Life in a marginal: local NHS services edition

The first in an occasional series of "weird things that get sent to you when you live in a marginal seat". Imagine my trepidation at receiving a letter with this marked on the envelope:


That can only mean one thing: local NHS services are to be wiped from the face of the Earth, right? But no, the true nature of the information is far more surprising:


Phew! Ed Miliband is personally going to save my insert local hospital name here! Through no less than a completely non-arbitrary set of random targets. Count me relieved.

I don't mean to sound smug but to be personally sent a personal letter from the leader of the opposition addressed personally to me has to make me one seriously important voter.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What would a Labour Brexit look like?

Image
Some Remainers are upset at Jeremy Corbyn again, after he apparently ruled out staying in the single market after Brexit . Many have taken umbrage at his claim that single market membership is intrinsically linked to EU membership, pointing to the EFTA countries Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Iceland as counterexamples. But Corbyn is technically correct to say that the single market is not a club that can be joined. You can of course loosely say that the likes of Norway and Switzerland are "in" the single market, but their high level of access comes through the EEA agreement and bilateral treaties respectively, which include exceptions such as agriculture and fisheries. It's not a binary distinction by any means. Rather than argue semantics, a more fruitful exercise is to analyse what Labour would actually hope to achieve if they were in charge of Brexit negotiations. As with the Conservatives , it is clear enough if you take at face value what they say t
Read more

Unseen Academicals and the meaning of sport

Image
There's nothing like a hardback book to make you wonder: "what's the point of hardback books?". They're more awkward to use and less portable than paperbacks, they take up more than their fair share of space, and they're expensive. They're grandiose relics, like stately homes in a world designed for suburban semis, except you don't even get a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake when you stump up for a hardback book. They'd be harmless, though, if it wasn't for the hardback-exclusivity of new books. This actually depresses total book sales, at least from me, because the media review books as soon as they come out, but if a review actually convinces me to buy, I then have to wait up to a year for it to come out in paperback, by which time I've forgotten all about it. And unless it makes the Waterstones 3-for-2, I'm unlikely to chance across it again. Nice work, publishers! The one advantage to hardbacks is that they are impressive.
Read more

Are Starmer's pledges worth the paper they were written on?

Image
  The 10 pledges made by Keir Starmer on his way to victory in the Labour leadership election planted his campaign firmly in the ground marked by the 2017 general election manifesto that almost put Corbyn's Labour into government. But six months on, questions are increasingly being asked about whether he intends to stand by them. On both the left and right wings of the party and among some commentators there is a growing belief that the pledges were nothing but a ruse to lure former Corbyn supporters away from his chosen successor Rebecca Long-Bailey, and having served their purpose are now in the process of being quietly dropped to make way for a return to Blair-style centrism.  But is this belief actually true? Approaching this question as a very forensic lawyer might do, let's first consider the case for the prosecution. The belief on the Labour right and among centrist pundits that Starmer is their man is well summed up by Andrew Rawnsley's  recent column on his confere
Read more