Falmouth is already an impressive deep water harbour and busy port but in order to move with the times, it needs to cater for the bigger ships that need more depth. A deeper channel will also give opportunities for the renewable energy industry. More jobs in Falmouth will be good for the whole area – many people from Camborne & Redruth have also worked at the Docks over the years.

The plan to dredge the harbour was knocked back by environmental concerns last year but new plans will be submitted soon.

There is more information here.

I know that everyone wants to deal with environmental issues responsibly and plans will include safeguards – I really think this plan should go ahead and if you agree, please sign the e-petition to government here.

And for anyone of a historical bent, the original ‘Falmouth For Orders’ is the story of the last clipper ship race from Australia to Falmouth around Cape Horn.

The residents of Rosemellin in Camborne have certainly made me feel this way. Rosemellin is an area of Camborne North that seems to have gone under the radar when maintenance work was being timetabled. Footpaths are patchworked and pitted, grassed areas are churned up by 4x4s, cars speed along Boilerworks Road and park illegally and dangerously by the school. There were so many issues that I thought it would be a good idea to call a meeting of residents and get their views on what the priorities were.

Thanks to the generosity of Rosemellin School and the forbearance of the cleaning staff, I fixed a time and place, sent out leaflets and turned up, hoping a few hardy souls might come along too. From the off, there has been a fantastic response. And what is brilliant also, is being able to act on some of these issues.

There has been some discussion about the ways in which councillors’ community grants are used – though I would warn anyone not to use the term ‘Big Society’ to my face on this one.  Another pot of money that councillors can allocate is £24,000 for highways. It is quite a substantial amount and there has even been some talk at Cornwall Council of clawing it back from councillors that haven’t used it yet. It was suggested to me that the reason was that next year might be too close to an election year and some may be hoping to take advantage, so anyone (not in my ward) who has a burning desire for a crossing or speed humps, should contact their local councillor quickly and find out if he or she has any of this budget left.

Mine is now earmarked for Rosemellin. There are restrictions on how it can be used (not for maintenance) and there is still quite a bit of work to do on consultation and plans but with such a great team of motivated people, I’m confident that it will be spent well on improving an area that needs it. No complaints or frustration, I hope!

It’s not pretty but you can read the news item here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16669566

Apparently, Mr Pickles claims that councils have a ‘moral duty’ to sign up to the freeze.

As the police, councils up and down the land (Conservative as well) and our financial officers at Cornwall Council are telling us, this will create a big black, financial hole in our budget when the grant disappears, which Ministers have said it will next year. And on top of that, we could face even more cuts.

Of course, it will not be Eric Pickles in the firing line when severely disabled people, their benefits already cut by central government, find more day centres closed and support packages reduced.

Eric Pickles, on his fat Ministerial salary will not be in despair as he struggles to hold down a job and care for elderly relatives with little council support.

Eric Pickles will still be surrounded by his staff, civil servants and police protection while the rest of us will lose our neighbourhood police.

It will be local government staff – the ones left after another round of redundancies anyway, who will have to square the circle of demand for services without the funds to pay for them.

It will be local government having to decide between libraries and home helps, leisure centres and wheelchair services, maintaining footpaths and providing hand rails or stair lifts.

In Cornwall, the Lib Dems are mounting a campaign to accept the freeze with lots of people holding placards about how much they would save with the Lib Dems.  Next year I look forward to some honesty and lots of placards declaring ‘My elderly mother lost her home help because of the Lib Dems’ or ‘My local library shut because of the Lib Dems’,

The Tories and many Independents have supported this drivel and I hope they think again at budget setting time.  All the evidence is that accepting this freeze will make it impossible to fill the financial black hole without cutting vital services.

Freezing council tax the year before an election might be a good headline but the price will have to be paid in the end.

Local government has been told that if council tax rises by more than 3.5% this year, they must hold a referendum.  That could cost more than the rise in tax itself. This is nonsensical but it will be law next year and make financing of local councils perilous.

In politics, it is easy to talk in headlines. It is even easy to mislead people by only talking about part of the truth.

Getting sanctimonious about that, running campaigns to take advantage of it, really does make a mockery of the word ‘moral’.

]]> http://juderobinson.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/turkeys-and-the-morality-of-freezing/feed/ 1 JR http://juderobinson.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/frozen-turkeys/ http://juderobinson.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/frozen-turkeys/#comments Sat, 21 Jan 2012 08:46:20 +0000 JR http://juderobinson.wordpress.com/?p=1162 ]]> It is a truth universally acknowledged that a politician seeking re-election will find some decisions even tougher as the ballot box approaches.  

This is one good reason that many people – and police officers – fear that electing Commissioners to run the police force will not turn out well.

Stephen Otter, the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall police yesterday gave Cornwall Councillors a brutally frank briefing on the budget and how this is impacting on the police force. 

