mudhook

Post offices

Forty nine of the 277 post offices in Cornwall have been listed for compulsory closure by Royal Mail. These are throughout Cornwall and in both rural and urban areas.

These forty nine are part of the national program to close 2500 of the current 14 000 branch post offices in Britain. The reasons for closure are fewer customers and pressure about competition and subsidies. Changes in the way we live mean that the post offices have lost many services: television licences are no longer sold in them, benefits and pensions are paid directly into bank accounts, car tax can be paid online. The government sees the financial losses and fewer customers – for which its own policies such as benefits payments are partly responsible - and its simple response is to cut back the service to try to stem the losses, a policy that might lead to even fewer customers and more and more closures. This simple response is what happened in the 1960s to branch railway lines.

People can tell Royal Mail what they think of the proposed closures: the consultation for Cornwall ends on September 1st.

Opposition to closures has to face economic realities. At present the post office in Britain makes a loss of £3.5 million a week. Does anyone think that can continue unabated? Can the present losses be borne? Can the losses be eradicated without closures? Can the number of users be increased significantly? Can the services available at the post office be increased? There is an important social question too: What will happen to those who cannot easily get to other post offices for their benefits and other cash, despite the Royal Mail’s assurances about the nearness of the alternative open post offices? Can the present services be provided conveniently and satisfactorily for present customers elsewhere as is done through Royal Mail’s “outreach” system? Indeed, is there a longterm future for discrete post offices at all?

An additional issue in branch closures is that many of the post offices are part of a shop: the loss of the post office part might mean the loss of its customers to the shop and the consequent closure of the shop.

Opposition has to come up with a coherent response and plan rather than plaintive wails, parochial complaints, and attempts at party political blame - and in the end closure.

You can read about the closures at the royalmail.com site here ; scroll down to Cornwall. The overall plan is given, along with some details of each branch listed for closure, including the local population and the weekly customer use which is challenging information.

Relocation of cancer surgery

At the same time as branch post offices closures in Cornwall are debated, the proposed move of some surgery from the RCHT hospital at Treliske, Truro to Derriford Hospital, Plymouth is under debate. The county council has called for further public consultation on the Cornwall primary care trust’s proposal to move surgery for upper gastrointestinal cancer (stomach and gullet cancer) to Derriford: treatment before and after surgery would continue at Treliske. The reason for the move is, in line with national guidelines, to improve outcomes for patients, that is to increase the survival chances of patients and reduce incidents of complications. In order to maintain their skills surgeons need sufficient patients to operate on and in the RCHT part of Cornwall only around twenty five patients a year have an operation to remove their tumour: note that only those twenty five would be affected by the proposed relocation. The arguments for the consolidation at Derriford are set out fully by Cornwall primary care trust here .

Although the move sounds reasonable on these grounds, Derriford is eighty miles from Penzance and that is a long, stressful – and expensive - journey for patients and their families: that is a reasonable caveat and objection and should be explored fully. We should hear from the patients who would be affected by the relocation.

The present reality is that nearly three in ten people in Cornwall - those in the eastern parts of the county - already look to Exeter or Plymouth for their hospital care. Health care should have no inappropriate county borders.

Change

Panta chorei said Heraclitus, according to Plato, but change is difficult for people, even change for the better and it is not certain to everyone in Cornwall that the post office and cancer surgery changes are for the better. There are no easy solutions to these two issues neither of which is about dismembering Cornwall. What is needed is neither sentimentalism nor parochialism but hard thinking about what is the best to help and serve people.

_______________________________________________________________

Panta chorei (everything changes, moves): Plato in his book Cratylus, referring to a saying of Heraclitus.

I shall post here continuing good news for Cornwall, developments which will positively help the people of Cornwall and the local economy and everyday lives. Everyone who wants the people of Cornwall to succeed in the modern world will welcome them. This post covers 2008 from January onwards. Vorsprung Cornwall 1 and 2 cover 2007.

