[andrewb]

Today I got the privilege of visiting the Houses of Parliament and lobbying Greg Pope about the NHS (along with my mum who works for Unison whilst some other members lobbied Janet Anderson). We were supposed to be meeting Jack Straw too but he couldn't fit us in until late on and we were only staying the day.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (because we got to talk for about an hour which was great), I quized him on a real example where 85 student nurses had been trained and only 10 had been given jobs, clearly showing firstly the lack of money for jobs, but secondly the waste of money in training people who have no job to go to and might just go overseas.

He replied telling me that he believed that due to the current debt that Royal Blackburn Hospital is in (due to the merging of Burnley whom were a few million in debt) that once this was resolved in perhaps 12months time, many of the financial situation cuts would be sorted. Of course that is no help to current student nurses but it does give hope of a positive future.

Now of course he is not directly responsible for Blackburn Hospital but he is a Labour MP so his opinions do count a lot.

He certainly painted a better picture of the NHS than we are led to believe, and he was not at all overly defensive about the NHS like some MP's are. Now its obviously up to you if you believe Greg, but when it comes down to it, I do.

The opportunity of going to Parliament and lobbying my MP (and walking past John Prescot on the terraces had to get that one in!) was a REALLY positive experience. I even got to mention Accringtonweb!

Overall I was greatly impressed by him, and although Labour HAVE mismanaged the NHS in a lot of respects, its not as doom and gloom as I once thought.

ps. If he wants to post and correct me on something I might have misquoted then thats fine. I don't claim to remember everything!