You are hereGordon Brown Spits out England
Gordon Brown Spits out England
Yesterday I speculated as to whether Gordon Brown would utter the word 'England' in his speech on health and social care in England.
I'm rather taken aback to report that he did, just the once:
And for too long in England we have tolerated a care system which sees tens of thousands of people who would prefer to be cared for in their own homes go needlessly into residential care, with all the cost and losses that entails.
He managed to slip the word 'Britain' into his speech seven times. But none of this is relevant to Scotland where the Scottish Government takes its own decisions on health and social care.
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from uberVU - social comments on Thu, 02/11/2010 - 10:25This post was mentioned on Twitter by toques: Gordon Brown Spits out England http://bit.ly/9qp1ZG @DowningStreet
The fact he said England in this context is consistent with Andy Burnham doing the same thing when talking about the personal care bill on the Today programme last Monday (see my previous comment on your post about the BBC). I think Labour must be making a deliberate play for the English working class vote on this one, and they've realised that English people have wised up to the fact that free personal care is available in Scotland - so he pretty much has to say England in this case.
I'd be very surprised if they started to refer to England explicitly in connection with the NHS or education, though. That's because they don't want people to realise that their promises to ring-fence NHS spending apply only to England (and are at the expense of tax increases or service / benefit cuts affecting people outside of England), or that they don't plan to remedy the inequalities in education funding in England relative to Scotland.
Well he will have to learn to say it if he is going to sell it all off!