Gary's views

LOCAL IS BEAUTIFUL

Last Friday I was briefed by a dispensing surgery in the constituency that could be under threat if some of the rules relating to pharmacies are changed following a recent government white paper. It is a high quality practice giving medical service to its community with the added bonus that local patients can get their prescriptions on the spot. Patients build up a relationship with their GPs and chemists and nobody has to travel very far. The pharmacy is a crucial part of making the practice viable and if it were to close, so would the practice. The world would not come to an end if the practice were to close and people had to travel 3 miles to the next one, but why let it happen?

The pressure for change is coming from the large pharmacy chains that want to rip up the rule book and ply their trade anywhere and everywhere. I accept that this was a momentum that began in the eighties and much of it brought good outcomes, but this trend may have gone too far.

Perhaps it is time for a pendulum swing, doing more to protect local mechanisms that serve the community, rather than allowing the onward march of market forces to dominate. If local is best, if it works, if it is value for money, if it is best for the community, why change it?

There was never a golden age and I realise you can never put the clocks back, but if we are going to learn anything from the turmoil of the past few months, surely it is that large international organisations, constantly pandering to short term shareholder pressure to make dividends, do not always know best or do right. If we could have our time over would we have allowed high street banks to become massive investment banks dabbling in all kinds of swanky high risk financial products? I don’t think so. The essence of banking is surely a business in which we can place our savings and borrow money through people we know and trust. I am not sure whether we can ever get that back, especially in the Internet age, but we certainly should fight to cling onto other local organisations that serve the community.

As we struggle through the next few difficult economic years, hopefully we will have learned lessons about what is best for our country and proceed with more wisdom.

DEBT

I was hopeless at physics (and all science) at school partly because the teacher was called Mr Honeybun which we all seemed to think was hilarious, but I can remember one maxim very well: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

I have no idea what it means in terms of its scientific application, but it is a useful phrase in understanding the development of society.

After the corruption and poverty of Georgian Britain came the strictures and social reform of the Victorian Age; after the austerity of the post war years came the excesses of the swinging sixties. You get the picture, an equal and opposite reaction to what had gone before. Things do not flow in a straight line; there is an action and then a reaction and then a further reaction to that and so on.

We are living through the fag end of a generation of spiralling personal debt, where we have all been encouraged to borrow and spend, because the value of our house will always go up, because there will be no more boom and bust, because tomorrow is another day, because we deserve it!  Banks have begged us to take out more credit; take the waiting out of wanting, use your flexible friend. And we have responded with gusto, personal debt in the UK now standing at an all time high. The pain of these decisions will be felt by many people over the next few years, and we need to support those who are suffering.

But some of us are already thinking what comes next. Could we now see a new age of greater financial responsibility? We certainly need to. But I hope it goes further than that. Irresponsibility in financial matters has spilt over into a reckless attitude in many other areas as reflected by anti-social behaviour and alcoholic excesses. Perhaps the reaction to the events of the past decade or two will usher in a full-scale rethink of what really matters in society; leading to a re-embracing of timeless values that will bring real contentment to people’s lives: living within our means, respect for each other, stable families, involvement in community and so on.

It will take a big shock to challenge the prevailing culture of the past few years, much of which is media driven. Well that’s OK, because unless I am very much mistaken, a big shock is exactly what is coming.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING

In all the challenges facing our economy, we must not forget the plight of those much worse off than most of us. The select committee on which I serve at Westminster is looking into human trafficking and the statistics are appalling.

Because it is such a hidden crime, nobody knows how many people are trafficked into Western European countries, but the best estimates are about 800,000 people a year, (Wembley stadium filled up ten times over) mainly women and children. Some end up as domestic servants working for wealthy families in large cities virtually treated as slaves; many end up working on the land or in sweatshops as illegal labourers; many women and children are forced into the sex industry against their will, and many children are forced to commit crimes, like pick pocketing, for their pimps. Typically they are lured away from their impoverished villages on the promise of some legitimate job in the west and then, in transit, their identity and travel papers are taken away from them rendering them illegal migrants who are then terrorised into doing what the gang masters say. We have not really moved on much since Dickensian times have we?

