The 19th of March is a significant day for the link road between Morecambe and the M6. It is the date by which the government is expected to decide whether to build the road and as this happens to be today then I am expecting some news. This story has been going on for decades and it is still mentioned on the doorstep.
The only news so far this week is a story from The Visitor where we are invited to take a 'sneak peak' at how the finished road would look. It would appear that the decision has been made as this sneak peak was published yesterday and the graphic artists have worked hard. Maybe the decision has been made and it hasn't been published on the Lancashire County Council website. If no decision has been made then that should be news too. Well it is the 19th March.
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P.S. The news has come through that the Secretary of State has given the go ahead for the link road. As the idea was first raised in the 1940s then this makes the 19th of March a fairly momentous day.
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Friday, 15 March 2013
Do these numbers add up?
Knocking on doors means that I am asked many questions. It's not like being on Question Time and I don't need to know everything about every question. In fact most people are happy simply to be able to ask a political question. On Wednesday one person asked me why the Liberal Democrats went into coalition with the Tories and not Labour. As it happens this came up on Any Questions last Friday when Peter Tatchell made the point that Liberal Democrats should not be working with the Tories. This was answered by Ed Davey for the Liberal Democrats.
I knew the answer without Ed reminding me. Without a coalition, a minority Tory government would have resulted in another general election and a second election may have given the Tories unfettered control. This coalition also allows for Liberal Democrat policies to pass through parliament.
The person who asked me the question may be pleased to see Liberal Democrats and Labour working together in their plans for press regulation. David Cameron was part of the cross-party talks before he decided that he wasn't going to get his way. The difference between the Liberal Democrat / Labour view and the Tories is that the Tories prefer to regulate the press without controls underpinned by law which sounds very much like the status quo. The trouble is that the press has had plenty of opportunities to regulate itself and their failure has been frequent. It's not all bad news - apologies often get printed in the back of the paper somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if the Tories lose the vote on Monday as reports are that it will be close. And that reminds me of another question that I get asked. Why didn't Liberal Democrats form a coalition with Labour? Well the numbers didn't add up. I wonder if they will on Monday.
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I knew the answer without Ed reminding me. Without a coalition, a minority Tory government would have resulted in another general election and a second election may have given the Tories unfettered control. This coalition also allows for Liberal Democrat policies to pass through parliament.
The person who asked me the question may be pleased to see Liberal Democrats and Labour working together in their plans for press regulation. David Cameron was part of the cross-party talks before he decided that he wasn't going to get his way. The difference between the Liberal Democrat / Labour view and the Tories is that the Tories prefer to regulate the press without controls underpinned by law which sounds very much like the status quo. The trouble is that the press has had plenty of opportunities to regulate itself and their failure has been frequent. It's not all bad news - apologies often get printed in the back of the paper somewhere.
It will be interesting to see if the Tories lose the vote on Monday as reports are that it will be close. And that reminds me of another question that I get asked. Why didn't Liberal Democrats form a coalition with Labour? Well the numbers didn't add up. I wonder if they will on Monday.
Change the world
Monday, 11 March 2013
Tilting at Windmills
There is a headline today on the BBC website that reads 'Lancashire farmers in wind turbine row with MoD'. What would you expect to read? My initial thought was that the MoD wanted to build some turbines and local farmers were objecting. In fact the farmers wanted the wind farm because of 'crippling costs' but the MoD felt this would affect their radar system 20 miles away at Warton.
The trouble is that the prospective turbines would have been built in the shadow of much taller turbines on Oswaldtwistle Moor and there are many other turbines within a 20 mile radius. It strikes me that Warton's radar system is compromised already. Wouldn't it be nice to have a reasoned discussion on how radars are affected by wind turbines? I wrote about plans for a wind farm in Heysham and these would be less than 20 miles from Warton. I guess there is a reasonable answer but it's just hard to see it from today's article.
Whether wind turbines affect radar systems or not, it looks like the tide is turning and wind farms are now recognised as efficient and desirable as well as a cleaner fuel. As far as beauty is concerned it is in the eye of the beholder. I have always thought that turbines were beautiful in the way that enthusiasts admire steam engines or in the way that back to back houses are conserved for their insight into history. A few years ago they were just slums.
