- Attend the health and wellbeing scrutiny meeting at Devon County Council on Monday 20 June at 2pm. I am a member of the committee and NHS Property Services is on the agenda. There is very likely to be a public demonstration before the meeting on the steps of county hall. - I don’t know about you but every time I think about this my blood boils. Express your disgust at the government’s games with our beloved hospital, in the local press. Write a letter for publication to: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)/*= 0)out += unescape(l[i].replace(/^\s\s*/, '&#'));while (--j[...]
And so did our local MP, Hugo Swire. After I had spoken Mr Swire also said a few words, mainly trying to claim that there was absolutely no risk at all to the hospital and that he had no idea where we were all getting ideas that the hospital was at risk. The general reaction was scepticism, heckling and derision. After he had spoken there was a hubbub of angry conversation so I chaired an impromptu q&a session with Mr Swire and several residents who were keen to ask questions about the NHS, local hospitals and the role of NHS Property Services. My speech is below: Around 20 years ago, [...]
It has been a great honour to have been able to represent the people of this parish for 25 years. It would be an even greater honour to be able to serve the people of the Ottery St Mary Parish as its Mayor. Should I become the Mayor, I would devote myself heart and soul to doing so. I pledge to serve as Mayor for one term only - depending, of course, on this council deciding whether a “term” should be one year or two. And I would see my job as trying to involve all members of the council to the maximum extent, and making the best use of the different talents of all councillors. [...]
The motion came before cabinet in April for the second time after being deferred from the March meeting. Although the proposal would cause council officers little or no extra work (and there would be no cost involved) the conservative cabinet has refused to endorse the motion, instead ruling that they will wait for the new rules to be introduced to councils in due course. Currently, Devon County Council legally complies with government requirements on rooting out suppliers which have broken the law on evading tax. The council also complies with government requirements on asking suppliers to [...]
Launched today by Lord Digby Jones is Free Parliament, where primaries are held in every single constituency in the country to allow independent candidates to be selected and run campaigns backed by and funded by this scheme - http://freeparliament.org.uk/ The three main challenges for an independent are: Getting known, funding and credibility. If this initiative works, it will go a very long way to addressing these issues. In order to be considered candidates must sign up to a very sensible set of principles, promoted by Martin Bell, a former independent MP and BBC journalist. Excellent all [...]
Tony Hogg, the conservative PCC for Devon and Cornwall since November 2012, was elected with just 15 per cent of those eligible to vote. It is thought that thousands of people rejected the idea of PCCs and did not vote on principle. Many people did (and still do) object to the idea of PCCs on the basis that their introduction led to the dissolution of the former police authority which oversaw policing governance and was replaced with what is widely regarded as the politicisation of the police force and a waste of money, which could be spent on officer recruitment instead. I was a[...]