NHS - a 'reform' too far?

The coalition seems determined to press ahead with major disruption to the NHS despite criticism of the reforms from numerous healthcare experts including bodies such as the Royal College of General Practitioners. The reforms will see GPs and private healthcare firms competing for patients with GPs being responsible for buying in care for their patients.

GPs will have to become managers as well as doctors. Business interests will ultimately be competing with the provision of the best possible patient care.

This reform will result in the biggest reorganisation of the health service during its 60 years of existence – while at the same time £20 billion is being cut from the health budget. The new legislation is a charter for disintegration of public health provision, mismanagement of vital patient care and is open to exploitation by unscrupulous private firms. Labour’s insistence on PFIs for public services has been shown to be bad for the public purse and services. This reform which is based, not on clear evidence but on selective statistics, will follow the same pattern.

The third reading of the Bill takes place after Easter.

The Mysterious Benefactor

Last Sunday (6th March) the St Piran Trust produced the St Piran play. If you have read previous blog posts you will know that the Trust needed a benefactor to come forward and donate some daffodils in order to keep a tradition alive.

Fifteen minutes before the play started a gentleman came out of the crowd with four boxes of bunched daffodils and the play began with people carrying their daffodils to the Norman church.

The thing is, the St Piran Trust are unaware of who this very kind person was. The Trust would like to thank him and let him know how much they value his wonderful and warm-hearted gesture.

If the anonymous benefactor could make himself known then the St Piran Trust would like to thank him properly.

It is generosity like this that shows that there is no need for Mr Cameron to try to take advantage of people's goodwill and call it a 'Big Society'. The caring society is alive and well in Cornwall.

St Piran Play

Today the St Piran play was performed accross the sand dunes at Perranporth. There were hundreds of people there to see the story of St Piran unfold at various places of special significance to the life and history of St Piran.

This year the St Piran Trust had taken over the production of the play and it looks like the tradition is in good hands. As well as the scenes that we have come to enjoy each year there were new surprises and added touches designed to enhance the atmosphere and overall effect of the production.

St Piran's Oratory is currently buried under tons of sand. Given the significance of the site and its antiquity, this is something of a travesty. You can find out more about the Oratory and the work of the St Piran Trust here .

Illogan's youth leads the way!

Congratulations to Illogan School and to Illogan RBL Junior Football Club. Both have recently been recognised and received awards for excellence.

Illogan School are leading the way in Cornwall after being awarded the prestigious ICT Mark. This award was made following an in-depth assessment of the way in which the whole school uses and applies new technology.

Meanwhile the Illogan RBL junior FC has been recognised by the FA and received the Charter Standard Award. The award reflects the quality of the knowledge and training of the people involved with the club as well as the way the club is administered. Illogan RBL junior FC now join an elite group of clubs to have received the award.

It is good to see that in Illogan, as across Cornwall, lessons in ‘Big Societies’ are not needed. Cornwall’s ‘One and All’ spirit leaves the UK behind in her wake!

AV Referendum

Over the coming months there will obviously be much debate surrounding the AV referendum. Mebyon Kernow is committed to a yes vote in the referendum on AV. This is because MK has consistently argued that PR is a better voting system than FPTP. It is true that AV is not the holy grail of a STV system, but, nevertheless principle demands voting for change that takes the system away from FPTP and towards STV.

AV is a big improvement on first past the post for several reasons. One big advantage of AV over FPTP is that it helps to make tactical voting harder to justify by the bigger parties. In the last general election the Lib Dems were for ever claiming that the only way to prevent [sic] a Conservative government was to vote for them – what a joke that turned out to be! The way that AV is set up makes it harder to convince voters that it is necessary to vote for one party in order to stop another from gaining power.

The AV system also makes parties try to broaden their appeal and develop policies which are less extreme because they will have to try and gain a much broader appeal for voters’ second preferences. The argument that AV would favour parties like the BNP just does not hold water.

Naturally we can expect Conservatives to pretty much line up behind the FPTP system as it has stood them in good stead over the years. Labour will be non-committal as they try to woo Liberal Democrats (in case there is another hung parliament) but will still prefer to keep the old Westminster two-horse race going. For the Lib Dems, the AV referendum is the poor price that they have extracted for selling their political souls to the Tories – you have to expect them to push for a yes vote.

The people that I really find hard to understand are those who have consistently called for a PR system but who now intend to vote against AV. To me this is a mystery.

What is the rationale for claiming to be in favour of PR and yet voting for FPTP in the referendum. Some people even want to simply spoil their ballot paper in a protest. For me this makes no sense. It will be hard enough to motivate people to go and vote on this subject in the first place – to try and motivate someone to make a trip to the polling station in order not to vote is surely like trying to push water up hill.

It also seems that some of the proponents of a vote against AV or a spoilt paper are (quite correctly) annoyed with the Lib Dems and don’t want to reward them for their duplicity. Well I would certainly agree that the Lib Dems deserve no reward for their broken pledges and blatantly unashamed U-turns – but I also think that not voting for AV rather than FPTP, when you claim to believe in PR, is such a big ‘tactical vote’ that even the Lib Dems would be proud of the idea. So much for principle and voting for what you believe to be the best option available on the ballot paper?

Some people claim that AV is not STV and until STV is on offer we should vote against it. Again, this is not a very well thought through argument. All that will happen is that the FPTP campaign will get a resounding victory. What happens next? Does anyone honestly believe that the Tories will say “Well we won that campaign with such a large vote that clearly we will have to have another vote with STV as the option.” Somehow I doubt it. The argument that will be used is “As there was such a clear vote in favour of FPTP that is the end of the matter.” There will not be another chance to get a better, more representational system for decades.

If you believe in PR and fail to vote for AV then be prepared to live with the knowledge that there may not be another chance to get a PR system for thirty or forty years – but never mind because the Lib Dems got what they deserved!

I am a volunteer with the St Piran Trust.

St Piran’s day is the 5^th of March and this year the St Piran Trust is responsible for producing the St Piran Play. This is the annual play staged on the sand dunes at Perranporth which attracts hundreds of ‘pilgrims’ who celebrate the life of St Piran. The play will be held on Sunday 6^th March commencing at 2:00pm.

Over the years a tradition has grown that, at the start of the play, the members of the audience are each given a small bunch of daffodils. These flowers add a welcome splash of colour to the event and are often left at the granite Celtic Cross close to the Norman church which provides the backdrop to the final scenes of the play.

Unfortunately, due to the poor weather this year, our normal supplier is unable to donate the daffodils for the pilgrims.

Does anyone know of a local daffodil producer who might donate approx. 300 small bunches of daffodils so that we can keep this tradition going? Plese get in touch if anyone can help.

More information on the St Piran Trust is here .