Coate Water in the bleak mid-winter

This is Coate Water country park (click on photo to enlarge), the object of a long struggle to prevent ‘development’ in the surrounding area. The latest effort by the ‘developers’ includes building 900 houses in the vicinity. Bath University attempted to blackmail local people by insisting that the area was the only possible one for a University campus. That effort was bombed out. The Tory led Council then made a commitment that if there was no University to be built there then there would be no houses built (see Breaking the fifty-first promise). That commitment was abandoned and they are now in favour of a ‘development’ including 900 houses. This was supposedly a ‘pragmatic’ position designed to ‘preserve Coate Water, when the Council is under pressure to build more than 30,000 extra houses in Swindon.

The Council’s ruling group made much of their opposition to an undemocratic planning process whereby central government determined an arbitrary number of houses, and the unelected regional development body imposed this figure on Swindon regardless of the views of local people. Ironically, the Tory Party at the national level has said that if elected they will end this planning system with ‘target’ housing numbers, and ‘give democracy’ back to local people. So why, with the possibility of a Tory government, has the Council’s ruling group decided to support what they had previously opposed?

See Coate campaign to carry on into next year

http://jefferiesland.blogspot.com/

Penalising Trusts for doing ‘too many’ emergency procedures

The NHS doesn’t produce widgets to be sold on the widget market. It has sick people coming through the doors. Yet one of the consequences of the government’s commercialisation of the NHS is that efficiency is measured by the balance sheet rather than the quality of the work done. The market system which the government has introduced not only makes planning more difficult, owing to “patient choice”, but in some instances it appears designed to ‘incentivise’ Trusts to do less work, even when it is socially necessary!

Christopher Addison, Council Housing and Swindon

80 years ago, in the 1929 General Election, for the first time a Labour MP was elected in Swindon. Who was he and what was his connection to Council Housing?

Doing some research on the history of Council Housing, I recently discovered a Swindon connection of which I was unaware. The first Council housing estate built in Swindon was Pinehurst, in 1919. It was the result of the Housing and Town Planning Act which was introduced by the then coalition government to address the housing crisis. The British rulers were worried about the potential radicalisation of returning troops combining with the growing independent shop stewards movement which had emerged during the war. They were fearful of a British version of Bolshevism emerging.

Alfred Williams Heritage Society

An Alfred Williams Heritage Society is being launched in Swindon on December 8^th at 7.00 p.m. In Swindon Central Library. The Society has been set up with the motivation of popularising his writing, putting it on a website, and finding a home for a permanent exhibition and collection of his work, manuscripts, letters etc. The Society has made an application to the Lottery for a grant to organise a two day festival in November of next year, which is the 80^th anniversary of Alfred’s death.

Its website can be visited at: www.alfredwilliams.org.uk

Foundation Trust AGM

I attended a session of the Swindon & Marlborough NHS Foundation Trust AGM last night. The FT was launched at the end of last year as part of the government “health market” in which “independent” Trusts compete with each other, and private companies, for patients. The Chair of the Trust and the Chief Executive spoke of “difficult times ahead”, expecting cutbacks in funding. They thought, however, that there were advantages in FT status, the most important of which, they said, is that they are accountable to us as members rather than to NHS bureaucrats. “Difficult decisions” would have to be made, but would be done “in consultation with our governors and our members”.

Social Care – a public service or a commodity

On Monday I attended an event organised by LINKS, the Local Involvement Network which the government says have been launched “to give communities a stronger voice in how their health and social care services are delivered”. The subject of the meeting was ‘The Big Care Debate’, a government consultation on the future of social care. The consultation is premised on the idea that given the rising age profile of the population ’something must be done’ or else ‘we’ won’t be able to afford to provide it.

California’s real death panels

The religious right and Republican opposition to health care reform in the USA has used propaganda which has little traction with reality. One of their assertions has been that health-care reform would mean ‘death panels’ deciding on whether old people can live. The irony is lost on them since the current system, dominated by the insurance companies does operate a sort of death panel, although one without any discussion.

Lobby of Swindon Council

These hardy souls above braved heavy downpours to lobby the Swindon Council in opposition to transfer of our Council houses to a Housing Association. There is another row at the back of shy and retiring types not visible owing to the angle of the shot and their flagrant refusal of the photographer’s instructions to move forward.

The good news was that the Council’s ruling Tory group agreed to withdraw their motion (to ballot tenants for transfer of the town’s Council Housing) until they can examine the details of the government’s consultation on a new Housing system. For analysis of this see Swindon TUC’s website at:

http://swindontuc.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/swindon-tuc-breifing-government-consultation-on-new-housing-finance-system/

With friends like these…

Iran is a country in which the USA and Britain have a history of interference. It’s history was shaped by the overthrow of the Mossadeq government which had the audacity to nationalise Iranian oil. He was removed in a coup in 1953 supported and funded by the US and British governments. The price of this coup was paid by the Iranian people with the brutal regime of the Shah. One of the consequences of this dictatorial regime, with a complete absence of any freedom to organise, was the use of the mosque as a focus and a cover for opposition in the absence of any democratic framework for the struggle for democratic rights. In that sense Britain and the US share responsibility for the fact that Khomeini and the clerical regime emerged from the revolution of 1979 as a ruling elite.

Keep Our NHS Public AGM

Saturday I attended the AGM of Keep Our NHS Public. One of the issues which was discussed was the possibility of KONP standing candidates in elections. This debate elicited the response from a representative of UNITE (which is an affiliate and financial supporter of KONP) that if it did take such a step then the union would have to withdraw its support from the campaign. The issue will be discussed by the Steering Committee this week.