Illogan Parish Council to Get a New Office

There was an Illogan Parish Council meeting tonight.

The council approved various decisions related to the construction of a parish office. At the moment the Illogan Parish Council (with an annual budget in excess of £100,000 pa) operates literally from a shed at the bottom of a garden. The new parish office will be part of an Illogan ‘hub’ project which, as well as providing a modern and utilitarian home for the parish council, will develop the existing facilities at the Illogan Village Hall providing more storage space and an enhanced main hall.

The Parish Plan process is now also complete. A final public consultation has been scheduled before publication in the next few months. The plan is the result of a lot of hard work put in by a working party of volunteers from the community. Once formally adopted and published it will provide a structure for policy decisions relating to community development over the coming years.

I am also pleased to report that the council are prepared to support the principle of openness and transparency in local government. In certain situations the council has the power to exclude the public and press from the decision making process. A complaint had been received concerning the way the council conducted its business at a recent planning meeting. Before the complaint was considered by the council an item on the agenda asked the council to resolve to exclude members of the press and public. This resolution was not passed and the complaint was dealt with in open session.

The AV Factor

George Eustice would have us believe that the AV system of voting is extremely complex. In fact all you have to do is rank the candidates in your order of preference, from one to however many candidates there are. It’s really not rocket science is it? Once the voter has done this then the result is determined in the same way as the X-Factor unfolds – except it happens in one count except over several weeks.

If you watch the X-Factor you will know that every week the public vote for their favourite and the singer with the least votes gets booted off the show. The following week all the people who voted for the singer that lost the previous week now choose their next favourite and vote for them instead – and so on until, at the end, the singer with over 50% of the vote wins the record contract.

This is what happens with AV.

As the least popular candidate gets booted out of the election so the votes that he or she got get distributed to the next favourite candidate on the list.

It’s as simple as that!

George will also tell you that AV is very unfair because some people get to vote more than once.

This is also a complete load of nonsense.

In fact everyone, clearly, has the same vote. The point is if you have voted for the front runner then your vote continues to count for them in the subsequent round. If you really want to think of each round as a separate poll then everyone has the same number of votes – but if you vote for the front-runner then your vote remains with them.

Now George Eustice, of course, knows all of this so why is he so set against AV and why does he come up with such blatantly misleading and scaremongering untruths?

Perhaps it might be that Mr Eustice is very afraid that, being a Tory, no-one is going to give him a second or third preference. The Tories usually have a strong core of voters that go out to vote come rain or shine – but not many others would normally consider voting for the Conservatives. This means that as the lowest ranked candidates get kicked off the show so anyone but the Conservative candidate is likely to pick up the next round of voting preferences.

George might start off with 35% of the vote but that percentage is likely to decrease as the result is calculated, and by the final round he has only a slim chance of winning.

AV is not a particularly good or representative voting system. Mebyon Kernow believe that the best system would be a Single Transferrable Vote system, achieving true proportional representation. We have campaigned for proportional representation for many years. However, AV is a big improvement on First Past the Post and is much more preferable.

MK's Rising 'Councillor Count'

Local government and local democracy are extremely important in Cornwall. Cornwall Council and town and parish councils make many decisions that have a huge impact on the day to day life of the people of Cornwall.

In 2009, following the local elections in Cornwall, Mebyon Kernow – The Party for Cornwall, had seven seats on Cornwall Council or Town/Parish Councils across the Camborne district.

Over the last two years, after many hard fought by-election election campaigns, this number has increased dramatically and now stands at thirteen – and we would very much like to increase this number further.

There are many people out in the local community who have a great passion for the good of Cornwall – please come and help us make Cornwall a better place to live, work and enjoy family life. Local councils need people who are able to commit time and energy to the community to make continuous improvements.

I would ask how many people would like to make a difference to public life and believe that Cornwall can and should get a better deal. Anyone who does should come and join us.

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!