Hazel Gets On Her High Horse

Hazel Blears, who only a month ago blathered so beautifully of opportunity creation, security enhancement and tough measures, appears to have undergone a spontaneous prioritisation realignment. Having decided, in the face of some possible inconvenience from the Boundary Commission, that "the people of Salford and Eccles come first", Blears is petitioning Patsy Hackitt, the Nurses' Friend, over the "reorganisation" (closure, in Standard English) of maternity services in the constituency. A strategic spokesbeing said that "current services are based on the needs of 30 years ago", when babies were brought by the stork, rather than being excreted in the more sophisticated fashion to which we have become accustomed in the twenty-first century. "In-patient hospital services", rather than their budgets, "are spread too thinly to provide the best care" and hence "There is strong evidence that better care can be delivered in fewer, larger, more specialised units" to which instant and utter access will be universally provided by Britain's dynamic, innovative and above all efficient transport systems. If only the Boundary Commission had the sense not to get in the way.