Swimming in red tape

Andy Burnham should try it

Labour minister Burnham wants us to get fit, he wants to trumpet the new sports facilities that they have made available for us, he’ll probably want to come to South Shields when Cllr. Iain Malcolm finds a developer to build our own super sea front water park swimming pool. Yet looking at this, council swimming pools are shutting at the rate of seven a month, with the mendacious excuse of under use generally cited as the reason for closure. They appear to be under used because some oafs won’t let people in to swim, because there aren’t enough lifeguards on duty, they need at least one for every forty swimmers!

Just another example of the “Elf ‘n’ Safety” madness that is spreading throughout the UK.

We could actually go out, get fit, and generally enjoy ourselves if half of the legal profession, politicians, and the insurance industry took a few days off!

Please Cllr. Malcolm, when you build our swimming pool can we go and drown at our own risk?

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Coercion or compulsion?

Labour MP with a Stalinist streak

Can you imagine Cllr. Jimmy Foreman announcing to South Tyneside parents that they cannot have a school place for their infants unless they have all had the MMR jabs and can provide a certificate to prove it?

No, neither can I.

Yet a Labour MP, Mary Creagh (Wakefield) has proposed just such a Stalinist measure, somehow thinking that compulsion is so much better than coercion and persuasion. What sort of warped thinking is this? It’s hardly the way to get parents on your side is it?

My view is that there are many benefits to be gained from these inoculations but they are counterbalanced by some small risks that I, as a parent, was willing to take. Others are not, and see the risks as much greater than I do, I respect their views and have no objections to them exercising their choice. There are many who prefer to have separate inoculations rather than the combined dose, and some GPs still harbour doubts about the risks attached to the combined vaccination.

Creagh wants to influence debate within the party as it begins to prepare its next general election manifesto. She chairs a group of Labour MPs which will make public health proposals that can feed into the party’s policy forums, but stressed yesterday her idea was in its infancy.

As far as ideas go, this one should be denied a place in the nursery of educational thinking, compelling people and removing choice is unlikely to lead to a greater uptake of these important vaccinations. The state should never be elevated to a position of principled morality assuming that individuals are incapable of making reasoned decisions.

Nanny needs to be ignored from time to time!

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Jenkyns slams “death sentence”

NICE decides against Tarceva in England and Wales

Lung cancer is not nice, and neither is the decision of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in England and Wales (NICE) in respect of Tarceva, purely on the grounds of cost effectiveness of course. NICE has decided, for now, that Tarceva, the drug which has had a great beneficial effect for South Shields cancer sufferer Jimmy Jenkyns, cannot be prescribed for new patients as it is not “cost effective”.

Needless to say, Jimmy’s wife Deanne has slammed the decision, calling it a “death sentence” for future sufferers.

Incredibly, if you live in Scotland Tarceva can be prescribed for you, for free! In fact, due to the disproportionate amount of tax payer subsidies provided to the Scottish Executive via the Barnet Formula, all prescriptions are free in the land of the Caledonians.

It irks and niggles me something rotten, so heaven knows how Jimmy and Deanne must feel about the situation. The drug is working so well for Jimmy that he has been able to return to work, I spoke to him only yesterday and he was looking very well indeed.

I really wish David Miliband could have some incisive influence over NICE and the NHS overlords who are making these decisions!

Jimmy and Deanne have a busy message board here, why not give them a shout and offer some support.

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Carrot and coriander

A battle against the weight

I seem to be struggling with my weight again, too much sedentary work and too little exercise again. Time to get out and put some miles in on the streets of South Shields. However, I doubt that I’ll ever see that 28 inch waist again that I had as a teenager!

Lunches tend to light these days, mainly soups, and sometimes I just do without, but I’ve developed a liking for carrot and corriander soups (don’t really mind which brand at all) and have perhaps had four or five tins over the last few days.

I worry though, that too many might result in an orange hue to the facial features, and too much exercise in the sun might exacerbate this.

I don’t want to end up looking like the next Peter Hain!

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Prescription to kill polyclinics

Cameron could be right you know.

South Shields is blessed with a number of very good health centres where groups of GPs offer a number of services including nurse practitioners, specialist clinics, physiotherapy, and counselling sessions etc. We also have a mix of general (single) GP surgeries that see, perhaps, fewer patients. However, it is accepted that these facilities are few and far between in the outlying estates necessitating a journey towards the busier parts of town for many people.

