The nearly always excellent Dizzy Thinks blog highlight the contradiction between the Conservatives pledge to cut taxes whilst at the same time wanting to increase services. You have to ask if Tories don't believe their policies, why should anyone else ?
Dizzy seems to be at odds with the Tories most ecent announcement that each new mother will get 6 hours of maternity nursing help each day for the first week of a baby's life and the costs this will incur,
"At a time when there is a shortage of midwives already, are we seriously going to propose spending around a quarter of a billion each year on maternity nurses? Come off it! "
I agree with him. Actually what we need is a proper system of guaranteeing pregnant women a midwife. My own wife was told when by the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital that despite her waters breaking, despite early signs of pre-exclampsia and also despite having regular contractions, being five weeks early and being 2 cm dilated, this was not enough to warrant having a bed, and was told she would be sent hom. the fact that she had the baby less than two hours later, before they had a chance to send her home highlighted the fact that hospitals need more maternity beds and more midwives, not maternity nurses or state nannies.
Irrespective of your views on the subject of maternity nurses, Dizzy's point is clear. Can the Tories afford their promises if they are to match Labour's NHS funding plans (as they have promised) and also add new services whilst also cutting taxes ?
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