Wednesday 30 June 2010

Rebecca Addresses National Issues

TODAY, Rebecca Harris, our local MP, presented her Private Member’s Bill to the House of Commons for its First Reading.

Her Daylight Savings Bill is intended to provide for an analysis of the costs and benefits of moving the clocks forward one hour throughout the year. This would give everyone an extra hour of daylight in the evenings - when more people are able to enjoy it.

Mrs Harris said: ‘Road safety experts are also confident that lighter evenings will save nearly 100 lives a year on our roads, mainly children and other vulnerable road users. We can't ignore something that would save that many children's lives.

‘This change could reduce our reliance on artificial light, and cut people's electricity bills and up to half a million tonnes of CO2 pollution each year - equivalent to taking 200,000 cars off Britain's roads.

‘It is also supported by the leisure and tourism industry, who estimate that lighter evenings could create 60 – 80,000 extra jobs.

‘I believe there is so much potential to improve people's quality of lives, and bring health benefits for everyone (children, the elderly, and people returning from work) that I think the government should examine it properly.’

Rebecca is proposing to investigate a return to the situation, throughout Britain, between 1968 and 1971 when, during the oil crisis, clocks stayed on British Summer Time (renamed British Standard Time) throughout the year. However, in her Bill, clocks would still be moved forward by an hour in Summer, as is currently the case. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) would effectively become redundant, and the country would use BST in the Autumn/Winter and GMT+2 in the Spring and Summer months.

Britain abandoned the use of Winter BST in 1972 because of the increased risk to Scottish children going to school in the dark.

If Rebecca’s Bill is passed, and the results of its analysis are positive, the Secretary of State will be required to introduce a trial of the proposed changes.

Rebecca is also contributing towards national decision making since being appointed to the House of Commons Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills on 24th June.

Mrs Harris said: ‘These are difficult times for all businesses, and I hope that through my membership of the Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee, I will be able to not only represent the needs of all businesses in Castle Point, but also help to promote the high skilled, well paid, jobs for young people in the Borough.’

... (02/07/2010, Press & Journal) - Fears rise over bid to shift clocks forward

... (06/08/2010, Fleet Directory) - Essex MP wins top award from national road safety charity

... (12/08/2010, Telegraph) - David Cameron considers double summertime

Working The System

MARY is not her real name; but she is in her mid thirties, has two young boys, and lives in a two-bedroom council house in Essex. Both children have different fathers, and the youngest boy’s contributes to the single mother’s household expenses – as he has done since the child, whom we will call John, was born.

But the authorities are not aware of that.

Entertainment is not lacking in the family’s residence, with a large, wall-mounted, flat screen TV in all rooms, apart from the bathroom.

The three-piece leather suite was bought new, by John‘s father, when the local council provided Mary with the keys. So too was the rest of the furniture, carpets and curtains that the home required.

Both boys are slim; but John is very small for his age, thin, gaunt and apparently has ADO (Attention Deficit Disorder). He has been diagnosed as such and sometimes takes his prescribed medication when his mum remembers to give it to him. When she forgets he creates havoc at school.

‘The pills kill his appetite,’ Mary explains. ‘But he seems to be putting on weight now that he has joined the Breakfast Club.’

John’s father (we will call him Peter) tells a different story. ‘John is perfectly all right when he stays with me,’ he says, ‘and eats like a horse when he is here.

‘I never stop cooking for him.’

Peter is also in his thirties, living in a three-bedroom maisonette that he bought three years ago for cash. Unlike Mary, he works full time; but, like her, he has never paid tax.

‘I’m off their radar,’ he says.

John’s father makes his money from trading second-hand cars and, although he says he has stopped now, selling stolen vehicle and motorbike parts on Ebay.

‘Ebay’s fun,’ he says. ‘They have no idea what they are buying and, if you know what you are doing, it is easy to bid the price up to the maximum they can afford.

‘I’ve got this place, that’s in my mum’s name, and over £80,000 being looked after for me, in cash. Last week I had to be particularly careful and go through it all for those £20 notes that are coming out of circulation.

‘I had to change over £10,000 in total – and be careful of how I did it too,’ he grinned.

Last month, Mary had her year old Fiesta ‘stolen’ from outside the maisonette.

‘When we got up in the morning it was gone,’ she laughed. ‘But Peter is going to get me another with the insurance money, aren’t you darling?’ she asked.

‘Bit of luck really, because I was getting bored with it.’

She was not just talking about insurance from the car’s ‘theft.’ She and Peter are also waiting for compensation cheques as a result of injuries they claimed for a vehicle accident (in which they were not present).

Mary explained that she and the children were only living temporarily with Peter.

‘It is just because this place is so much bigger than mine,’ she said. ‘But I am number two on the list now for a three-bedroom property now that the kids are bigger.’

Mary hopes to be given a council house in a better area than the one she is in.

‘Hornchurch or Upminster, I hope,’ she says. ‘I refused the last one they offered me there because it was too far away from the school – but I might have to take the next one I’m offered.’

‘It’s pointless taking something in a run-down area,’ Peter explained. ‘You can make a lot more from buying off the council in a good area, doing it up, and selling it on.’

Peter and Mary are trying for another child, following the coalition’s emergency budget last week.

‘I have no intention of going to work,’ Mary said.

... (01/07/2010, Guardian) - Coalition must face unpalatable truths of welfare reform

Tuesday 29 June 2010

No Hiding Place For The Work-Shy

WHILE councils anxiously await the full details of the coalition’s spending cuts to be announced in this autumn’s budget, those residents drawing social security benefits also wait to discover what the government has in store for them. It is now clear that the UK’s Welfare Budget is to be heavily axed – in-line with other high spending departments.

The £11 billion of cuts, announced in last week’s emergency budget, are now emerging as nothing more than a down payment on getting to grips with the previous government’s profligacy, and the strategy - adopted by both previous Tory and Labour governments - of ‘parking’ the unemployed on disability benefits (to reduce the unemployment figures) is now to be reversed.

It is estimated that one in five, currently in receipt of disability benefit, are actually fit enough to work. If the figure is true, the coalition may be able to reduce its annual social security spending by as much as £38 billion.

Meanwhile, apart from the navel gazing regarding England’s 4:1 defeat by Germany in the World Cup, this week’s news is becoming dominated by councils, up and down the country, briefing the national press on local cuts. Care charges are apparently set to rise; nursing homes are to be sold-off or closed; free travel passes and meals-on-wheels services are to be abandoned and, of course, staff are to be laid-off. It seems that even some police forces are preparing to cut their front-line presence and squarely blame the government for their decision to do so.

The stories, it should be noted, mainly come from Labour controlled councils and Labour Party politicians, which is strange given the reported intent to cut services for the elderly and vulnerable – as if there were no choice in the matter. But the fact is that choices do exist – as the private sector has admirably shown. Capital projects can be put on hold; lazy assets can be liquidated and directors can set an example by forgoing bonuses and taking a pay and pension benefits cut, like their employees, in order to preserve jobs. Moreover, the private sector was by no means as bloated and inefficient, when it undertook its own housekeeping, as the public sector finds itself now.

Editors and reporters need to be on their guard against giving air to such briefings and press releases. In particular, such printed articles should also investigate the reason why no alternatives can be found.

Controversy, of course, sells newspapers. But this summer, with its raft of impending tube and in-flight attendant strikes, leading up to the autumn budget, does not require stoking to fuel more unrest.

The public will have enough to contend with keeping their own budgets in balance, and do not need the added worry of opposition scare stories to make them even more depressed…

... (02/07/2010, Telegraph) - Francis Maud says police chief is scaremongering on cuts
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