Maidstone Weald Labour Party

As part of the debate please find the topic below. Please comment.

It is scandalous that one in three children live in poverty in the UK.
The Government has set a target of halving child poverty by 2010. As a
member of the Campaign to End Child Poverty, Shelter is supporting a
call for the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, to prioritise the issue in
his budget. Email Alistair Darling MP

and find out more about Shelter's involvement with End Child Poverty.
http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/index.html

# posted by Labour : Friday, October 26, 2007  1 comments

In order to use the interregnum between now and the General Election and the intervening local government elections too, as well as to ensure that you are well briefed to enter the final contest in 2009ish it would be desirable that news, opinions, facts specifically about our Constituency are revealed, for use in argument, propaganda, newsletters, manifesto; we have this new medium of being able to communicate with so many of our members, search in the remotest places and seek out those matters which effect the everyday life of and which correspond to the desires of our constituents. We know by extensive experience that few people are likely to, or often able to, attend 'meetings';
although we may wish to gather much information through door knocking and door stepping and much of that will always be good if only to present our face to our constituents; yet we have the means in this medium (web) to ensure that we garner information on which to base our local policies and reinforce the information we may get from the centre of the party.

Once upon a time we had reporting to local party meetings numbers of Trade Union delegates, (and it was the TUs which originally formed the backbone of the Party) alas now not very much in evidence; we had a youth section, and a women's section, alas defunct; there were activities between meetings ....other attractions have superseded them.
Because there is a need to be aware of those aspects of the politic agenda which have local relevance and be able to respond immediately and knowledgeably to critique of the other parties it would be helpful if we could, in an organised fashion, take on the task of being prepared by systematic reporting through e-mail and web in particular. The following is a list of the areas in which we could begin :
1. Public order - crime, justice and human rights. --For instance : Do we know how Maidstone compares with other towns - what is the state of anxiety in the town?

2. Governance - democracy/citizenship -For instance do we have a clear view of the advantages or otherwise of regionalism and all purpose Local Authorities?

3. Livelihoods - economy, business, transport - can we answer the questions on the numbers in employment, the extent of un and under-employment, in-work poverty, bankruptcies. Do we know the take-up/eligibility of free school meals in the local primary school near each of us - and how does it relate for instance to the current Shelter campaign about the one child in four in relative poverty and how is it in Maidstone?

4 Education and Training - there is much talk in the business pages of the KM and local papers of the difficulties in apprentices and training opportunities - do we know how that is affecting business as well as the young people of the Town?

5. Environment - global warming - are we up-to-date on the problems of the local incinerator and its future?

6. Health and social care - we are fortunate in that we have a number of specialists in these fields, but are we using their expertise for forming a policy locally?

7. Housing and Communities - we have a number of members who have been looking at the local scene and of course there are the Labour councillors who can inform us,

8. International matters - do we know how concerned local people are about the Iraq war, for instance? Are we aware of the world-wide hegemony of one state and the international competition for oil and energy products and the role of finance capitalism in this?

9. Migration and immigration - much is made of this subject in the local press - are the local people much concerned and to what extent is it real in our Town?

10. Taxes and public Finance - for instance is there any support locally for the proposals to tax land rather than the present local tax?

If we were to consider how to be best advised, say on a quarterly basis, on such issues as above, bearing in mind that no single individual can encompass the details of it and research all the local effects, we might look at the possibility of sharing the work between all and everyone of the members by asking them directly to take some responsibility for being Reporters (rapporteurs): that would involve actually asking all of them, first of all about their preferences and finally allocating areas of responsibility and times for reporting. It may well be a way of involving everyone ...............

Yrs Les Turner

“As a local GP, trust in the local hospital for the local community is essential. The events that have occurred since April 2004 have eroded that trust. I send my sincere condolences to those families who have lost relatives due to the events that have occurred.

The hospital is there for one purpose, for the patients. Over the past few years I have seen patients who will not go in to Maidstone Hospital or the Kent and Sussex due to worries about getting an infection. I’ve actually seen some of my patients fearful that they will not leave if they were to be admitted.

These events must never be repeated and building back the trust in the hospital is paramount. The hospitals’ doctors and nurses and staff work incredibly hard, and the management must take a leaf out of their book.

I welcome the resignation today of James Lee, who had been on the board since 2003. All the board members must be accountable for the events that have occurred That includes those that planned the departure of Rose Gibb who also had been on the board since 2003, before the publication of the Healthcare Commission report. I support the fact that her severance package has now rightly been stopped.”

Dr Rav Seeruthun has been selected as the Labour Party Candidate for Maidstone and the Weald for the next General Election.

Dr Rav Seeruthun is well known in the local community given his work as a General Practitioner and has lived in Maidstone for nearly ten years. He initially did his house jobs at Maidstone Hospital, and has also worked as a Casualty Officer in the Maidstone A+E department that is now under threat.