* For several months people have been fund raising for a proposed children’s hospice in Cornwall: the nearest one at present is in north Devon. Now Howard and Shirley Rosevear have given land near St Austell as a site for the hospice. This will be for children from Cornwall and Plymouth.

You can read this heart-warming story here in the Western Morning News for 25 June. There are good people in Cornwall.

* June 2008. The government is contributing £34 million as part of transport improvements for the regeneration of the Redruth-Pool-Camborne area. In all the regeneration project is intended to produce 2300 new jobs and six hundred homes.
(Source: egov monitor Rosie Winterton announces £34 million transport improvements for Cornish regeneration area)

* May 2008. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published data for individual institutions about MRSA and C difficile deaths. The data comes with caveats. For the period 2002-06 the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust performed creditably in this difficult sphere: better than average for the listed institutions for C difficile and average for MRSA.

* 13 April 2008. There’s an upbeat article in the Observer describing Penzance as now the premier art place in Cornwall and a place to visit and enjoy. Perhaps Penzance is beginning to see a cultural and economic resurgence and outshine St Ives. (Source: Observer 13 April 2008 Penzance turns regeneration into a fine art)

* April. The county record office at Truro has begun to put its parish tithe maps and their accompanying apportionment/survey books onto compact disks. This will save the original printed maps from wear and tear, will make them available in a more user-friendly format than microfiche, and make the survey books more easily searched. Additionally, the record office is selling the disks (map and survey book) for £20. This is excellent news for everyone interested in local and family history in Cornwall.

* In Cornwall in 2007/08 £3.362 million was spent on warm front measures for vulnerable households. The details are here , look for DEP 2008-0881.xls for 17 March 2008.

* March 2008. Caradon district council is receiving £5.95 million for affordable housing from the first round of the national affordable housing program 2008/09. This will build ninety six houses in the district and create a care village for the elderly out of the the Passmore Edwards hospital in Liskeard. This is capital news and a significant help to people there in need of affordable housing. Rejoice. Read more here . (NOTE. The original article is no longer available online but the cached version is still available: type “caradon £6m affordable housing” into google and open the cached version.)

* There has been a significant improvement in waiting times for NHS hospital patients in Cornwall. The figures are subject to caveats and fluctuations but the waiting time for all specialties for patients still waiting for hospital admission in the period ending March 2007 in Cornwall and Isle of Scilly primary care trust (CIOSPCT) was 7 weeks; March 1997 in the corresponding Cornwall and Isles of Scilly health authority (CIOSHA) it was 12.9 weeks.

Examples of reductions in the specialties are cardiology with 4.6 weeks at March 2007 and with 14.6 weeks at March 1997; gynecology 7.2 weeks and 13 weeks; and ophthalmology 7.2 and 17.7 weeks.

With all the caveats these are impressive reductions.

You can read the details and the data explanations and caveats in Hansard 27 February 2008, columns 1754W-1756W.

* The figures for breast and cervical cancer screening show that in the area of the present Cornwall and Isles of Scilly primary care trust the screening program is being well used and is reaching a high proportion of women. We are slightly higher in percentage reach than the average for England in cervical screening. In breast screening the proportion of eligible women who have attended screening here was higher than the England average in the last given year, 2005-2006, a very large improvement over two years previously when Cornwall was way below the England average. The lives of women in Cornwall are being saved through timely screening. (Hansard 31 January 2008, columns 596W-602W and 618W-624W.)

* 30 January 2008. The EU investment program, called by the unromantic name of the Convergence program, now begins in Cornwall and will make available about £300 million over the years 2008-2013, plus £140 million from the British government.This is in effect a ‘continuation’ of the 2000-2007 Objective One program which made about £350 million available to Cornwall.

* 25 January 2008. The Healthcare Commission has published the results of its assessment of 148 maternity units. The assessment stressed women’s reported experiences. The maternity unit at Treliske Hospital, Truro (Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust) has been assessed as among the “Best performing,” a category in which 26 percent of the units fall. In fact it is seventh best of the units. That is an excellent performance.

