Nurses

This evening I was a panellist at the local RCN version of Question Time - although I have to say that the Chair was a lot kinder than Dimbleby and there was a lot less interrupting.

Other panellists were Desmond Swayne - in the blue corner - and Alan Whitehead in the red corner.

Desmond was the most sensible I have ever seen him (all things are relative) but I was pretty gobsmacked when he started talking about things like the importance of public health. I muttered that this was something of a renaissance and he agreed! The bottom line is that my political activism was awakened in the 90s because I was so appalled at what the Tories were doing to the health service and I really cannot believe that the health service will be looked after in the unlikely event that they get into power.

Alan was his usual relatively gentle self but he had the more difficult job of trying to defend some of the Government actions.

Nice to have some feedback after the meeting that I had shown a real grasp of the issues. The reality is though that there was actually quite a lot of agreement between us about some of the problems and we didn't come to blows.