Mid-term blues hit early

With open hostility in the ruling group surrounding positions and the number of officer departures I suspect the hand-quivering clustershambolic leadership of Chambers and Jarrett must be on the close.

All eyes for this week will be on Full Council on Thursday night where we will finally get a confirmation on the Mayor and Deputy Mayor and on the discussion around member allowances. 

Medway Labour of course had a consistent policy on both these issues last year which we believed reflected the public interest; namely a return to the fair points-based system around mayoralty selection, which takes the pathetic partisanship (observed in the Conservative Group this year) out of the Queen's appointed representative for Medway; and a cut of the Conservative party chairman & deputy chairman perks who we believe are 'lapping the cream' of public money whilst the majority of Medway taxpayers continue to pay huge sums of Council tax for poor political leadership.

It is of course good to note that members will be taking a pay cut this year, as per the recommendations of the independent panel, but this does not go far enough in my mind and what we need is specific focus on those mid-level takers of public money.

We do not need so many Tories on the payroll at Gun Wharf. 

The other points to note from the meeting come from the public and member questions for the evening. A number of noticeable themes emerge

The first is that the Tory attempt to introduce a 'fake' Freedom Pass, as promised in their local manifesto in 2011, has clearly backfired badly. The Tories have a terrible record on the Freedom Pass having spent most of 2010 opposing any form of public subsidy for bus travel for young people because of cost, seemingly taken out of a hat, and pubicly lambasting the opposition Labour Party for proposing the idea. In 2011, the Tories took the Freedom Pass and audaciously added it to their local manifesto and claimed Labour were opposed; but the budget in 2011/12 only allocated a pathetic sum to the scheme, and so Labour called the Tory rat out. 

Rightly so, as we now have a scheme which to huge numbers of parents is woefully substandard; and I expect many more will continue to articulate not only the rank Conservative hypocrisy but also why we continue to suffer a worse deal then our neighbours in Gravesham, Sittingbourne and Maidstone who have a Conservative-controlled County Council.

Roads and re-surfacing also make an appearance with the announced overspend of £1.2m on the Stoke Crossing, dubbed the 'Bridge to Nowhere' by the press. With Tory-leaning Parish Chairman and Councillor's citing the money could have been better spent elsewhere, and the public outraged at the scale of spend whilst residential road budgets are seemingly 'gerrymandered' into Tory wards with a number of roads slipping budget cycles, this will prove controvertial.  We all know the Tories have spent millions on road schemes in Chatham no one voted for or wanted, and that have gone millions overbudget; taking money from what could have been spent on residential roads. 

Tories will no doubt spread the blame; who will it be this month... I cant wait. 

A number of other questions relate to the botched care home closures and privatisations which have been totally mishandled by the administration, and which descended into a farce, when the Council refused to extend the consultation on a proposal from Medway Health to take on the closing Balfour Centre. The Tories also ignored local campaigns calling for a limited partnership and stakeholder co-operative model of management favouring overt privatisation. We now go into the future with no public care home provision as a number of privately-owned homes continue to fail CQC reviews. 

The way in which the cabinet managed the Balfour process was nothing short of incompetent; as standard from Medway Tories. 

Marlowe Park and the campaign by Cllr Igwe to safeguard this facility is also on the table; Cllr Igwe led the campaign and called-in the manner in which the Medway PCT communicated and acted. 

Lastly the Community Safety Plan is due to be discussed; now that Cllr OBrien has returned from his 'fact-finding' tour of Kent it is interesting to note the precious little change in the document that all these visits were apparently tasked. Given Medway has seen a massive reduction in crime from 1997-2010 there will surely be commentary around the cuts to PCSOs, cuts to Police numbers and the real concern that opportunistic theft and crime is increasing across our towns. We may also get an announcement on whether our multitiled Cllr Mike will be standing for Police Commissioner on the back of his record as Medway CSP Chair. Then again; we may not.

A busy night ahead. 

Save Marlowe Park

A number of Labour activists out today in Strood South to campaign to safeguard the Marlowe Park GP surgery in Strood.

This has been a badly handled affair by the Primary Care Trust; negotiations which have clearly failed have not been communicated to Councillor's across all political groups which represent the ward.

I can tell the PCT now that if you expect local political parties to roll over and swallow a closure of a GP surgery in Strood and the fall-out of 3,000 patients transferring to other, already crowded, GP facilities across Rochester & Strood then you are sadly and gravely mistaken.

The campaign to safeguard this facility is very much established on the ground and people will not accept poorly communicated statements and information after the fact.

The doorstep today was very receptive to our petition which was managed by activists Mark Jones and Robert Heathfield, but this was in part due to the ground-work of the Conservative opposition who had pre-leafletted, which gave us a justification for knocking and speaking to people and collecting signatures.

Cllr Igwe, despite having a young baby (less then 6 months old) and a family he is with energy and vigour. Having a child of such an age can be extremely tiring; as any dad can tell you...

Well done Isaac and keep up the good work.

Save Marlowe Park; Please Sign!!

Please sign this petition to persuade the Medway NHS Trust to award the Marlowe Park Medical Centre the much needed stability it needs and listen to patients.

Marlowe Park Medical centre faces closure on the 31st of March with the NHS Trust now informing people they intend to disperse the list as the GP hasn't signed the Contract. This is untrue as the GP has accepted a cut of almost £30,000 for the next year to £196,000 per annum making this the most poorly funded APMS Practice in Medway. For comparison - Walderslade DMC is paid £580,000 for 1500 patients, College Health in Boots Chatham £487000 for 2000 patients, DMC Gillingham £2.5 million for the same amount of patients as we have!!

Marlowe Park is a multilingual practice catering to the highest percentage of Learning disability patients according to list size and the highest eastern european population concentration for any Practice saving the Council tens of thousand in interpretor fees.It has been one of the fastest growing Surgeries with an increase in list size to 3500 from 2800 in the past 18 months and the highest jump in quality indicators for any Practice in Medway.

We have very high patient satsfaction levels and the Community needs this Medical Centre to function.

This Practice needs a stable GMS Contract which will ensure continuity. We were promised a tender vide letter dated 17th of June 2011 when given a 9 month interim Contract.

The Trust did not do the tender and in recent months can't make up its mind by first offering a 3 month extension, then a 3 year Contract, then an 18 month and when we protested that this finishes in mid financial year a final offer of a 12 months Contract.

This has been accepted by us and now we have been informed that the Practice list will be dispersed to nearby Practices the nearest being a mile away in a hilly area. No consideration has been given to patients or patient care.

Please sign now