The unit at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which serves some women in east Cornwall, is in the “Least well performing” category. That is unacceptable but the assessment has been influenced by incomplete information from the trust.

The complete details are here.

* 8 January 2008. Cornwall county council is considering, through consultants, the development of a park-and-ride for seven hundred cars at St Erth railway station. This, along with longer trains, would be to improve the service for people on the St Ives branch line, which is much used in summer, and to reduce congestion in St Ives.

Such a development has long been advocated by locals.

Read the details at Transport briefing here.

This follows on from this post of 7 December 2007 on next year’s formula grant for local government.

An official council paper presented recently to the county executive says candidly that the increase from central government in the formula grant over 2007-08 is “much higher than expected and sees Cornwall close to the higher end of shire county increases.” The paper goes on to point out that this means about £6.2 million more than county council budget planners predicted Cornwall would receive. The paper adds that the following two financial years to 2010-11 exceed, to a lesser degree, the county council’s predictions of funding.

This is a welcome frankness about how well Cornwall with a 8.5 percent increase has done out of the settlement and puts the earlier political wailing in context. The average increase for the shire counties is around 5.7 percent.

The paper goes on to point out that the Cornwall largess still leaves the county council with a deficit of nearly £5 million on current spending plans.This is a serious problem.

The Liberal Democrat council has made some curious spending choices in the near past and has at times appeared incoherent about its route. Can it improve? Not enough, I think, and that’s a pity because, Labour being out of the possibility of power in Cornwall at present, the alternative is the godforbid Conservatives.

I shall look at the effect of the damping mechanism on Cornwall’s funding later.

I shall post here continuing good news for Cornwall, developments which will positively help the people of Cornwall and the local economy and everyday lives. Everyone who wants the people of Cornwall to succeed in the modern world will welcome them. This post covers 2007 from July onwards. Vorsprung Cornwall 1 covers February-June 2007 onwards.

*December 2007: Newquay Airport continues to expand its services. Ryanair are increasing their flights to London Stanstead and flights to Spain, from March 2008 Skybus will be operating two additional routes, and in summer 2008 Flybe will be operating five new routes.

These expansions will help the airport, create jobs, and help the Cornwall economy. Welcome them.

* 26 November 2007: A parliamentary answer has revealed that the proportion of 16-18 year olds in Cornwall who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETS) is 6.1 percent of the Cornwall age group. This is much lower than in many places; for example the figure for Hackney is 13.1 percent, for Liverpool 13.2, for Birmingham 11.4, and for Plymouth 7.4. Cornwall is in the bottom third of the figures, where bottom is best. This is good news about young people in Cornwall though 6.1 is still too high.

Read the details in Hansard 26 November 2007, columns 141W-144W. Similar information is given in Hansard 21 November 2007, columns 958W-964W.

Addendum February 2008: Hansard 25 February 2008, columns 1284W-1290W gives NEETS figures for 16 and 17 year olds. At December 2007 the figure for Cornwall was 5.5 percent of the age group; this puts Cornwall at the 64th percentile of the 149 local authorities.

* 7 November 2007: Starting in September next year Cornwall, along with thirteen other local authorities, will begin to offer fifteen hours of free early education to all three and four year olds for thirty eight weeks of the year. This is to help to give every child a good start in life and to help parents work out a life/work balance. The scheme will be funded by the government. Details are in Hansard for 7 November 2007, columns 3WS-4WS.

* 2 November 2007: today is the official opening of the new heart centre at Derriford Hospital, Pymouth. There’s an account of it in the Western Morning News.

Yes, I know Plymouth isn’t Cornwall but patients from east Cornwall use the hospital and the heart centre will be used by people from all over Cornwall. This cardiothoracic unit is very good news for people in Cornwall who no longer have to travel as far as London for treatment such as a heart bypass.

* 25 October 2007: the future of Newquay airport is assured after investment of around £44 million has been agreed to change it from an RAF to a wholly civil airport. This involves money from the EU, British government, and the regional development agency. The airport is important to Cornwall’s economic development. Read more here.