And it could get worse – Devon and Cornwall Police are facing the same dilemma over freezing budgets as Cornwall Council. I wonder how different will be the response of elected and appointed members.

We all know that some cuts have to be made. The police themselves said they could cope with 12% while maintaining front line policing and Labour would have accepted this. The coalition hiked it to 20% – one fifth of the budget.

In Devon and Cornwall’s case, this is £49 million over four years.

This means 700 police officers and 500 support posts are going. Some of our neighbourhood police will disappear.  The stark choice is keeping the police on the streets or being able to respond to 999 calls as needed.

Now the government is offering a grant of £2.9 million to the police if they freeze their budget.

BUT the grant money to fill the gap is there this year but not next, leaving a black hole in the budget. It also then leaves a lower base budget, so a small increase the year after will bring in less than it would if they had raised the tax this year and inflation will erode it further. By 2015-6, it will mean a £9 million hole.

Instead of losing 700 police officers and 500 support staff, 1000 police and 700 support staff will go .

The numbers of police in Devon and Cornwall would reduce from 3500 to 2500 and anyone who thinks that can be done without affecting policing is either in cloud cuckoo land or a politician facing re-election.

On top of this, with the coalition economic policy in tatters, our economy sliding backwards and the deficit becoming even more difficult to pay off, the government is making noises about another round of cuts.  

This is paralleled at Cornwall Council, where the same offer is on the table and the Tories and Lib Dems are falling over each other to claim credit for saving the council tax payer money without admitting that a financial black hole will result. Services for the elderly, the disabled, libraries, bus services, all could be threatened but it won’t happen until after the next election in 2013.

The Police Authority, which is appointed not elected, will be making the decision this year but in future years, it will be up to the Police Commissioner that we elect in November to decide for the police. It’s a scary thought.

At Cornwall Council, it will be up to elected members in February.  The Conservatives and Lib Dems have already indicated they will be voting for a freeze. Unless there is new information that it won’t be disastrous for next year’s budget or mean massive hikes in future years, I will vote against.  It isn’t an easy decision to make when money is already tight but because of the way the government has set this up, I think it is the right decision.  Election year or not.

The proposal for a ‘Business Improvement Districts’ – where local businesses pay more in council tax to fund improvements – in Camborne has proved controversial.

There have been surveys and meetings about the BID but with a mixed response. Many businesses are struggling to keep going and want to be absolutely sure that forking out another £100 + a year will pay dividends and not sink into some administrative ramblings.

This has not been helped by the letter that has just gone out telling local businesses that if their rateable value is less than £7500 a year, they will be unable to vote in the ballot on whether a BID will be set up.

Understandably, smaller businesses want a say as they will paying if it goes through.

For those businesses that are concerned by this letter, I can confirm that it is a mistake and

all non-domestic rate payers with the exception of charities with premises that are offices, halls, clubs or community centres, will be eligible to vote.

Legislation for BIDs came in 2003 and there have been many across the country that have been very successful, including in Truro and Falmouth.

The money generated in those places has been used for one off festivals, promotional websites, leisure guides, even dressing empty shop windows – anything that the steering group feels would help increase trade.

The key is for local businesses to get involved and decide if they want it and what they want from it, if it goes ahead. The 28 day ballot starts in February and telling small businesses that they can’t vote is pretty unfortunate.

So – all businesses in the BID area can vote, please get involved, find out more, say what you think and vote!

The BID development officer is Josyanne Thatcher at Cornwall Council on 01872 224378 or Josyanne.Thatcher@cornwall.gov.uk

It was wonderful for me to spend time with my family – especially my children who have grown up so well. Hard to believe sometimes I had a hand in that.

And as my parents are aging, it was good to have them here too. Persuading my mother to use a wheelchair (she can walk but very slowly and not for long) gave us more freedom and also a profound gratitude to the Labour government that pushed through laws making public places accessible. Even with that it is hard enough but how difficult was it 20 years ago?

We stayed over Christmas in Falmouth and visited lots of old haunts, which was very enjoyable and yes, those cobbles look great but are a pain in the neck – as many argued at the time and were roundly ignored by the local council. Same old.

Special thanks to Gylly Beach cafe in Falmouth, who were brilliant, the couple in Wetherspoons, who volunteered to change seats, so we didn’t have to squeeze round a pillar and the ladies in the Cavendish cafe who did the same to make it easier for us to get in.

Lots of people are so kind, which makes the political landscape seem even more bizarre. Massive rows over Diane Abbott, because she said something stupid seem as irrelevant as massive rows over Jeremy Clarkson because he said something callous.

I’m reserving my indignation for the government that is cutting disability benefits, cutting housing benefits, spending a small fortune on marketisation of the NHS and delaying regulation of the banking system that caused this financial mess.

In Cornwall, we haven’t really seen yet the impact of the huge cuts to our budget and the year ahead will bring a lot of hard choices. One of the most difficult will be the council tax freeze, which will save  people money on their bills this year but may cost a lot more in the years ahead. As ever, those most affected will be the elderly, the vulnerable, the disabled, the bus users, the community transport users, the people who need the services most.