I fear that the government’s plan to introduce giant “polyclinics” could see many of the smaller GP surgeries disappearing altogether, and for people in villages or smaller townships this could be a great inconvenience. I do not see it likely that places like East and West Boldon, Cleadon Village, Whitburn or Marsden, and Biddick Hall would get one of these “polyclinics” built within their midst, and they would all find themselves having to make longer journeys to see the doctor.

Therefore I think that David Cameron, the Conservative leader is right to oppose the plan as it could have terrible effects upon smaller communities who have already seen the loss of their local post office, local pub, local shops, and local police station. It’s another statist corporatist plan to provide bigger and better because they know what is best for us - and choice isn’t what is best!

Dr. John Crippen writes further in Centre Right illustrating the difficulties in staffing the proposed “polyclinics” and outlining his fears that it will lead to a two tier health system with the poorest suffering most, once again.

” If that is what the people of this country want, then so be it. As long as you know what you are going to lose.”

It makes you wonder if Labour has almost given up fighting for the hard pressed in society!

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Waynetta’s world

An open letter to Jimmy Foreman

Today’s meeting of the Cabinet of South Tyneside Council will consider a report setting out a new general policy that attempts to limit the number the number of successful planning applications for hot food take away shops in the borough.

Many of our recognised retail areas have a number of hot food take-aways at present, an indication of the general demand for such facilities (they wouldn’t be there if people didn’t want to use them), and in some areas we are actually losing good general retail space to make room for them. In South Shields 14% of our retail outlets have been given over to cafes and restaurants and a further 6% are occupied by hot food take-aways, does this indicate that many of our residents have a lifestyle which reflects that of Waynetta Slob (pictured), the character created by Harry Enfield?

One might argue that the modern lifestyle revolves around a couple with 2.2 children both working who have little time to prepare and cook their own food and therefore rely on a convenient supply of burgers, fish and chips, kebabs, Indian curries, pizzas, and Chinese food, yet at the same time there are areas in South Tyneside where unemployment is still unacceptably high with couples and single parent families relying upon the same sources for their meals. The applications for hot food take-aways would not be so high if the demand for their services was not there, and after reading in the News of the World on Sunday of the lifestyle enjoyed by Karen Matthews I was struck by instant recognition of a number of similar scenarios that I could point to in South Tyneside. We are in danger of allowing our residents to live in Waynetta’s world!

As a libertarian I will say that it’s their choice to live this way, to shop in these places, and to feed themselves and their children with an unhealthy diet high in saturated fats and carbohydrates. So whilst people want to use the facilities of hot food take-aways then why not let them?

There are a number of other disadvantages to allowing this market free and unfettered access to our High Streets of course, they nearly all (without exception) create problems with car parking, particularly between the hours of 6.00 p.m. and midnight when local residents hear a constant stream of car engines coming and going to make use of limited parking space. Many of them are the cause of increased litter problems, especially at weekends, some of them create odours , and some become the focus for attention from groups of youngsters who seem to enjoy flocking to a lit window like moths to a flame. This can be intimidating for ordinary law abiding citizens making their way home at night. Again, an illustration of Waynetta’s world.

Yet, the demand for these products and services need not necessarily be as high as it is at present if we start a massive educational onslaught against our children to help them enjoy the benefits of knowledge, and learn all about food, it’s preparation, and cooking. These skills were once passed on from mother to daughter (and even to sons) and yet as far as I can remember have never been given a general high focus within the educational curriculum. Some very basic cooking skills are being taught in South Tyneside schools from an early age (i.e. years 1 - 4) and the skills curve starts to rise again at year 7. However, the time and intensity given to the subject needs to be amplified, encouragement needs to be given to all pupils of both sexes to learn culinary skills between years 7 and 11 and in further education. Community education needs to become involved too for adults looking to further their knowledge and skills, community projects need to be initiated to involve as many sections of the community as possible, our community centres, clubs, and associations have a role to play too. Once culinary skills and talents are established the skill base will again start to widen as the knowledge gained starts to be disseminated amongst family groups.

