13 March 2007

Asking for trouble

In the short term, this may offer some political advantage - or at least the First Minister may think so. The BBC reports:
First Minister Jack McConnell has pledged that Scottish nurses will receive their full 2.5% increase from April this year.
That means they will be paid more than nurses elsewhere in the UK.
The move was announced on Tuesday and is at odds with Chancellor Gordon Brown's plans for a phased pay rise for nurses south of the border.

Big Gordon will not be pleased (to put it mildly). Nor will Labour MPs south of the border. At some stage, perhaps sooner than he thinks, Mr McConnell may need a favour from these guys...

1 comment:

Deacon Barry said...

Thank the stars, I thought I'd imagined hearing this. I can't find a mention of this in all the usual news outlets. Yours is the first mention I've found in the Blogosphere.
I didn't realise it was just Scotland though. Gordon Brown is not going to be pleased is he. And neither will my English and Welsh colleagues.
I, of course, am fairly delighted to be getting the full award, but even then, it's still below inflation.
It's time to put on our tin helmets and wait for the meadow muffins to collide with the rotary air conditioning.