Hey ho, back to the fray.

Business leaders and unions have united in their response to the proposals, which could cut £7000 a year from salaries.

What a Christmas present this is: the pockets of people in Cornwall will be emptied to pour more money into areas of the UK that are already wealthier. While local people will have to battle over a dwindling supply of affordable homes, those in better paid employment elsewhere will be snapping up second homes here.

RCHT has come a long way since then with massive improvements in results, high satisfaction ratings and having repaid half of its debt.  The big question now is what the future brings. The government says every hospital should become a Foundation Trust by 2014 or be taken over. According to the recent Select Committee report, four out of five hospitals will struggle because of financial difficulties, poor leadership or poor services.

Foundation Hospital status was introduced by the Labour government and supported by the Cooperative Party. It gives hospitals more freedom in how they operate but keeps them within the NHS family and introduces elected governors, accountable to the public.

In Cornwall that means we get more say in how our hospitals are run. If we don’t get Foundation status, our hospitals: Treliske, St Michael’s, West Cornwall, could be run by Plymouth Derriford, Royal Devon and Exeter or a private healthcare company (like the one that has just removed out of hours services out of Bude and there isn’t a thing anyone can do about it). I am pretty sure that if that happens, many more people will have to travel out of county to get treatment and the Health Select Committee agreed in its report.

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has admitted it faces a challenge of Everest proportions to win foundation status. This to me is one of those occasions when people in Cornwall need to show their support for health services that are run in Cornwall, by Cornwall, for Cornwall.

Quite what our MPs feel about all this is anybody’s guess. There are rumours – and I fervently hope they are unfounded – that one of them is encouraging a vote of  no confidence in the RCHT board.  The powers that be at the Strategic Health Authority have expressed doubts in the past about Cornwall’s ability to run its own affairs and that could give them an excuse to draw a close to a sometimes turbulent relationship.

Andrew George (Lib Dem St Ives) marched with campaigners, who took to the streets in support of West Cornwall Hospital due to the winter ward closure and makes a lot of statements about Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust but does not come across as supportive.

Sarah Newton (Conservative, Truro and Falmouth) seems to feel the main object of any intervention is to promote the ridiculous idea that the previous Labour government is responsible for RCHT’s problems.

Apart from that, there seems to be very little awareness of just how important this is and why we should all be getting behind our NHS hospitals.

To bang on solely about the historic debt of the hospital is to miss the point.

The UK is in recession and NHS spending in real terms has fallen and is unlikely to rise in the near future despite growing demand from an ageing population. On top of that money has been taken out of the system (around £35million in Cornwall) to pay for the government’s ill thought out reorganisation plans.

RCHT has to deliver £19 million of efficiency savings, balance its books and have a surplus at year end on top of loan repayments and it has to do this while driving up standards of patient care and outcomes.

My reading of the tripartite agreement in place between the RCHT, the Strategic Health Authority and the Department of Health, is that if the Trust does this and submits a robust bid to become a Foundation Trust on 1 January 2012, then the loan will be rescheduled.

If it fails, we have to start thinking the unthinkable – losing local control of our NHS hospitals.

It’s time for people in Cornwall to get behind RCHT. We can still be critical, challenging and downright stubborn but we should also make it clear that we want a local Trust and not any other out of county or private solution.

The more people who sign up to be members, the better. Click here or write to

RCHT Membership Office
Bedruthan House
Royal Cornwall Hospital
Truro
TR1 3LJ

And do it now!

The massive tree looks marvellous now it is all lit up. Congratulations to all who were involved in organising this, making floats and in the procession.

Radio Cornwall’s Graham Smith has blogged about a scrutiny meeting next week, which will consider the possibility of a referendum on several issues – to coincide with the costly and unwelcome election of a Police Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall Police Authority.

One of the questions suggested is

Should we have control over the main roads into Cornwall so that we can dual and upgrade the A30 and A38?

Aside from the obvious point that how you frame the question affects the outcome, this issue has come up before.

At the Council’s Cabinet meeting on 16 November it was decided to agree the de-trunking in principle in order to get access to government information on costs.

 Subject to approval of the strategic case by the Minister for Transport, the Corporate Director of EP&E and the Corporate Director, Resources, be directed to develop the stage 2 business case for detrunking with update reports prepared for Environment and Economy Overview and Scrutiny Committee before bringing the final business case including the full financial implications to Cabinet for approval of the terms for detrunking.

In the WholePlace bid to government, published and submitted to government – deadline for submission 10 November –  it was promised that

We will seek support from the DfT and Highways Agency to de-trunk and dual the A30 and upgrade the A38.

It’s the backwards way of doing democracy. First, make a commitment to do something, then vote on it in Cabinet, then tell the people they are making the decision.

Off I go, muttering *Democratic deficit* to myself.