This is the the way to break out of Waynetta’s world Jimmy, but first you need to be brave enough to break out and away from the national curriculum, and to establish a new pattern in South Tyneside which stakes a great pride and emphasis in increasing knowledge of healthy easy cooking and eating. You should be pressing your Cabinet colleagues to follow your lead in this venture and impressing upon them the benefits of health, fitness, and more importantly a lessening of the demand for hot food take-aways in our retail areas. the consequences of which will be a releasing of more square footage originally intended for general retail use.

Councillor Jimmy Foreman as the Lead Member responsible for education in this borough you have an important and pivotal role to play which overlaps into other areas of the region’s lifestyles, you can be instrumental in driving a cultural change which will benefit us all, and your lead could create a model which other authorities might follow and it could become a catalyst for much better styled shopping areas in the future.

People make better choices when they are better educated, and the culture of Waynetta’s world can be eradicated.

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Can the scientists always be right?

Human embryology and fertilisation Bill

The most senior Roman Catholic scientist in Britain has attacked his Church’s opposition to proposed laws that will allow the creation of human-animal embryos for research.

Sir Leszek Borysiewicz made a passionate defence of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and the science that it will make possible.

Trying to put aside the religious arguments I still find my mind questioning the “ethics” of some scientists and the medical profession over this bill. We live in a society where we are often told that the explosion in the world’s population is causing great risks over how we consume resources, and that eventually there will be too many mouths to feed, and here in the UK the demographics firmly show that we live in an ageing society that has problems financing it’s pensions provision and social care for the elderly.  Yet we have the world of science ever more determined to find new methods of research that will seek to eradicate certain life threatening diseases and illnesses, they seek to increase the longevity of life, regardless of the social cost. Have they no belief in the concept that there must be some sort of “natural selection”? That we all must expire and die one day?

What will be the consequences of finding a cure for Alzheimers disease or Parkinsons disease? Will the expense of having used stem cell research to formulate the cure then move on to something else to eradicate? Where do you stop? Eventually the human body must give up despite the attempts of science to keep it going longer and longer and longer, rather like a 1920s Panhard.

Another concept in this Bill which the scientists cannot possibly provide an answer for is the assignment of a right for lesbian couples to have children via IVF treatment. Just how can that be assigned? If lesbians cannot conceive through natural means, then what natural “right” can be given that allows them to carry a child without a father? Even though the conception can only be provided through the use of donor sperm where does that leave the father in the life of the child? What happens if sometime in the future the biological father decides he wants visitation or custodial rights? What about the rights of the child? Surely they must be entitled to contact with the father should they so wish?

It just seems odd to me that we can talk about this concept of a “right” where nature itself disallows conception without the combined efforts of a male and a female!

Driving smokers underground

Labour’s ideas full of centralism and control

Just been to my local paper shop here in South Shields where I have to do the normal chore of buying Mrs. Curly’s cigarettes (I do wish she would give it up) and asked the proprietor how this crazy idea might affect her business.

For a start she would have to find, or borrow, more cash to refit behind and under the counter if Dawn Primarolo, the Minister for Public Health, gets her way, secondly she believes that the problem of children buying cigarettes will end up just like children buying booze (they will get an older person to do it for them, just like now), but more importantly she thought that some of her adult customers would be made to feel like absolute lepers or pariahs simply for exercising their right of choice.

Yes we all know that there are serious health risks associated with smoking (and I think that I appreciate this more than most) and we all understand the minister’s words:

“Children who smoke are putting their lives at risk and are more likely to die of cancer than people who start smoking later.”

that’s without thinking of the heart disease and other lung diseases which may be caused by smoking.

However, what sticks in the craw, more than other people’s cigarette smoke, is the controlling interest of the “nanny state”, the creeping influence of the health commissars who always know what is best for us, and allowing us to make our own informed choices in life is clearly not good! You should know that your actions, thoughts, deeds, and consequences need to be controlled more rigidly. The health commissars seem to have an agenda to make us all live for ever, well if not for ever then at least to a hundred, this is despite the fact that the UK demographic shows that we already have an ageing population with a looming pensions crisis that looks all the more difficult to solve every year. I often think that we would all be better off, as a society, if we popped our clogs of whatever cause at the age it might normally happen without the influence of the longevity brigades, in the longer term this would be a far cheaper option for the NHS than seeking to keep us all alive for a decade or more longer.

The final word belongs to Rita,

“shoving cigarettes under the counter only helps to make them more illicit, and kids like nothing better than doing things they shouldn’t”.

