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(not satire – it’s ConDemNation today!)
In the lead up to military intervention in Syria, where are all the government’s austerity hawks? You know – the ones who’ve been endlessly telling us for the past three years how the country can’t afford health services, fire services or school playing fields?
If there’s going to be austerity, it can’t be selective. Either we can’t afford things – or we can.
So why in three years has the NHS lost 5,000 nurses – who cost around £12.82 an hour – but we seem to be able to afford cruise missiles which cost around half a million for a single use?
Answers on a postcard please to:
George Osborne MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Email – tatton@tory.org
Twitter: @George_Osborne
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Pride's Purge 
Ah, but in the words of Sir Humphrey, ‘Trident is the nuclear missile Rolls Royce would sell you’. Looking at ‘Yes Minister’ today, a friend of mine once remarked that it seems less of a satire and more of a documentary.
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Pingback: Selective austerity? £12.82 an hour nurse...
Reblogged this on kickingthecat.
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there is no austerity the public are just suckers and will fall for anything it seams
thankfully the younger generation in countries like Egypt are getting wise to the crap from their government and are fighting a death battle for change and i for one hope they succeed as you cant keep burying your head in the sand and keep drawing a bad deal in life you sometimes like in Egypt have to play the death card to secure a brighter future
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I don’t think the public are suckers. For the most part, we don’t get any real information about anything from the MSM. Tom does his best to cut through though 🙂
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its very selective sometimes
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Not an original point but a good example of the stark contrast of the selective stupidity of national spending. Good shout…
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‘ere we go again, no wonder the world is so violent..more billions down the drain, who pays, we pay…we cannot afford war, but we can afford peace..
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Bit of Bank Holiday irony – 8.0pm
On Sky News and BBC news a speech by John Kerry about Syria –
On BBC Parliament – The Dangerous Dogs Committee
Says it all
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Being original is vastly over-rated IMO. Much better to be effective. Or funny.
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If you click on £12.82 you get to an advert for a registered nurse for the Cambrian Group a private mental health provider. So not a typical qualified graduate NHS nurse who after a few years experience would earn a lot more than this. So poor research by Tom. Also the defence budget has also been cut whereas the NHS budget has increased with normal inflation although not enough to cope with the increasing demands put on it.
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the defense budget can not of been cut if we ae fighting new wars you cant budget a war.
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so how much would they earn then.
do you know.
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An Agenda for Change (NHS payscale) band 5 Registered Nurse starts at £10.96 per hour. At the top of the band 8 years later it is £14.30. So the £12.82 is fairly accurate for middle of the pay band.
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Band 5 is the entry level for qualified nurses and the experienced ones earn at least 20% more.
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Clive – so you agree that an inexperienced nurse can earn less than 12.82 an hour? And an experienced one can earn little more than 12.00 an hour. (10+20%=12).
Erm… so you’re agreeing with me then.
Mind you, this whole conversation actually proves my point. Here we are arguing over a couple of quid an hour for nurses but not discussing the obscene cost of a single-use cruise missile.
Here’s another interesting fact. Just one Tornado costs around £35k an hour to operate. How many hours of sorties will there be in Syria?
Let’s keep focussed on the real issue here.
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Yes war is expensive thats obvious, the real issue will be whether if it happens, its justified, the jury is out on that at present in the case of Syria.
In terms of nurses pay quoting the average of entry level nurses in their early twenties is not representative of the profession as a whole.
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If the west intervenes in Syria, they like Iraq and others will end up paying back any financial costs incurred one way or another.
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tom
some people don’t get “essence” or “spirit” of the/a story,do these people deliberately set out to try to spoil a story, don’t they see the juxtaposition here? ie nurses being laid off in their droves, yet a nation, britain, in which many people suffer the daily grind of sheer poverty, coz, they happen to fall on hard times, by cause of unemployment/disability/underemployment etc, etc, as the back bone of our welfare state is being broken, can afford to fight a war..poverty creates an even bigger demand on the nhs, and other social services! the nhs/welfare state, was set up to restore the health of an impoverished nation in the 1st place…
the same group of people responsible for the dismantling/destruction of our welfare state and peoples lives, (welfare into warfare), can at the same time, claim, that britain can fight a war and ignore the plight of it’s own people, is the central crux of this story….the bigger picture, the overview..soar and roar people…
a cruise missile from stock to launch costs much more than £500k,…storage, maintenance launch platforms transport, the bang at the end of it’s journey, more human misery, the cost of war is incalculable..we can easily afford peace..good work tom, as always..
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Nurses aren’t being laid off in droves, there has been a small recent decrease, about 4000 or so from a peak work force of 312000 and between 2001 and 2011 nurse nos increased by 20%. However, the the real point is that nurses numbers won’t be affected by whether the UK fires off cruise missiles at Syria or not. We spend 5 times more on healthcare than we do on defence and this ratio is increasing. The trend has been the same with welfare. In comparison we spent twice as much on defence as on healthcare in 1950. The Atlee government started the NHS and welfare state but also managed to fund the development of the UK atom bomb programme and the Korean War. Since those days all governments have reduced defence spending consistently.
Overburdendonkey seems to forget is that there is already a terrible war going on in Syria which as long as the Russians continue to support ASSAD is likely to carry on possibly for years until both sides are exhausted. Whether western involvement would bring it to an end more quickly and ultimately reduce the death toll or make things worse is in my view very difficult to predict. Whatever happens there will be no good outcome only a least worst for the people of Syria.
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you dont half get a lot of pedents posting here.
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clive..
i am very aware..that war NEVER cures war…
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your being very naughty your posting replys after everyone else has stopped commenting that’s normally my trick.
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Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & POLITICAL JOURNAL.
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