* 10 September 2007: Kerrier district council has deservedly been named by the government as a champion for homelessness. It will share with other councils its expertise and good, successful practice in reducing the use of temporary accommodation and in helping people to avoid homelessness. See here for more details.

*From September 8-22 St Ives, Cornwall is holding its annual festival. Music, poetry, painting, film, talks, everything to enjoy in the arts from Cornwall and the wider world. Not a time to be gloomy about this place.

* From 6th to 12th August Newquay is hosting its annual rip curl boardmasters (RCB) surf contest. Okay, Cornwall isn’t Hawaii but one estimate is that surfing brings £40 million into the Cornwall economy and this RCB contest attracts thousands of visitors each day. The rip curl boardmasters is actually a surfing, skateboarding, and music festival/competition. See here for vigorous details. Oh, and there is a bikini competition too.

Cornwall: a fun, energetic place for talented people and great for unenergetic spectators.

* August 2007- a regeneration of the centre of St Austell is going ahead. The cost will be £75 million, of which £31.5 million will be from the south west of England regional development agency (SWRDA) and the rest from the developers, David McLean Developers.

The regeneration will be mainly retail and includes new shops, cafes, a cinema, and an underground car park, but also seventy flats.

For several years now St Austell has been the forgotten town of Cornwall with an uninspiring town centre. Things can only get better.

Details are here and here.

* July 2007 - A group restoring the Steeple nature reserve on Worvas Hill, St Ives was given £36 000 by the heritage lottery fund. The money will help to fund restoration, improvements, tree planting, and educational work.

* An architecturally impressive new art gallery has opened in Penzance in July. St Ives has its Tate and now Penzance has its Exchange. See details and pictures here in the Daily Telegraph for 21 July.

* Marks and Spencer opened a new store on 19 July at the shopping site by the roundabout on the eastern outskirts of Hayle. As well as shirts and skirts and the usual M and S things, it will sell food and has a cafe, and has created nearly a hundred jobs. This is very good news for Hayle and western Cornwall. There are other shops on the site (Next, Boots) though I’m not sure if there’s enough car parking there. On the adjacent site there are other shops selling fabric, tiles, cars, etc; it’s all a good shopping area now.

* July 2007 - A fast computer network which links all the hospitals and doctors’ surgeries in Cornwall and Scillies has been launched.
This enables information to be shared among medicos speedily; for example, doctors will be able to see patients’ xrays from hospitals in their surgeries.

This technology is clearly a beneficial way of meeting the medical difficulties of a spread-out rural county.

See here for details from PublicTechnology.net.

The Liberal Democrats are doing the grievance thing again.

They are complaining that Cornwall does not get a fair share of central government money (the “formula grant”) for local government services in Cornwall, that Cornwall’s formula grant is less than the national average, that Islington gets more funding, and that Cornwall loses money by means of “damping.” I think Islington is mentioned because it can at a push be presented as Tony Blair territory.

First, the formula grant, simply.

This is basically what the money given by central government to local government authorities is called. It is made up of non-domestic rates (business rates) collected locally, pooled centrally, and then redistributed; the revenue support grant for such things as pay and services; and, now, a dedicated schools grant. The various amounts paid to each authority are worked out by formulas which aim to reflect the particular circumstances of the authorities taking account of levels of deprivation, number of pupils, the composition of the population, and so on. See here for details about the working out of the Cornwall grant. Housing and in effect police services are paid for by other funds. And on top of this central government money the local authority raises more money by levying a council tax.

Second, how much are we talking about?

For 2007/08 Cornwall county council gets a formula grant of £127.970 million. The district councils in Cornwall also get formula grants.

What is damping?

That formula grant of £127.970 million is after an amount is taken away from Cornwall county council’s central government funding for “damping.” This is a mechanism for redistributing money among authorities to ensure each one gets a minimum grant increase, in effect and intention a mechanism for minimising changes in grants received. This damping device strikes me as a civilised response, protecting people from a sudden and large loss of central government money. Cornwall gave up £6.7 million for damping in 2007/08. I should have thought Liberal Democrats in Cornwall would approve of the mechanism but apparently not.