Dizzy is calling it an anti-smoking fascism, perhaps he smokes, he is angry about the whole thing.

Slim your children down, or we take them away!

Draconian, over bearing social service goons

If this was to happen in South Shields, someone would be facing a charge of serious assault by now!

Yes, there are health concerns, but the goons in the social services departments have really gone to town with their over bearing threats (which are probably real.) Is there no end to the interfering”nanny knows best attitude” of some of these people? Have they never heard of actions like encouragement, persuasion, involvement, help, aid, inclusion etc.

An all round approach involving schools is needed here, and the parents probably need some help too - not “orders” to go to dance lessons or football from health commissars!

More disturbing news on “The Frankenstein Bill”

Cameron will not support abortion amendment on disabilities

I have known many South Shields’ families during my fifty years of life in this town who have been blessed with the gift of disabled children, some with slight problems others with the most severe of difficulties in comparison to the rest of society. After the initial shock at birth, all of those whom I knew went on to develop the most wondrous bonds with their children devoting their life to their care, attention, needs, and in the nature of giving them as much quality as humanly possible. I have known families who were aware at the outset that their children might not necessarily reach adulthood, yet nothing deterred them from being proud, resolute, loving, parents.

Despite the heartache of losing a child at a relatively early age, most of those in this situation would not have had things any other way, they are saints in my mind. I have known children quadriplegic and unable to communicate with little else except eye contact or touch, I have seen a seemingly healthy seventeen year old with spina bifida succumb to liver failure overnight, it was heart wrenching, he was my friend.

Yet we have a law which still allows doctors to abort embryos with genetic defects that lead to (some quite minor) disabilities right up to 39 weeks - that’s right, up to the normal gestation period!

The Disability Rights Commission has previously expressed concerns about these double standards in the 1967 Abortion Act:

“It reinforces negative stereotypes of disability and there is substantial support for the view that to permit terminations at any point during a pregnancy on the ground of risk of disability, while time limits apply to other grounds set out in the Abortion Act, is incompatible with valuing disability and non-disability equally. In common with a wide range of disability and other organisations, the DRC believes the context in which parents choose whether to have a child should be one in which disability and non-disability are valued equally.”

We are not just talking about major problems here, in 2001 the Rev. Joanna Jepson started a legal challenge into the late abortion of a 28 week-old foetus. The reasons given for the termination were associated with the foetus having a cleft lip and palate - grounds which the Rev. Jepson argued did not constitute “a serious handicap” under the terms of the 1967 UK Abortion Act. The Rev. Joanna Jepson, who was born with a jaw deformity herself, and whose brother is disabled, argued that the abortion was an “unlawful killing“. However, in 2005 a judicial review concluded that the doctors carrying out the abortion had “acted in good faith“, and would not face prosecution.

MPs now want to make an amendment to the Human Embryo and Fertilisation Bill which would bring this anomaly into line with the time period for all abortions, thus all embryos would be treated as equal at the same time.

My own personal view is that the destruction of embryos on the grounds that they may have deformities or disabilities is a gruesome form of social engineering that we could well do without, and I’m sure that the parents I spoke of above would passionately agree with me. So why am I disturbed by the news that Conservative Party leader David Cameron will not be supporting the amendment to lower the limit to 24 weeks (which is still the highest in Europe)?

I am disturbed that an issue is being made of a single person who just happens to lead a national political party by both a national newspaper and the Conservative Home blog. It is a sensitive issue, more to do with disability than abortion, more to do with the perception of how we view human beings as a whole, regardless of their abilities in comparison with one another. So my own views differ from Cameron’s, so what? As the father of a disabled child he has every right to hold his own views, and every right to hold a differing view from others. This is a complex and unusual Bill in that it deals with many ethical questions posed by the continuing forward march of science and therefore we should not expect our legislators to abandon whatever views they hold on morality and faith. Further, we should expect that our legislators take cognisance of the fact that many in society hold views on morality and faith that may differ from their own, and for these reasons alone it disturbs me that politicians may be subject to the party whipping system when voting on this Bill.

This is not in any way shape or form a party political issue, yet Gordon Brown (the son of the Manse) has so far not been able to decide exactly how he wishes his Cabinet or his party to proceed on the issue, surely he should concede that here is a Bill which demands that MPs consult there own consciences before coming to a decision.

That decision should be made on the basis of a free vote, in both Houses!