge education and training effort would be needed to develop the skills enabling the self-provisioning of food and goods, from ventilators to coat-hangers. And that would pay enormous dividends in environmental health and social harmony.

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COMMENTs by email

DS:

Sadly this crisis may be the opportunity needed to galvanize government to switch to more benign, labour intensive and environmentally sustainable policies. Colin Hines, Andrew Simms, Caroline Lucas and most of the other names here ( including myself), have been forcefully advocating these policies for years. Let’s hope that somehow government will be forced to listen.

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