Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

CARERS WEEKS

I spoke at a special service at Exeter Cathedral on Monday, celebrating the work of some of Devon’s 74,000 carers. We enjoyed the raucous singing and percussion of enthusiastic young people from some of the county’s special schools and heard testimony from unsung heroes who care for sons and daughters or parents around the clock. It was deeply moving and motivating. I rang Jan from the station, still all churned up, and said that if I ever complained about my lot in life again she was to take me out in the field and shoot me. She agreed surprisingly willingly.

One poem came anonymously from North Devon about how that person was caring for her dad who had Alzheimer’s disease, all the time wondering when her own life was going to start; and would she be too old? Two million people countrywide have been caring pretty well full time for a family member for over ten years.

It is necessary that we care for the people within our own family units who need special help. The state simply could not afford to do it, as the value of carer’s work is estimated at £57 billion per year, if the tax payer was footing the bill. Blood is thicker than water and looking out for one another in good times and bad is what we sign up to in marriage and when we have children. It is pointless to ask “why me?” when things go wrong in the life of a loved one. We all know that life can be so random – bad things happen to good people.

But the lack of support that carer’s get from the rest of us through the agencies that are there to provide help is a silent scandal. Imagine caring for a severely disabled child every hour of every day and not even being able to go to the toilet alone, or get a night off to chill out, or take your other children to the cinema. We have to provide better short breaks for these heroes, many of whom are at breaking point. Future generations will look back aghast at how we failed to care for the carers.

Things are moving. The government has unveiled a very welcome package of extra cash recently to help provide respite care. There is welcome momentum within the corridors of power on this subject, not before time. More is needed.

posted by Nigel on Monday, June 18, 2007

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

GRAMMAR SCHOOLS

We have 5 excellent secondary schools in this constituency, and soon a decision will be made about a new one at Sherford. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting it should be a grammar school.
I strongly support the three excellent grammar schools in Plymouth and would die in a ditch for them to be retained and for them to be encouraged to thrive. They sit very happily alongside the comprehensive system we have in Devon and Plymouth and give parents a further layer of choice. The 3 selective schools also have the distinctiveness of being single sex, which, call me old-fashioned, still has some advantages, especially for girls. They have an academic focus, and for the right child, can be a catapult to a high flying future. I know from my own daughter’s time at Plymouth High that pupils come from all backgrounds.

So the recent debate in my own party has been relevant for me locally. It has been a storm in a teacup because nobody in their right minds thinks a future Blue government would close existing grammar schools and only a fool thinks we should go back to a system of winner takes all selection at eleven. I and 4 of my brothers went to grammar school, the remaining brother went to a secondary modern. It took him a long time to get over that kick in the teeth, the last thing you need on the edge of adolescence. My party’s support for our existing grammar schools should have been made clearer sooner in this unfortunate debate.

The real focus should be on raising standards for all our young people. I visited a secondary school in the west of the city a couple of years ago and it was like going to a different planet. We are missing a trick here to lift the horizons of and provide escape routes for the next generation from homes where parents don’t care.

The best teachers should be better incentivised to teach in the most challenging schools; we should encourage other providers of education to step forward – all under the watchful eye of Ofsted, of course; firm discipline needs to be rediscovered for the hard nuts and we have to find the right way of intervening in the lives of very young children so obviously going off the rails;. But whatever we do about our failing schools, grammar schools are here to stay.

posted by Nigel on Friday, June 15, 2007

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

DOWN-SIZE

I sat in on the opening session of a Plympton school get together last Friday where pupils from all schools were being consulted on how the local education system could be extended to make their lives better. This is part of a government drive to introduce earlier starts, breakfast clubs, after school activities, holiday and weekend cover; all designed to extend the school day to care for children while parents bend their backs to put in those extra hours that modern life demands. On the surface, all very laudable – to give families what they seem to want, the freedom to work longer hours. The state now seems to think it its duty to provide wrap around cover for its citizens, irrespective of how we choose to live.

It put me to thinking: where will this all end? If you build more roads, more cars instantly appear to produce gridlock, so you keep building more until the land runs out. Better to have built more railways surely? If you put in place more school provision, more families will naturally take advantage of it, work longer hours and have even less contact time with their offspring. What will be the implications of that for these hard-pressed families, especially the children?

Are we not in danger of simply encouraging people to propel themselves even faster around the hamster wheel? Can it actually all be done without sacrificing the things that really matter: time, relationships, family, those special moments, an appreciation of the beauty of our planet?
The debate on global warming and the focus on reducing our carbon emissions gives us all an opportunity to take an even more profound look at the way we are living our modern lives. Maybe it is not enough to change our light bulbs to low energy ones, recycle all of our rubbish (Jan even seems to be washing out dog food tins in our house (why?)) and downsize the car. Perhaps it is time for every family to examine our lifestyle to explore whether we have got the balance quite right between work and home, the acquisition of material things versus an appreciation of deeper qualities.Will we be the first generation for centuries that has not passed on a better world to our children? The consumer-driven, helter-skelter lifestyle bubble must surely burst at some stage, perhaps when the next recession strikes. But who can turn around this super-tanker?

posted by Nigel on Monday, June 04, 2007

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Borrow a semi-automatic weapon from your local shooting club, and insert magazine of bullets. Find a public place, possibly the middle of Ridgeway or Broadway shopping centre, gather a crowd around you and the local press, aim the gun at your right foot and slowly squeeze the trigger and keep it pressed. That’s one way to do it. The other way to shoot yourself in the foot is to try and pass a bill at Westminster to exclude your own profession, but nobody else, from the Freedom of Information Act!

I am so cross about the Private Member’s Bill that a handful of colleagues have driven through Westminster whilst most of us were in our constituencies taking part in the usual round of Friday activities, which sought to exclude MPs from the FIA.

There is certainly a need to ensure confidentiality of information given to us by our constituents who seek help with all kinds of sensitive issues. But I am unaware of any threat to that relationship of confidentiality since the FIA came into force. So I do not see the menace that this new bill is designed to correct.

What I do know is that the impression has now been created that the real reason for doing this is to prevent the public from knowing about MP’s expenses, which is utter rubbish because we all now accept that the amount we can claim to pay staff and travel costs for getting to Westminster and back every week will be published annually. We expect and receive a day of silliness from the press, somehow managing to imply that this is for our personal benefit, which is also false. But the hoo-hah lasts a day at most and the world moves on. I cannot see the problem.
But the danger of the current moves is far worse. We already suffer a poor reputation in the eyes of the public, and the perception flowing from this ill-judged measure can only make things worse. The BBC have reported this in a ludicrous way (twice) as a cynical plot to place ourselves outside the law, asking the question: what law will MPs exclude themselves from next? This is well over the top, but should have been expected and some of it will stick. Another self-inflicted wound.

So I am totally against it: I hope that it will be over-turned in the Lords and never becomes law.

posted by Nigel on Monday, June 04, 2007