We tried to find the most significant facts in this long and shocking article, but really it must be read from beginning to end.
It exposes the disgraceful tactics that developers use to maximise their profits and minimise their obligations.
Be afraid, be VERY afraid:
Electoral Ommission
A really hard-hitting report about the failure of the Electoral Commission to get to grips with administrative bungling, fraud and blatent “looking the other way” to avoid responsibility. This 60 page report makes frightening reading about a subject we already find worrying enough with a Chief Executive who reports to himself not being at all worried that he lost 6,000 plus voters at the European Elections and finding Parliamentary scrutiny about it an irritation.
Fortunately, he does not have to worry about local scrutiny as the Overview and Scrutiny committee majority party members agreed to do what he said and refuse to deal with the matter – on the casting vote of its majority party Chairman.
Here is its introduction:
“This study reviews progress seven years after the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s 2007 Report and poses five main questions:
How inaccurate is the electoral register? To what extent is administrative failure responsible for any inaccuracies that occur?
What is the extent of voting fraud in the UK?
Has the Electoral Commission implemented the main recommendation of the
Committee on Standards in Public Life, that the Electoral Commission should focus on administering elections rather than policymaking and on promoting participation?
Are the delays being considered by the Electoral Commission in implementing individual voter registration and in introducing the requirement for voter identification at polling stations justified and acceptable?
Are measures being taken by the Cabinet Office to improve the accuracy of the electoral registers for the May 2015 General Election adequate?
The four main conclusions of this report are:
The administration of elections in the UK remains dangerously inefficient and seriously open to fraud.
There remains within the various bodies responsible for electoral administration a culture of complacency and denial.
The Electoral Commission has taken too few meaningful steps to address the recommendation of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that it focus on its regulatory role.
There is an emerging danger of partisan divisions between the two main political parties about whether or not to tolerate this situation. Too often, a bogus dilemma has been cited between the aims of encouraging voting by members of socially disadvantaged groups and guarding against fraud.
Too little has changed since the Committee on Standards in Public Life published its report into the Electoral Commission in January 2007.4 The main change between 2007 and 2014 is that the headline statistics show that the problems of inaccuracy in the electoral registers, already serious in 1981 and worse in 2007, have continued to amplify.
Good electoral administration is a regulatory matter requiring determined administrative action. Yet the bodies responsible for such administration – local government authorities, the Cabinet Office (currently responsible for electoral matters at central government level), and the Electoral Commission – have too often failed to act. It is too easy to blame sociological factors and voter disengagement for what are administrative shortcomings.”
Source: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/electoral%20omission.pdf
New Vision for NHS says small local hospitals will remain
Setting out his vision for the next five years, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said that the health service would have to break out of its “narrow confines” and promote healthy lifestyles.
Entirely new models of care, which could include GP surgeries clubbing together into federations to replace many services currently carried out in hospitals, will be set up across the country.
The report, Five Year Forward View, which has been produced by NHS England along with other national NHS bodies including Public Health England and the Care Quality Commission, throws down the gauntlet to the next government on the long-term future and funding of the NHS in England.
It sets out a wide-ranging vision for the future of the health service, with reforms in almost all key areas of care, For example on Hospitals:
Hospitals Care and surgery for many serious conditions – such as stroke, heart disease and some cancers – to be concentrated at specialist centres. However, small local hospitals will remain, and in some places could be taken over by new, GP-local care organisations led groups. Large hospitals in big cities could take on responsibility for leading community care and GP services in their area.
Read Full Article here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/firms-to-receive-nhs-cash-to-reward-staff-for-losing-weight-in-radical-model-for-health-care-9811782.html
Currently only highly localised infrastructure can be constructed when developments take place – they must be tightly linked to that development, though in some cases even that is not completed: developers strike down all affordable housing and don’t put in attenuation tanks unless threatened.
We have no local plan so we cannot charge developers “Community Infrastrructure Levy” – an extra charge based on the site and size of the development that, if in place, they could not avoid.
As a result, for example, East Devon has woeful public transport. This has bedn highlighted by the planned community hospital closures. How do you get from Ottery to Seaton or from Axminster to Budleigh Salterton without a car – if you do not qualify for ambulances? The answer is: you get a taxi there and back. Let’s say a very conservative £20 -£30 per round trip.
Most people as inpatients or visitors to our community hospitals are elderly. Many, if they can drive, cannot drive at night. What do they do if they cannot afford the luxury of taxis to visit relatives?
And let’s not get started about how we all get to Skypark!
Blame? Buck stopping? Our district council. More interested in helping developers to build more houses for more people needing more services, no interest at all in dealing with the fallout.
Our only remedy? The ballot box in May 2015.
East Devon Watch 