Does Cornwall get less than the national average? I am unsure what this national average means since the grant to local authorities reflects their different sizes of populations, the different make-ups of their populations, and the different needs of their populations. Average is a problematic concept with so much reasonable variation. For the one aspect where average is meaningful the 2007/08 Budget Book published by Cornwall county council says on page 16 that the percentage increase in the formula grant for Cornwall for 2007/08 is “above the English average” increase: see here.

Does Islington get more than Cornwall for the formula grant? Oh yes, for 2007/08 it receives £146.776 million. Is this unfair? Well, I discussed the unfairness issue when the Cornwall Libdems complained about Islington getting a larger dedicated schools grant than Cornwall. Islington has a larger proportion of pupils on free school dinners and more measured deprivation. Again, I should have thought Liberal Democrats supported equalising help for the worst off, but again apparently not.

The Liberal Democrats in Cornwall are sounding like a party that is not in favour of redistributing wealth. Before David Cameron came along we usually called such a party Conservative.

Does Cornwall get a fair share of the money? Look at the way the grants are worked out and decide: see here. I believe it largely does; Cornwall is not bled dry by the rest of England.

For example, in the redistribution of the business rates (part of the formula grant), Cornwall receives back £102 million more than is collected from the county. This gain dwarfs the damping loss. Islington, by the way, gets back £15 million less than it collects.

Have you read about the £102 million gain for Cornwall on Liberal Democrat or nationalist websites? There’s really quite a lot of positive news for Cornwall that doesn’t get a mention on them, isn’t there?

The Cornwall Labour Party blog draws attention to welcome progress in falls in unemployment here in Cornwall.

Since Labour came to power unemployment has fallen by about 9 400 in Cornwall. See here for the detailed data for each of the five Cornwall constituencies; it also explains how unemployment is measured.

The fall in the numbers of unemployed people in Cornwall constituencies is about two thirds overall. In the same period the fall in UK unemployment was 45 percent, significantly smaller than in Cornwall. The Cornwall constituencies are among the top tenth of most improved UK constituencies ranked by these percentages; we have made serious progress.

This good news seems to have been unrecorded so far by the Liberal Democrat and nationalist websites in Cornwall.

However, the Liberal Democrats here have acknowledged in Matthew Taylor’s words: “The fact is that the Cornish economy has started to turn round” since the dismissal of the Conservative government, though they claim credit for their Libdem efforts.

Of course, pay for workers in Cornwall remains problematically and stubbornly low and this is affecting negatively the lives and opportunities of many people. Progress is unacceptably slow.

Low pay also affects the funding of the NHS here and will be a factor in any move to reduce benefit levels, national pay scales, and the minimum wage in Cornwall. See this post and this on the blog.

In 2006 the median average gross pay for all fulltime, adult employees in Cornwall was £357.5 a week. This was 79 percent of the England figure of £453.3, a very modest improvement since 1997. Mean average pay is higher and so is median and mean average pay for males everywhere.

Again, even in the averages there is variety within Cornwall. The median pay (in 2006) for Penwith workplaces works out at about £2000 a year less than in Carrick.

See here for the ASHE income details.

David B Smith, professor of business and economic forecasting at Derby University, has suggested that the national minimum wage should be revisited.

In an article for the Economic Research Council ‘Does Britain have regional justice or injustice in its government spending and taxation?’ he argues rightly that the economies of the regions of Britain differ and therefore the effect of the same government spending and taxes varies from region to region; and, contentiously, therefore that government interventions, including social benefits and the minimum wage, should vary to fit those differences.

The argument is that, for example, national-level unemployment benefits and welfare benefits in areas of high pay mean people are much better off in work than on those benefits; however, in regions with low pay those benefits may be a disincentive to work; indeed, government transfers of resources to less favoured regions may counterproductively discourage an enterprise culture. I think this is a telling argument and should be explored further.

