I caught a little of the first election debate last night which may well be more than most people in the country did. I was struck by a couple of things:
it’s apparently o.k to break election promises, which makes we wonder why we should believe our esteeemed PM.
no top down reorganisation of the health service
The organisational changes contained in the Act have been both damaging and distracting. Damage is evident in the serious fragmentation of commissioning, the bewildering complexity of regulation, and the loss of continuity as leaders have been replaced and organisations have been restructured. Distraction has resulted from a requirement to undertake fundamental restructuring when there ought to have been a focus on improving patient care and delivering greater efficiency at a time of constrained budgets.
The government’s record on NHS reform: our verdict: Kings Fund, February 2015
immigration ‘in the tens of thousands
In the year to June 2014, net migration was 260,000 – and that was well above the Conservative target of getting it down to tens of thousands by the 2015 general election.
For 20 years, the UK has seen more immigration than emigration – reaching a peak in 2005. Net migration began to drop in the wake of the credit crunch economic crisis and then again from 2011 after the government restricted entry for some people from outside of Europe. But now net migration is on the rise again.
BBC News, November 2014
The second thing I noticed was that not much was said or asked about the environment and global warming. A two degree rise is going to mean some fairly significant population movement (and immigration unless we put up a very high fence!) and a tad more stress on the health service but it doesn’t seem to be an election issue. Oh well it’s just the future of the planet, nothing we need to worry about!
