Monday, July 29, 2013

News from Blakenall

Interesting mess being created with the debacle around the land issue where at present Bloxwich baths stands.
We have the past announcement that these baths and leisure centre will be rebuilt with lottery grants.. however who actually owns the land on which this Leisure centre stands? Have the Miners charity who left the open space of Leamore Park for the continued benefit of the people of Blakenall been consulted?  How incompentent can you get? and risk losing precious regeneration funds?

News also that the Ryecroft NRC based in Ryecroft Place is to close along with the adjacent health centre facilities. All those using Ryecroft NRC will be expected to move to the Dartmouth centre based in New Forest Road .. the welfare rights service and the ryecroft training unit.. Have the people of New Forest Road been consulted? Not a bit.. we have sent round a consultation paper to seek their views and most feel that the Dartmouth Centre in new Forest Road should be considered for demolition.. they already have too many cars parking there on the road and to increase usage by making the Dartmouth centre the hub of a gigantic spoke will vastly increase the car parking.
Ryecroft NRC I in the right place and if Dartmouth centre was demolished , the land sold for housing, some of the proceeds would cover doing up Ryecroft NRC and expanding into the adjacent health centre.. to be used as a day care centre for the elderly living in the area for lunchtime meals etc
.. a much more sensible plan,.. needs proper meaningful consulting of course .. but your local independent councillor Peter Smith accepting this way forward with £200K to facilitate has done this without asking all local residents about it.. the idea makes good headlines but local residents have to live with the consequences.!

We have news that the Goscote area will be offered up for development... all that debate about the open space called the Lea.. in reality there was never any probable cause for alarm that the Lea would be built on.. the essential first step was to get the advert out to see if any major developer would come forward to talk about it.. as we stand the save the Lea campaign has just delayed the talking and allowed the tipping paradise open space to remain for longer.
WHG should concentrate on looking after their tenants as a priority and I fear that too many times they have lost sight of that with distractions into too many other areas

We have been asking many residents on the effect they see of the introduction of the so called bedroom tax.. a great many horrific personal stories of residents caught up for no fault of their own in the accompanying cuts to their household incomes and so reducing their standard of living to below the poverty line... guilty of ruining peoples' lives... there will be more evictions, family splits and domestic violence and continued wrecking of lives... those who are well off can just shrug off these changes... those in charge have lost touch with reality.. time to turf them out!!
Ian Robertson

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

What future for our NHS?

Our National Health service seems to be continually under attack by often misguided politicians and also from within by those who work in this sector but forget the basic principles of how to select treatment plans using evidence based medicine .




We have a Government that . has caused a crisis in A&E and cut 4,000 nurses while wasting £3 billion on a damaging reorganisation of our NHS, founded 65 years ago on Friday this week .







People worried about difficulty in getting medical advice with their own GPs now often opted out of out of hours cover go to where they know a place is open and even with a horrendous wait at A and E will eventually get that medical care. This ha created serious pressures on those who are trying to cope with running this part of the service and where sifting through the patients attending is often down to the non medical person sitting on the reception desk. Of course there are many who attend A and E who have relatively minor medical needs and have come to the wrong ‘medical bus stop’ and so hamper health care delivery elsewhere in the system.



The NHS appears to use their resources inefficiently. A health service has the prime objective of treating ill patients , getting them better quickly and helping them to return to normal living and to continue as independently as possible. We also allow public companies whose main interest is producing a profit for their shareholders to write contracts that have so many self interest clauses in to protect those profits and so cost us the tax payers dear. How can these highly paid executives in our NHS and elsewhere be so naive and such poor negotiators?



However we use enormous resources to screen large sections of the public … screening for breast cancer, prostrate cancer, aneurisms, colon cancer which do find some early signs of disease but when you look closely at the figures these numbers are very small ( unfortunately) screening should only be targeted at very high risk groups.. otherwise the only use is to raise awareness of future signs of ill health.



We are now going along the trail of preventative medicines .. such as statins when the proper and only real ‘prescription’ is an adoption of a more balanced and healthier diet maybe with evidence based knowledge of how for example the diet pattern in Southern Italy results in much lower incidence of CHD.



We do not support and coordinate the voluntary sector who are absolutely vital to the sustainable care of the vulnerable, elderly and those convalescing after recovering from illness or supporting with dignity those who are terminally ill.



We must save our NHS from itself becoming terminally ill and drifting into a privatised service where the size of your bank balance determines the quality and speed of access for treatment of your illness.