Thanks to everyone who signed our Stop Gordon Brown's NHS Cuts petition on Saturday. We spent some time in Wareham, Poole Town Centre and outside ASDA at Canford Heath and collected over 500 signatures to boost the petition.
If you didn't get a chance to sign out petition, you can do so online here.
Why are we campaigning on these issues?
The Royal College of Nursing estimated in August that 18,000 jobs have been cut from NHS hospitals in recent months, 81 community hospitals are still threatened by cutbacks or closure, according to the Community Hospitals Association; 2,036 bed losses have occurred since April
This is on top of the 2,500 beds which were lost from NHS hospitals in 2004-05 and the 6,000 beds cut from NHS hospitals in 2005-06. In just three years, therefore, the NHS is set to lose 12,500 beds – a cut in capacity of 7 per cent.
We want an end to Labour's interference, the NHS has just gone through its tenth reorganisation since Labour came to power nine years ago. We believe decisions affecting local services should not be taken by distant politicians, but by the patients and frontline staff who use and work in our local NHS.
Too much money has been diverted from patient care by an NHS bureaucracy which has swelled its ranks by over 100,000 people since 1997. Gordon Brown's financial mismanagement is forcing short-term decision-making. Hospitals are closing their wards to patients without replacing them with the services needed in the community.
We believe that short-term cuts in the NHS at the expense of building services for the future are unacceptable, and that this short-sightedness will prove even more costly in the long run.
I have a number of friends and family members who work in the NHS, their experiences bear these comments out. We should be very proud of our health service, the dedication of the staff working within it is examplary. It's such a shame that it's the politicians who have let it down, it's time it was freed from being a political football and placed under the control of an independent board.
Finally, it was good too to see our local Lib Dems campaigning at ASDA as well, I support wholeheartedly their campaign for more funding for our local police force. I wish them luck with their campaign and I hope we'll be seeing them campaigning as often as we are on these vital issues.
2 comments:
Can you explain why when Labour came into power there were approx 350,000 nurses and there are now approx 500,000?
Yes, because investment in the Health Service has increased enormously in the past ten years. Quite rightly in my opinion.
Now, however, the Royal College of Nursing estimates between 18,000 and 20,000 nurses have lost their jobs since April.
All the nurses I know are sick of the bureaucracy that now accompanies their job, thanks largely to the restructuring and targets introduced over the same time period.
My point is therefore twofold:
Firstly, think how many more nurses and doctors we could have afforded without money being wasted on restructuring the service 10 times in those 9 years. Or by not increasing the number of targets from 40 to over 540 in the same period.
Secondly, that level of investment needs to be maintained and redirected. That's why we're collecting signatures opposing the cuts and why I think the service should be overseen by an independent board.
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