However, I think it is not just a matter of regional economics; these are people’s lives and pricking the poor and ill to make them more economically productive is an ethically difficult project. There would have to be observable gains for individuals to make it acceptable. The effects of reduced benefits are likely to vary for individuals: for the able idle a cut might well get them into work. I am at a loss to see how a cut will encourage a drug addict or alcoholic out of his distress and into work; for him benefits are a response to his illness not a cause of it.

Smith also argues convincingly that the point at which the minimum wage is uneconomic, pricing out employment, varies from region to region. Those areas with high productivity and high living costs in relation to the average should get a higher minimum wage. And, conversely, the minimum wage should be cut in low pay, low productivity areas.

That means that in the southwest region, including Cornwall, the minimum wage should be cut.

At present the minimum wage is £5.35 an hour for an adult, say about £214 gross a week. I think knocking £15 a week off that in Cornwall and the southwest region is hardly likely to have any discernible effect on people’s behaviour except to make poor people poorer and heighten their perception of social injustice.

I agree there is a case for saying that in London, for example, the national minimum wage is too far low as it does not take into account the economic circumstances of life there; that is the regional injustice. Pay in many jobs already takes into account the noticeably higher cost of living in London. However, I disagree that the minimum wage should be cut from its present level anywhere. It is at a modest level and a cut would be a real-life injustice for working individuals.

I do not believe a modest minimum wage is in reality an economic monster. Yes, increases in it can have an effect on the viability of businesses and the ability of businesses to employ people. However, the government has been cautious and astute in increasing it and in consequence it has not so far damaged the economy. That is the way to go: affordable economic justice. There is also desirable social solidarity in a national minimum, the nation’s ad imissimum of earned wages. The early claims of Conservatives that it was an economic folly that would damage the economy and businesses and employment have proved unfounded and now the Conservative party support it, though that may be due to political realism as much as economic observation. Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats initially toyed with regional-level minimum wages rather than one of national uniform level.

Is anyone listening to Smith’s challenging arguments? The article ‘Gordon Brown to vary minimum wage over UK’ in the Sunday Telegraph for 22 July 2007 suggests that the Labour government is looking at regionalising the minimum wage, varying it from region to region or even locality to locality to reflect the realities of the local economy. That would be a major shift in economic and welfare policy. However, I think the title in the newspaper is bolder than the article which is somewhat indefinite.

It occurs to me that there is, of course, another possible and contentious change: the regionalisation of national pay rates, taking into account local pay in the private sector and the ease or difficulty of recruitment and retention of staff. The Cornishing of current national pay for professionals in, say, education, health, and local government would be downwards. Would it apply to Cornwall’s MPs?

See here for a post on average pay in Cornwall and (un)employment.

I thought it would be useful to put up a collection of website addresses for various data involving Cornwall. I have tried over the past months to show that Cornwall is not terra oppressa, sunk in universal poverty, neglected and treated unfairly by the British government. Judge for yourself. I have reduced some long urls to tinyurls.

Free school meals
HANSARD (primary) 4 July 2006 column 1021W, (secondary) 12 July 2006 column 1861W
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmhn0607.htm

GVA per head (ONS December 2006)
http://tinyurl.com/2449pu

GDP per head (Eurostat February 2007)
http://tinyurl.com/3cjqdy

Average pay(ONS April 2006)
www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=13101 (ASHE 2006, Table 7.1a)

Indices of deprivation
http://tinyurl.com/2b6m5s

Education funding (Dedicated schools grant)
www.teachernet.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm?id=9405

Health profiles Cornwall districts
www.communityhealthprofiles.info/

17 March 1337 charter
www.statutelaw.gov.uk

1858 Cornwall submarine mines act
www.statutelaw.gov.uk

I shall post here continuing good news for Cornwall, developments which will positively help the people of Cornwall and the local economy and everyday lives. Everyone who wants the people of Cornwall to succeed in the modern world will welcome them. This post covers February-June 2007. Vorsprung Cornwall 2 covers 2007 from July onwards.

