Tendring Topics…………….on Line
Realize Health Ltd rides again!
Do you remember Realize Health Ltd? They are the commercial firm, in which the North-east Essex Primary Care Trust is a partner, (I am convinced a junior partner) that is now responsible for new hospital provision and the delivery and maintenance of health care within the Colchester and Tendring Districts.
They, you may recall, are the firm that was responsible for the design and construction of the new Fryatt Memorial Hospital in Dovercourt, with its kitchen unfit for its purpose and its floors buckling within two years of being laid! They also had the brilliant idea of replacing existing doctors' surgeries in Holland-on-Sea and Great Clacton with a large 'super-clinic' in Kennedy Way half way between the two communities. This would have been positioned at the summit of a slope, on a site equally inconvenient for the greater part of the residents of both Great Clacton and Holland, and near a main road along which there is currently no bus route!
Belatedly Realize Health Ltd has come to appreciate, what everybody living locally knew from the very beginning; that the residents of Great Clacton and Holland-on-Sea were two quite separate communities separated from each other geographically, each of which needed at least one centrally situated medical centre or doctors' surgery (call it what you will!) to meet its needs.
They have scrapped the idea of a super-clinic at Kennedy Way serving both Holland and Great Clacton and, as far as Holland-on-Sea is concerned, are now proposing to close the present unsatisfactory Frinton Road Medical Centre and replace it with a new one built on the present Brighton Road Car Park. Local people are a good deal less than happy with the idea. They point out that the present premises, however inadequate, are at least central to Holland-on-Sea and easily accessible by public transport. This is more than can be said for Brighton Road Car Park at the far end (on a street map, near the bottom right-hand corner) of the seaside town. Probably that is why it is a car park that Tendring Council is happy to dispose of!
At a public meeting held to discuss the options, residents said that the Ipswich Road Car Park, beside the main Frinton Road, was more central, more accessible and much to be preferred as a medical centre site. This though, has been ruled out, because Realize Health Ltd has conducted research into the possibility and decided that 'it is too small for our needs'. Their needs? All Holland residents want is a good, roomy medical centre, possibly for several doctors; not a new hospital, or even a polyclinic!
There is a ray of hope. Project manager Tonia Parsons told protestors that they would be happy to look at any evidence to support the view that Realize Health's judgement was wrong. The consultation period ends on 31st August so – keep the protest going!
What of the residents of Great Clacton? The site of their new medical centre to replace surgeries in North Road and Epping Close is still in Kennedy Road – once again, on a street map in the bottom right hand corner of a much larger area than that of Holland-on-Sea. I haven't yet heard of local reaction there but I think it unlikely that it will be enthusiastic. Since public car parks seem to be popular as possible locations, I would suggest that either the St. John's Road Car Park (near Elm Grove) or the car park behind the arcade of shops in North Road, could prove much more suitable for a medical centre than Realize Health's proposed site in Kennedy Way.
………………………………..
'Bobbies on the Beat!'
It was good to learn that Essex's Chief Constable is proposing to put an extra five hundred police officers 'on the streets' of our county to deal with nuisances, criminality and disorder as well as an extra one hundred specialist officers to combat terrorism.
This is in response to a continuing public demand for more 'bobbies on the beat'. I have heard it suggested that regular patrolling is a waste of valuable resources because the chances of a police officer actually encountering an act of criminality while on the beat is negligible. Exactly so, but while the sight of a policeman or woman may not deter an armed bank robber setting out on a nefarious enterprise, it will make a vandal, a drug dealer, a pick-pocket, an apparently threatening group of yobs, a mugger or a drunken hooligan think twice before breaking the law. The value of on-the-beat police officers lies not in the number of arrests that they may make, but in their deterrent effect on the perpetrators of small crimes and nuisances. It is regular encounter with minor acts of criminality of this kind that law-abiding members of the public find hard to endure.