The main argument that is no longer being debated concerns the efficiency of wind farms. When I wrote about wind farms in January it was because I had spoken with someone who felt they could never pay for themselves, even if their power source didn't use up the earth's resources.It sounds like the world is changing...
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The trouble is that the prospective turbines would have been built in the shadow of much taller turbines on Oswaldtwistle Moor and there are many other turbines within a 20 mile radius. It strikes me that Warton's radar system is compromised already. Wouldn't it be nice to have a reasoned discussion on how radars are affected by wind turbines? I wrote about plans for a wind farm in Heysham and these would be less than 20 miles from Warton. I guess there is a reasonable answer but it's just hard to see it from today's article.
Whether wind turbines affect radar systems or not, it looks like the tide is turning and wind farms are now recognised as efficient and desirable as well as a cleaner fuel. As far as beauty is concerned it is in the eye of the beholder. I have always thought that turbines were beautiful in the way that enthusiasts admire steam engines or in the way that back to back houses are conserved for their insight into history. A few years ago they were just slums.
The main argument that is no longer being debated concerns the efficiency of wind farms. When I wrote about wind farms in January it was because I had spoken with someone who felt they could never pay for themselves, even if their power source didn't use up the earth's resources.It sounds like the world is changing...
Change the world
Friday, 8 March 2013
Pothole Complaints
I feel a little sorry for the council when they are dealing with potholes. They must know that potholes are dangerous and I am sure that they cause many trips which then turn into many claims for damages. Everyone wants roads and pavements to be in good condition so it must be frustrating for council officers because potholes are many and resources are finite. The only thing they can do is to prioritise as some roads are certainly worse than others.
One method of prioritising is to listen to complaints and one of the things that I have been doing is letting the council know about the larger holes in our roads. One of the worst roads that I have come across shouldn't have needed me to write in to the council because many residents had already been in touch. In fact one of the first people that I spoke with told me that I didn't have to do anything (She also told me that she used to be a member of the Conservative Party) and I believed her for at least a few minutes.
Many others told me slightly different but similar stories. They told me that they had been in contact with the council and the responses ranged from the road would be resurfaced to it may be resurfaced if they could find the money and it would not be resurfaced along with many variations in between. One resident had even emailed the council to tell them he would be withholding his community charge until the road was resurfaced. Another had been asking the council to do something for five years. Reactions had ranged from civil disobedience to despair.
Imagine my surprise when I received the reply from the council that they had no existing records for complaints about the road. I have asked them to look again. I am feeling a little less sorry for the council officers.
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One method of prioritising is to listen to complaints and one of the things that I have been doing is letting the council know about the larger holes in our roads. One of the worst roads that I have come across shouldn't have needed me to write in to the council because many residents had already been in touch. In fact one of the first people that I spoke with told me that I didn't have to do anything (She also told me that she used to be a member of the Conservative Party) and I believed her for at least a few minutes.
Many others told me slightly different but similar stories. They told me that they had been in contact with the council and the responses ranged from the road would be resurfaced to it may be resurfaced if they could find the money and it would not be resurfaced along with many variations in between. One resident had even emailed the council to tell them he would be withholding his community charge until the road was resurfaced. Another had been asking the council to do something for five years. Reactions had ranged from civil disobedience to despair.
Imagine my surprise when I received the reply from the council that they had no existing records for complaints about the road. I have asked them to look again. I am feeling a little less sorry for the council officers.
Change the world
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Not Just Wrong - Truly Dreadful
The failings in the Mid-Staffordshire hospitals are well documented and according to the public inquiry what happened was ' "not just wrong, it was truly dreadful" and the government needed to "purge" a culture of complacency'. It is probably the biggest NHS scandal in recent years and the chief executive at the time was Sir David Nicholson. Now he happens to be the chief executive of the whole of the NHS in England. This morning he was questioned as part of the Mid-Staffs investigation. He cannot remember whether he was in charge of 54 or 56 organisations at the time. This is not a good basis for questioning him on any specific matter. He was also asked about mortality rates at his hospitals but he hadn't received any information. He didn't see any mortality rates.
