Monday musings
Posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 at 5:56pm
4 responses
It’s been a glorious, sunny day today and I’m glad on a day like this that I could be out and about, and not stuck indoors! In the morning I visited the Tenovus mobile Cancer support unit that was situated for the day in Bridgend Sainsbury’s car park. It is the first holistic mobile unit in the UK that can deliver chemotherapy, as well as provide practical and emotional support for cancer patients and their carers. There will be specialist Cancer Support Teams and nurses from Velindre Hospital delivering treatment and information on support services- what benefits patients can claim, and so on. It travels to locations throughout Wales, and they have seen 12 patients a day so far in Bridgend, Merthyr and Cwmbran. You can find out more by going to www.tenovus.org.uk
I also carried out street surgeries in Port Talbot today. I do this every Monday and Friday in different areas to try and get a picture of what is happening locally, and whether people have any concerns about policies or strategies on a Council, Assembly or Westminster level. The talk of the town was, unsurprisingly, MP expenses. Some people who came to the doorstep were furious with some of the claims that had been made. There’s no denying that people are disillusioned with politics as a result of the list of expenses leaked to the Daily Telegraph, and that things have to change fast if we want to restore faith in the political process.
The sooner the system is changed the better, but it doesn’t excuse actions like ‘flipping’ whereby some MPs have been changing the status of their second homes for various reasons, nor does it excuse buying products which are blatantly not for personal usage! I am quite sure that they were aware of what they were doing at the time of purchase…
Some politicians have been pushing their luck with claims and have unfortunately been clouding the perception of those MPs who have had decent claims. We all know that the Assembly has commissioned an Independent review on the matter, but perhaps this would be a good issue to trial citizen assemblies in Wales? It seems that people have a strong opinion on how the system should work, so why not provide them with that bottom up opportunity to say how it could be done differently, and better?
I’m off to my Orchestra rehearsal soon. Concert tomorrow night in St David’s Church Neath, 7pm if you fancy it.
