this weekend sees the NHS march as government cuts bite one little rebel took action
. NHS founder Nye Bevan once said that ‘the NHS will last as long as there are folk with the faith to fight for it’. So, two days before a major NHS march through central London, this action is designed to encourage ordinary folk to come forward and to stand up and be counted, to chain themselves up in the best tradition of the suffragette movement, and to fight for the survival of the people’s health service.

This Thursday, I’m going to be taking my Charlie Chaplin mime character (Charlie X) out onto the streets of London, to pull funny faces outside government and business places, and attempt to ‘lock-on’ and therefore get arrested for the NHS. Throughout the coming months I’m aiming to do it seven times (once for each of the 7 decades that the NHS has been in existence), ending on the NHS’s 69th birthday on July 5.

Says Neil Goodwin, the man behind Charlie X, “I had a hip replacement on the NHS back in 2014. Those fine doctors and nurses really changed my life for the better, and now it’s time for me to put that new hip to good use, by standing up for our NHS staff, and opposing the state vandalism of our beloved health service.”