Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com

• HAVING chaired a mental health charity for a few years, I have to express my anger on behalf of all those whose mental health needs are being compromised in this current climate.

Are we as a country being invisibly “groomed” into accepting faceless remote forms of medical care?

Mental health services are being targeted at a time when people are in such desperate need – St Pancras Hospital to name but one and there were so many closures of essential interactional services much before the pandemic.

This is not just about the NHS. People are losing confidence in authority in general and increasingly being groomed into acquiescing by force.

We have witnessed from Saturday’s events at Clapham Common how easily bad herd behaviour from professionals can set a precedent for other professions to follow – even by proxy.

It feels like the beginning of a fascist state. Cressida Dick should have strategically organised a peaceful vigil on Saturday and she should have been with these women and men but instead she allowed more violence to be perpetrated against women.

Where was Boris Johnson the next day? Why do ranks turn in? Because they can.

Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the what? Behaving like a domesticated dog who sits waiting for his owner to open the sausage box instead of acting more like a hungry fox who will stop at nothing to feed its young.

The moment a politician is knighted you might as well call it a day. He should have been with these women and men too and fought for a well-organised vigil – too late coming out after the event.

Now we live in a climate where guilt is the motivating force within society, the common weapon of the government that keeps the cogs spinning and where spiritual values are trodden down.

Take the NHS advert “Can you look them in the eye?” The answer is not really because you can’t do that on Zoom and we are not permitted to move very far from our front doors.

In fact the robot they put on Mars went 24 feet further than many of us have been permitted to travel this year.

We are now in a society where the words “Essential/front line” are used to demean, depower, and demonise those who are not easily compartmentalised, creating mass loneliness, isolation, desperation, and depersonalisation.

One such example: I had an appointment yesterday with my GP – it was for 2pm – but that call happened at 2.50pm; the GP failed to apologise until I stressed that I had had to cancel my next engagement because of the late call.

I am sensing a new, yet familiar, tone and climate emerging. Why was my time not honoured? If the opposite had happened would I still then be heard?

I then went on to ask the GP in question if their practice were affiliated with any private companies – namely Operose (Centrene) AT Medics – the response was “Not that I am aware”.

Those people in society who are currently being made to feel invisible and of little worth to society deserve to find themselves a voice and a purpose, and honoured as valuable cargo, or we will soon become a society where democratic rights are eroded and without opposition where parties diffuse, where things are done at us and to us rather than with us; where our GP practices can simply be privatised under our masks without our knowledge.

I praise the NHS workers and thank them for all they do in all areas of care. But I despair at those would do their very best to turn the NHS into a commercial and profit orientated enterprise where people are literally having to seek private care to get the urgent treatment that they need and being forced into depression and despair.

SUE BANKS, NW1