On return to the Welsh hills after months confined to France by the epidemic, the coming year’s membership package from English Heritage was lying in wait in the letterbox.
Getting to this chance to “step into England’s story”, as the organisation’s main advertising slogan has had it for some years, meant driving from Newhaven past umpteen placards, posters and stickers declaring loving support for the NHS, some professionally printed and commercially sponsored, others the products of individual initiative and artistry.
Yet tucked into the package was a cheaply run off publicity leaflet for the Hospital and Medical Care Association. It offered private medical cover with “individual room, en suite, choice of meals and free parking” backed up by the strange statement that one of the “guaranteed benefits” would be “a tax free NHS cash benefit” (the emphasis is theirs). This, of course, is for you the subscriber, not the NHS, as a polite, if confused, voice on the HMCA phone line explained.