How are the extra police to be paid? The Chief Constable expects to have to find an extra £27 million on top of the £300 million a year that the force already costs. This, so it is claimed, will not be obtained by an increased police precept on the council tax that we already pay to Tendring and other Essex councils , but by selling such services as IT and training, and sharing resources such as the police helicopter with other forces, and renting out police premises. Let's hope that this will do the trick.
Perhaps we shouldn't get too excited at the prospect of more police on our streets. Five hundred seems an awful lot, and so it is. Essex though, is a big county and I am sure that there are areas where they have a greater problem with criminality than we have in the county's north-eastern corner..
However, it's nice to find a top official who doesn't just listen to complaints (saying complacently, 'They're a useful safety valve!') but actually takes action to remove their cause.
………………………………..
MP's Pay
Most of us ordinary folk feel, I think, that our members of Parliament are pretty adequately paid. Thousands of hard-working people doing important jobs would be pleased to get half as much. We were quite pleased gherefore when we learned that MPs had voted themselves a modest 2.25 percent pay rise which, like the pay rises of many other public servants, is below the current level of inflation. They also agreed that future rises should be linked to those of other well-paid public-sector workers.
I am sorry though that at the same time, they voted to allow themselves up to £24,000 a year, 'for expenses' and decided that money so claimed should not be subject to external audit.
I don't take quite as harsh a view as our MP Mr Douglas Carswell. He declined to vote on the issue, saying that, 'we need to have a system so that if MPs want to buy things they pay for them out of their salaries and stop buying them on these expenses at the cost of ratepayers'. That's what the rest of us have to do, of course. However I can see that most MPs need a 'second home' reasonably near Westminster as well as one in their constituencies. Obtaining, furnishing and maintaining such a home obviously costs money and it does seem reasonable to me, if not to Mr Carswell, that MPs should have help with this.
I do feel though that every penny of such 'expenses' should be declared, independently audited and made available to the press and public. One argument put forward to oppose this is that it would reveal the addresses of MPs' second homes, which would present a security risk. I don't think that any determined criminal or terrorist who wanted to find the address of an MP's second home would have difficulty in doing so now. Why not follow them to their destination when they leave the House? Private investigators do that kind of thing all the time. So, no doubt, could criminals. In any case it would surely be possible to publish all the expenses without revealing the addresses to which they refer.
Mr Bernard Jenkin another Conservative MP, whose constituency takes in part of the Tendring District, appears to take a different view from his colleague. He voted for the recommendation of the independent commission on MPs' pay, for a larger increase of 4.55 percent this year. He is reported as saying, 'If an independent body believes that there should be an increase I think it is bad for the quality of future parliamentarians if you don't have the courage to pay what is recommended'.
Public service workers will hope that he will take a similar strong line if independent enquiries into their pay result in similar above-inflation recommendations!
………………………………..
SATS examinations
There has been something of a furore about this year's SATS examinations; not about the exams themselves but about the marking of the exam papers. Some, having been collected, have simply not been returned. Others, particularly it seems in the Eastern Region, have come back exactly as they were sent out - unread and unmarked.
I had, in my innocence, imagined that these exams were marked by newly retired school teachers or, in their spare time, by working teachers or university lecturers as a useful additional source of income. The examiners, I felt sure, would have had their qualifications and references thoroughly checked before being employed by the Department of Education for that purpose.
I should have known better. New Labour has privatised examination marking, no doubt in order to bring 'some of the energy and efficiency of private enterprise into our education system'. The present 'marking contractors' are ETS Europe, the European arm of ETS Global BV, an international corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, providing a worldwide network of educational services, with clients in 180 countries.
I suppose that I am simply being xenophobic in feeling a little unease at the thought that a foreign based firm is quite so deeply involved with the education of British children. If only that base had been in Brussels instead of Princeton I am sure that UKIP and much of the tabloid press would have beeen sharing my unease!
I suppose, mind you that in true colonial style, the top executives of ETS are content to leave the somewhat tedious business of reading and marking examination papers to native labour. They will be concentrating on administration, supervision (but they have slipped up a little on that this year!) and, of course, banking the proceeds.
.......................
No comments:
Post a Comment