Earlier this week the Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham, warned that 12,000 nurses will be lost to the NHS over the next two years if redundancies and lay-offs continue at the current rate. It could well be political speak of course, and politicians regularly distort the facts to suit their argument, but what if his warning is based on truth? Can our overstretched and overburdened health service cope with these losses to its front line staff?

We all know what a clumsy and ungainly beast the NHS is and how inefficiently it is run but my personal  experiences have convinced me at least that we still have doctors and nurses of the highest standard. I really don’t believe that many countries can boast a better quality of medical care than the UK but I cannot say the same for the management of the NHS.

Recent scandals involving NHS Trusts have clearly demonstrated that many hospitals are badly run with far too many inefficient and incompetent bureaucrats clogging up the system. It is surely upon those people that the Government’s axe of austerity needs to fall and not the poor nurses who seem to me to be performing heroically under the most intense pressure. We cannot afford to lose any more of them.

One last thought. It has often been reported that some top professional footballers earn as much as £200,000 per week together with endorsements. The average nurse earns around £20,000 per year. That means that some footballers earn as much in a year (£10.4 million) as 520 nurses combined. That probably tells you all you need to know about our society and its values.