Some of the stories we have heard and the people we have met makes your blood run cold. The most common countries of origin are Bulgaria and Romania within the EU and Russia, the Ukraine and Nigeria outside. The people who carry out this illegal trade in human beings come in all shapes and sizes but many are ruthless and highly organised international gangs.

We are only slowly waking up to the extent of this evil trade and are trying through our own police forces and Europol to stem the flow. At the moment, these crimes are still on the increase and we are scratching the surface. One expert described this activity to us this week as a low risk high profit crime. Only a few each year are caught and prosecuted.

Why is it so lucrative for the traffickers to bring girls and children over here and dragoon them into the sex industry? Because we allow that ancient trade to take place under our noses without understanding that many of the participants are pressed into it against their will. One measure we need to look further into is the flagrant advertising of these sordid services which help to fuel demand, something that could and should easily be changed.

RECESSION

There is never a good time for a recession, but for Plymouth and its travel to work area, the forthcoming economic down turn could not have come at a worse time. We were on the brink of transforming our sleepy city, for so many years falling short of its true potential, into a vibrant twenty first century place to live. Major new developments, both residential and commercial, were in the pipeline for the city centre, the waterfront and the massive new area for development around Millbay. A coherent growth strategy was in place. Whether these advances will now happen in the next few years is a moot point. So once again, a nasty economic turn down has pulled the rug from under our feet with the job half done.

There have been some developments completed and we should be grateful for that. The Drake Circus shopping centre seems to be holding up well, and some of the Sutton harbour improvement has been striking. But the really tall buildings that were going to transform our city skyline have not made it off the architects’ drawing board and the prospects in the next few years look bleak.

Back at Westminster this week, the atmosphere is as gloomy as I have ever known it. It is clear that something unpleasant has landed in our midst, but nobody knows just how destructive this monster will turn out to be. What we do know is that no country is immune and it is crucial that all major governments act together where possible.

I hope that the Bank of England will show vision and leadership at this time. The enemy is no longer inflation. The recent price rises of food and energy will almost certainly have worked their way through the system by next spring. The enemy is a total collapse of the economy and we need significantly lower interest rates to kick start confidence.

Those of us over 50 have been through at least three recessions and we know that belt-tightening is the order of the day. We know we will come out of the other side. We also know that no cloud is without a sliver lining and tough times provoke opportunities for life adjustments of all kinds. It may come as a greater shock to those who have entered adulthood in the last few years and who have been repeatedly told that there will be no more boom and bust.

MULTICULTURALSIM

We are living at a time when the pendulum is swinging decisively against the kind of pap multicultural claptrap that we have had to endure for a generation. It was done for the best of reasons of course: to make everybody feel welcome here, a very British characteristic.

Now senior politicians on all sides agree that although diversity matters and different cultures should be respected, it is crucial that anybody coming to our shores to live has to integrate. Multi-faith, yes, people must be free to embrace whichever religion they like; multi-cultural, no – it is time to rediscover a rich British culture. Many parts of the country are simply pockets of other nations and this is no longer acceptable.

The momentum now is towards integration, something welcomed by many of the second and thirds generations of immigrants who yearn to be fully British.

It is not too late to recapture a sense of a common culture with shared values. I suggest three things that we must now do.

First, we must pull stumps on non-EU immigration for a while and allow the country to draw breath. Reports of population growth to 80 million by 2050 are terrifying. The influx of so many migrants – from whatever background, coupled with a lack of integration has caused many communities to experience social tensions that now need time to heal.

Second, we must ensure that anybody seeking to live here is encouraged to learn the language and integrate. This is now the policy of the government and the next government is likely to go even further. I am against all of the money currently being spent by local authorities to distribute so much literature in foreign tongues – people living here must learn the lingo.

Third we must treat all those living here equally when applying the law and no longer make excuses for their own culture and background. The recent spate of Vietnamese citizens renting property in Plymouth to turn them into indoor factories for cannabis production is an illustration. This is happening all over the country. Maybe they do this in Vietnam, I have no idea, but it is not acceptable over here and I hope anybody found guilty will be dealt with decisively (and then deported).

History does not run in a straight line, there has always been an ebb and flow. The new current is now tugging us towards a fresh understanding of British-ness – and not before time!