How do you measure whether a hospital is doing well? Well perhaps, most importantly you could ask the patients and Sir David tells us he has done that even though he can't remember getting to all of his hospitals. You could ask the staff and both of these measures would give you some indication of what is happening. Sir David did this too. However if you gather this information together in a scientific way it gains even more importance but still Sir David did not get to know about the years of abuse and neglect.
Morbidity rates relate to illness and are quite complicated to decipher because we are complex creatures. However it is fairly easy to know whether someone is alive or dead. Nobody is going to argue about this diagnosis and mortality rates are fairly easy to understand. I knew about them in the 80s as a student of physiotherapy. They are a fairly easy method of monitoring standards within hospitals even if you have 54 or 56 hospitals under your care and this would be one of the first places where I would look if I were a chief executive but not Sir David.
The big problem in the NHS is lack of responsibility. There are no characters left like James Robertson Justice in Doctor at Large or Hattie Jacques in Carry on Doctor. There are many hard working and caring people who work in the NHS but they don't have the authority that they need. They go to work and do their job as part of a team. If something is going wrong then they may report this in the appropriate way but that would then put the responsibility on managers. Between 2004 and 2008 one nurse working in the A&E in Mid-Staffs reported more than 50 times about the risks to patients. She got no feedback.
The person who delivers the service is not responsible for the service as a whole. Financial directives drive the NHS. Whether you have a local A&E, whether you have any hospital service and the quality and quantity of that service will depend on management decisions which are very often directed nationally. They use terms like best practice, but this means that responsibility is centralised and those with local authority become less authoritative.
Now we know that the national decision makers can, at least in some cases, get to be where they are by presiding over a "truly dreadful" service while being apparently oblivious to that dreadfulness. Something is broken, and needs to be fixed. This chief executive had no grasp of detail, and then he got promoted.
Change the world
How do you measure whether a hospital is doing well? Well perhaps, most importantly you could ask the patients and Sir David tells us he has done that even though he can't remember getting to all of his hospitals. You could ask the staff and both of these measures would give you some indication of what is happening. Sir David did this too. However if you gather this information together in a scientific way it gains even more importance but still Sir David did not get to know about the years of abuse and neglect.
Morbidity rates relate to illness and are quite complicated to decipher because we are complex creatures. However it is fairly easy to know whether someone is alive or dead. Nobody is going to argue about this diagnosis and mortality rates are fairly easy to understand. I knew about them in the 80s as a student of physiotherapy. They are a fairly easy method of monitoring standards within hospitals even if you have 54 or 56 hospitals under your care and this would be one of the first places where I would look if I were a chief executive but not Sir David.
The big problem in the NHS is lack of responsibility. There are no characters left like James Robertson Justice in Doctor at Large or Hattie Jacques in Carry on Doctor. There are many hard working and caring people who work in the NHS but they don't have the authority that they need. They go to work and do their job as part of a team. If something is going wrong then they may report this in the appropriate way but that would then put the responsibility on managers. Between 2004 and 2008 one nurse working in the A&E in Mid-Staffs reported more than 50 times about the risks to patients. She got no feedback.
The person who delivers the service is not responsible for the service as a whole. Financial directives drive the NHS. Whether you have a local A&E, whether you have any hospital service and the quality and quantity of that service will depend on management decisions which are very often directed nationally. They use terms like best practice, but this means that responsibility is centralised and those with local authority become less authoritative.
Now we know that the national decision makers can, at least in some cases, get to be where they are by presiding over a "truly dreadful" service while being apparently oblivious to that dreadfulness. Something is broken, and needs to be fixed. This chief executive had no grasp of detail, and then he got promoted.
Change the world
Monday, 4 March 2013
Allaying Immigration Fears
I have been knocking on hundreds of doors recently to ask if I can help with any council matter and I have found a few UKIP supporters. The conversation has usually started with immigration but when I talked about my daughter's recent move to Australia then that seemed to be perfectly acceptable. There was general agreement that immigration was alright as long as there was work to be had which did not affect local workers. My daughter's move was fine because her skills were in demand and it would also have been alright if employers could not fill their vacancies. So the fears that these people had about the free movement of labour were actually fears about unemployment.
There was also a concern that immigrants should not be jumping any queues for social housing or taking benefits from a system to which they had not contributed. This is exactly how I would feel if I moved to Australia. I would not expect to be able to sign on, to be given a house or a job.
