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Millions wasted on boundary changes that won’t happen could have paid for more than 500 nurses

October 16, 2012 11:31 am

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The boundary commission revised changes to constituencies have been published today, even though Nick Clegg has said they won’t pass – despite Tory plans to bribe Clegg and his party which were mooted yesterday. The total cost of this boundary review is £11.9 million. That’s enough to pay for:

562 nurses

And even if we only count the money spent on the boundary changes after Clegg decided to make his MPs vote against, the money wasted – £4 million – would pay for:

188 nurses

Incidentally, there are 4,500 fewer nurses in the NHS than there were in 2010. Perhaps if less money was wasted on gerrymandering that won’t even happen, the government could have afforded to cut fewer nurses…

Related posts:

  1. Unfinished Business: Boundary Changes, Breaches of Contract and the Coalition
  2. Hitting the Boundary
  3. Quote of the day: Boundary changes edition
  4. The Tories appear to have given up on boundary changes
  5. Labour’s CLP reorganisation set to be scrapped following boundary change u-turn
  • http://www.facebook.com/joe.cox2 Joe Cox

    Sorry but this is a terrible argument. Leaving the boundary changes aside, democratic processes cost money and as social democrats we should make this argument loud and proud.

    • postageincluded

      Can’t see how a gerrymandering excercise can be described as a “democratic process” so the money could certainly be put to better use.  After 2015 the  Tory-LibDem Gerrymandering Bill will be squashed and the new boundaries will become an expensive footnote.Then we can have a new bill to redraw boundaries on the basis of  population – assessed using the census rather than the electoral register. That will be democratic and money well spent.

      Also we’re not all  ”Social-Democrats” in the Labour Party, whatever that means.

  • dereklancaster

    could be worse. could of sold all the UK gold for toilet paper. And a landed the NHS with crippling PFI repayments………….Oh wait.

  • LordElpus

    Disgusting innit. The government of the day wasting money on ill-perceived ideas . . .

    . . . never happen under a Labour government though . . .

  • David B

    And how much will be wasted in the next Parliment by keeping the extra 60 MP’s the boundary changes would remove?

  • MonkeyBot5000

    How many nurses could be paid for by the money used to subsidise food and alcohol in the House of Parliament?

  • williamtheconker

    What exactly is wrong with wanting constituencies to be the same size in voter terms?

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