From our Swindon correspondent:
My general feeling about the Conservative Party right now is that if you want to Get Brexit Done, vote Conservative. Get it through. But we’re probably going to have to turn on them once they’ve done this for us.
Because of stupid policies like this:-
The Tories have pledged an extra 50,000 NHS nurses in a bid to plug the existing vacancy gap, which currently stands at more than 43,000.The Conservative manifesto also reintroduces a nurse bursary – which the Government had scrapped – worth £5,000 to £8,000 per year.
No, we don’t need nursing bursaries. Here’s UCAS to explain why:-
The number of applicants to B7 nursing courses declined by 7.6 per cent in 2018 after it had already fallen by 17.6 per cent in 2017 when the funding changes in England first came into effect.As most nursing courses are still oversubscribed, acceptances have remained stable with 28,540 this year being the third highest on record. The acceptance rate for nursing courses in the UK increased this year by 4.1 percentage points to 56.2 per cent, the highest ever.
Even with the bursary changes, you’ve still got more applicants than places. So why spend money on bursaries?
How about returning nursing training to its former vocational status and sever the link with university degrees? The NHS might also stop its neo-colonial touring of EU member states and poaching their much needed and expensively trained nurses.
They should be increasing the number of training places. Almost all the shortage of staff is matched by the numbers turned away from training college.
I do, however, have no objection to a future employer putting their future employee through college. It would be a refreshing return to employers actually training up their employees instead of expecting somebody else to do it for them.
The question is whether to vote Conservative to complete Brexit and then fight them, as they are not conservative. A companion question is: If you vote Brexit Party to more reliably complete Brexit, is there any indication that they areconservative in the first place? Seems, whomever you elect, you will have to lean on him or sit on him. As always.