Today's news is that the Government is clamping down on 'benefit tourism' There may well be some people who would uproot their family in the pursuit of a better life but I don't think this sort of pioneer would also think of moving across the world so they could sit in a council house without a job and endure the vilification of their neighbours. However these are the kind of conditions that would have to apply in order for UKIP to achieve its prediction that millions of them will turn up in Britain. Worse than that, UKIP are branding them as villains.
The trouble for the voter is that if they raise concerns about immigration then they fear being labelled "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly" despite their legitimate concerns over the economy, housing and benefits. As for employment, the free movement of labour has to be a good thing. It benefits people like my daughter, it helps employers in this country and it helps the whole of Europe.
The discussion has to move on from 'closet racism' and concerns over immigration to the economy but the trouble is that UKIP have exploited fears of open floodgates. If David Cameron lurches to the right and puts immigration to the top of his agenda then he will miss the point of what is concerning the electorate. He will not be any better at allaying immigration fears than UKIP. What is needed is an explanation of why we need the free movement of labour and the right safeguards in place which would allow employers to fill their vacancies.
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There was also a concern that immigrants should not be jumping any queues for social housing or taking benefits from a system to which they had not contributed. This is exactly how I would feel if I moved to Australia. I would not expect to be able to sign on, to be given a house or a job.
Today's news is that the Government is clamping down on 'benefit tourism' There may well be some people who would uproot their family in the pursuit of a better life but I don't think this sort of pioneer would also think of moving across the world so they could sit in a council house without a job and endure the vilification of their neighbours. However these are the kind of conditions that would have to apply in order for UKIP to achieve its prediction that millions of them will turn up in Britain. Worse than that, UKIP are branding them as villains.
The trouble for the voter is that if they raise concerns about immigration then they fear being labelled "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly" despite their legitimate concerns over the economy, housing and benefits. As for employment, the free movement of labour has to be a good thing. It benefits people like my daughter, it helps employers in this country and it helps the whole of Europe.
The discussion has to move on from 'closet racism' and concerns over immigration to the economy but the trouble is that UKIP have exploited fears of open floodgates. If David Cameron lurches to the right and puts immigration to the top of his agenda then he will miss the point of what is concerning the electorate. He will not be any better at allaying immigration fears than UKIP. What is needed is an explanation of why we need the free movement of labour and the right safeguards in place which would allow employers to fill their vacancies.
Change the world
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Tories still don't want to be in touch
Try this yourself. Search for my Conservative MP, David Morris's surgeries and then search for my neighbouring Liberal Democrat MP, Tim Farron's surgeries. If you don't have the time then I'll let you know that in the first case you will find three surgeries, on the 19th and 26th October and one on the 9th November. I just can't work out the year to which they relate. On Tim's site there are regular surgeries from now up to and including August - this year.
The reason I looked was because I am a follower of both MPs on Twitter and found that my MP would post tweets that told me that he had finished a surgery (so he doesn't just do them in autumn) like 'I have just been doing street surgeries in Morecambe and Carnforth today'. On the other hand I see tweets from Tim saying 'Can I help in any way? I am holding my next surgery at...No appointment is necessary'.
Compare this with Conservative MP Claire Perry's apology for giving the electorate information in the last blog. However I am convinced that David does advertise his surgeries somewhere, it's just not on Twitter. David hopes that we find his website 'both informative and easy to navigate'. Unfortunately the alleged informativeness and ease of navigation doesn't extend to surgery dates,
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The reason I looked was because I am a follower of both MPs on Twitter and found that my MP would post tweets that told me that he had finished a surgery (so he doesn't just do them in autumn) like 'I have just been doing street surgeries in Morecambe and Carnforth today'. On the other hand I see tweets from Tim saying 'Can I help in any way? I am holding my next surgery at...No appointment is necessary'.
Compare this with Conservative MP Claire Perry's apology for giving the electorate information in the last blog. However I am convinced that David does advertise his surgeries somewhere, it's just not on Twitter. David hopes that we find his website 'both informative and easy to navigate'. Unfortunately the alleged informativeness and ease of navigation doesn't extend to surgery dates,
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