A whole day to myself

Well that’s what I thought when I went to bed last night. Unfortunately in the early hours the disease chose to remind me it was in charge in one of its less attractive ways. By 7am I was washed out and felt like I’d done a days work.

Undeterred I finally got around to doing what I intended to do first thing at lunch time. My blog. I’m a little confused with what is going on with national politics these days and the budget and subsequent political posturing are only making this confusion worst. Let me try to explain. Alistair is claiming that to cut to soon would damage the economy and make things worse. Vince Cable to a large extent is agreeing with a longer term view being the right approach. I know from voluntary work I do within the NHS cuts are coming in the short term. Our local Hospital Trust is being asked to save £22m next year with redundancies planned. However you look at it this will affect front line services. They had a surplus of £2.7m this year but because it is not a foundation trust this money cannot be carried forward. I’m inclined to agree with the longer term view. It will save jobs and it should help as growth starts to reappear. The Tories on the other hand seem to be saying this mess is all Bruiser Brown’s fault and we need to make severe cuts now to put things right. If I remember correctly it was irresponsible bankers who caused this recession and as most of these are Tories I hold them responsible. How he can stand up in parliament and blame Bruiser I don’t know. It seems to me their offer to the electorate is “its going to be bad if Brown gets back but it’s going to be much worst under us unless you happen to be wealthy” Now who in their right mind is going to vote for that? They aren’t going to mind if unemployment rises to 10m “It’s good for the country” and their jobs will be safe. I keep hearing them claim this government has run out of ideas but I don’t see any real policies coming from them, or have I missed a bit?
What is their hurry? After WW2 we had an enormous debt yet still managed to introduce the NHS, The debt was paid off over thirty years. I blame the Tories for this crisis and feel aggrieved that they have the audacity to expect working families to pay for it.
Unfortunately reactive PM Brown is saddled with another bunch of trade unions trying to pull the rug from under him. Have they learned nothing?
More on strikes later.