Nursing Counts priorities

I was recently contacted by a lady called Maureen regarding my commitment to NHS staffing.

As a voter in your constituency, I am asking if you will support the Nursing Counts priorities.

1. Improve patient care by ensuring safe staffing levels; giving nurses access to training and; listening to the concerns of staff.

2. Value nursing by paying a fair wage; stopping the downbanding of nursing experience and; investing in nursing so that future generations aspire to become nurses.

3. Invest in health and care by guaranteeing no more cuts in the nursing workforce; increasing resources for the community and; implementing workforce planning that reflects the needs of patients.

The nature of my candidacy is going to end up as something of a rolling theme. There are two things to consider

1. My stated personal view (That you should not trust as a fact from any candidate)

2. My SMART-voter.org policies. Which a random sample of 20 members of the Wokingham electorate will decide and I will commit to supporting with a vote back guarantee (You can trust these, but we don't know what they are yet)

1. My personal view (This is true, but don't take my word for it) is that if the state is to do anything of value it is to maintain the health of it's citizens. While I actually do not support free at the point of care. I'd like to see a nominal charge of a cinema ticket fee to see the GP to encourage people not turn up at every 3 day sniffle. I'm also a strong believer that the staff and premises needed to meet public demand should be state employed and state owned.

There is a disturbing correlation between the reduction in front line staff and the increase in locum staff private companies and political donations from people running those companies.

Medical staff must afford to raise families and have quality time with them, that means good salaries and fair working hours. Strangely enough I think the solution to that lies in Taxing property assets, reducing their inflated values and making the affordable to people who work locally, but that again is a policy I have no influence over driving or supporting. Wokingham decides. Fact.

2. What will Wokingham decide? It depends on the circles you walk in. I think everyone but the most right wing of Tories would agree to those principles being on the list and am both hopeful and confident that I will be allowed to commit to supporting these measures in a meaningful way that, at the time of writing, no other candidate is willing to match.

http://elections.rcn.org.uk/