Watch Sicko (2009) American director Michael Moore’s expose of the American healthcare system. One of the richest countries in the world has one of the fewest numbers of its population with healthcare. In 2009 49.9 million citizens, 16.3% of the population, had no health insurance. Moore compares the for-profit system of the USA with the universal health care systems of the UK, France, Canada and Cuba. And because it is a film by Michael Moore it is stamped with his lefty politics and sense of humour. Of course, much has changed in this country with the passage of the Health and Social Care Act in 2013 and the growing privatisation of the NHS. For me this film is a call to arms, we need to save our most cherished NHS, we cannot allow our country to go down the route of a system, as in the USA, that puts profit before people

Celebrate the 65^th birthday of the NHS….there are lots of events being planned. On 5 July on 2pm at Trafford General Hospital (where the NHS was was born)  there will be a  “hands round the hospital” event opposing the threatened cuts to services and the future of TGH itself. We understand that there will be a senior management meeting inside at the time! Protesters will then march from TGH to the nearby Golden Hill park near Urmston town centre at 3.30pm, for a family-friendly “party in the park” which will continue into the evening (music until  6.30pm, the event may continue afterwards). For further details see Save Trafford General Hospital

 The Save Bolton A&E  campaign are showing Ken Loach’s Spirit of 45 as part of campaign re-launch on Friday 5 July, 7pm,  Lecture Theatre, Central Library, Bolton town centre. They want people to come to the film and join their campaign. Further details go to Save  Bolton A&E

Launch of NHS SOS….a book edited by Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis that exposes an unpredecented assault on our NHS. Ray Tallis will be speaking in Bramhall on 6 July and at the WCML on 12 July. Further details Greater Manchester KONP

More drama…at the Greater Manchester Fringe Festival starting 1 July. Spread across Manchester and Salford there are numerous events,  including drama, comedy, film and even a vintage fair. My favourites include Colin Connor’s play Meanwhile about growing up during the hungerstrikes in Northern Ireland in 1981. JB Barrington, performance poet with his show Words for Class Heroes as he looks back in anger at 70s dockers, 80s terrace fashion and the chemical cocktail of 90s northwest. New Model Theatre are premiering their new show Static which is challenging our digital reality lives and asks us: can we live without the laptop, tablet and smartphone? Further details see http://greatermanchesterfringe.co.uk/

 Go see….Too Clever by Half…could be the motto for our politicians in 2013,  but it’s a satire written by Russian playwright Alexandre  Ostrovsky.  A partnership between the Royal Exchange Theatre and the internationally acclaimed Told by an Idiot reflects on the problem of honesty in a lying hypocritical world. Ostrovsky’s primary interest, was with the Russian merchants, he despised that crude and coarse, yet moneyed, class whom he felt  lacked the idealism of their educated neighbours and the bucolic charm of the peasants.  Ostrovsky is considered to be the father of Russian drama and like realist contemporaries, Turgenev and  Dostoevsky his stories explore the human condition in Russia in the mid-19 Century. Its on 10 July  – 17 August. Further details see