He says “We are not against change but these need to be made in the best interests of the patients. Having worked there and seen how busy the department is, it currently is madness to say that by downgrading the department lives will not be put at risk given the dreadful road links to Tunbridge Wells.”

As a GP he has worked in a number of local Practices including College Road, Holland Road, Lenham and Shepway.

He has also worked in the Kent and Sussex Hospital, Pembury Hospital and the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

Dr Rav also plays for Maidstone Hockey Club and has done so for the last seven years and has captained one of the youth development teams, he further comments “Maidstone Hockey Club is a great example of how a sports club can make a community come together and helps bring together a wide mixture of people from different backgrounds.”

He also delivered a well-received speech at last weeks Labour Party Conference and he received a resounding round of applause as he announced that he was the first Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Maidstone and the Weald from an ethnic background.

Leslie Turner from West Branch has pointed us in the direction of this article from the Guardian




By pandering to those who own their homes, politicians fuel a very damaging dependence

Adam Sampson
Friday October 12, 2007
The Guardian

Elections, even phoney ones, tempt politicians back on to safe turf. The past few days have signalled that the traditional electoral signifiers - crime, health, education - have been joined by another: home ownership. With homeowners in 70% of households, there is an inbuilt majority in favour of measures to protect their status. The political strength of pandering to this pressure group by promising cuts to tax on housing wealth - stamp duty, inheritance tax and capital gains tax - has been great enough to turn the polls, delay an election and force last-minute changes to Labour's pre-budget report.Worship at the altar of home ownership is clearly good politics, but is it good policy? There are reasons to believe so. Surveys show that 84% of people want to own a home in the next 10 years. Ownership creates stability, improves behaviour. It is lauded as a solution to declining neighbourhoods and estates - entice homeowners and you create a critical mass with an interest in investing in a community's future.
But is the consensus in favour of ownership right? Ownership is not an unmixed blessing: many poorer owners find themselves with an asset but no income to maintain it, and the cost of getting into the market is spiralling.

Nor is it necessarily in society's interests to encourage ownership: a Bank of England adviser pointed out that countries with higher levels of ownership tend to have higher rates of unemployment because of the adverse impact of ownership on labour mobility. It is also worth questioning what impact the stampede of capital into bricks and mortar has on the wider economy: with British mortgage debt already more than £1 trillion, is it wise to encourage more borrowing to invest in something as economically unproductive as houses?

The truth is that the virtues of - and desire for - ownership have been oversold. We have confused the advantages that come from home ownership with the desire for wealth acquisition. People want to buy because they see it as the quickest and surest way to get rich: wealth acquisition is far more commonly cited in surveys of aspirant owners than security or status. Given three decades of vertiginous house-price inflation, that is no surprise. Housing has been a far safer investment bet for many than pensions or the stock market.

But politicians may be taking too short-term a view. Things may look different to voters if prices go down, and the creaking in the mortgage market signalled by the Northern Rock fiasco swells into a fullblown repossessions crisis. The rush to ownership has, moreover, artificially inflated house prices, fuelled by cheap borrowing, and created massive divides: housing now accounts for more of the nation's wealth than anything else, and that wealth is increasingly in the hands of older people, with under-35s locked out unless their parents recycle some of their own housing wealth. The UK economy is dangerously dependent on housing: the decade of growth has arguably been sustained by the feelgood factor created by rising housing wealth. No one can look at the impact on the US economy of the housing crash without worrying how a similar downturn would play out here.

It is time to reassess the push for ownership. The recent recognition by Labour that house-price inflation has largely been caused by undersupply is very welcome, as is its commitment to increased housebuilding. But we should also think about taking the heat out of the housing market by weakening the link between ownership and wealth acquisition. However, the inheritance tax challenge laid down by George Osborne and picked up by Alistair Darling will only strengthen that link. When one adds the - apparently inadvertent - effect of the reduction of the capital gains tax rate on second-home ownership and buy-to-let, you have fuel for a sharp increase in demand.

What we have is a classic disjunction between two policies, housing and taxation. Promoting affordable housing means making it more difficult to gain wealth by investment in home ownership. It means increasing taxation on the increase in the capital value of homes, not reducing it. It means reviewing the council tax system or examining the possibility of a land tax. It means using inheritance tax to reduce the growing wealth divide.

And this goes far beyond mere policy. Home ownership is driving a return to wealth disparities that we have not seen since the Victorian era. Whereas the space that rich people occupy is increasing, the poor are living more cramped lives. And the rise in house prices is reducing social and geographical mobility, with people far less able to move from the north to the south or from poorer areas to richer ones.

Resisting pressure from any interest group as powerful as homeowners is difficult for governments in normal times. In the febrile political atmosphere of the past few weeks, it has proved impossible. It is vital that the government now uses the 18 months or so before election fever strikes again to take a more sober, considered look at how taxation can achieve the long-term aim of creating a more equal and successful (and decently housed) society