* June 2007 - Cornwall’s first “extra care” project has been launched. Sarsen Housing Association is to work with Caradon district council to provide fifty five “extra care” dwellings at Liskeard for elderly people who will be able to live independently but with care and support. There is a hurdle: central government funding will be needed from the Housing Corporation and Department of health but the providers are optimistic about this. See here for information.

* June 2007 - SOLD, a shared housing ownership program for people with learning disabilities, has got substantial funding - capital and revenue - from the department of adult social care of Cornwall county council to provide around twelve shared ownership dwellings in Cornwall. See here for more details and here for details about SOLD.

* June 2007 - As part of its dignity in care program the government (Department of health) has given Cornwall county council £740 000 for improving the material environment in care homes in Cornwall.

* Two Redruth companies have developed an eco surfboard of which more than half is from renewable materials. See www.suscomp.com.

* A good time for Cornwall. Last month (April) at Twickenham the Cornish Pirates and Mounts Bay rugby teams won their trophies and this week Truro City football club won the FA Vase at Wembley - all of them capital sports successes for Cornwall. And we have just had Helston Flora day, St Ives May day, and Padstow Obby Oss day festivities. A great time for Cornwall.

* May 2007- The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT) is serving organic meals, largely sourced in Cornwall, to patients. More than four fifths percent of the RCHT food budget was spent in Cornwall in 2006, a doubling. The distance travelled by the food is down by two thirds. The cost of all these improvements is the same.

This is good news for patients who rate RCHT food much more highly than is general in hospitals in England, good news for the Cornwall economy as local producers get more business, and even good news for the environment in the cut in food travel miles.

* May 2007 - Several miles of new dual carriageway of the A30 is now open in a bypass of Goss Moor and the hit-me rail bridge. It gets easier and easier to get into and out of Cornwall.

* April 2007 - The wave hub, the proposed wave energy project off St Ives Bay, has now received a total of £28 million which, subject to government and EU approval, means it could be built next year. It could produce about three percent of Cornwall’s domestic electricity. About two hundred jobs are likely to be created initially. The money comes from government and EU aid to Cornwall.

See www.southwestrda.org.uk for more details.

* St Julia’s hospice at Hayle has been given £35 000. This is part of a £40 million tranche of grants from the Department of health announced on 9 April 2007 for 146 hospices to improve their built environments. See here.

* The government has given £575 000 to public bodies in Cornwall, led by the county council, to tackle child poverty. This will be match funded by the local public bodies. The focus will be on prevention of poverty and the aims include more parents in employment, reduced inequalities in opportunities, and better take-up of benefits and tax credits. See here.

* A scheme since 2004 has been quietly bringing preserving and renovating historic and architecturally worthy buildings in Redruth. So far eleven buildings have been or are in the process of being renovated.

The Redruth heritage economic regeneration scheme (Redruth HERS) gives grants for renovation to be done in away that respects the historic and architectural value of the buildings.

The reasonable hope is that this will build pride and confidence and foster the economic life of the town.

See more about Redruth HERS here.

* The Cornishman reports 15 March 2007 that ninety six pupils of Cape Cornwall school who live at Pendeen are getting free transport to school after a campaign by a mother who moved to Pendeen from Bedfordshire in September 2006. The road was found to be hazardous.

* There is good news for disabled people in Cornwall.

In 2007/2008 the government (Department for communities) is giving £1 455 000 to help disabled people in Cornwall with adaptations to their homes. This is a ten percent increase on the previous year’s grant. See here.

* Newquay airport is getting £11 million from the EU, having had £8 million from the South West Regional Development Agency at the end of last year. The airport sees the start of daily flight to Gatwick and the return of the seasonal flights to Edinburgh next month, and in May the start of flights to Belfast. See the airport website.

* The duchy of Cornwall is proposing a project near Newquay which will include shops, offices, a primary school, and about 850 houses, including affordable ones. The project will have ecological features such a solar panels, biofuel heating, and first class insulation, a real attempt at sustainable and green development. See the design and development part of the duchy’s website.

* In February 2007 a start has been made on the bypass for Dobwalls on the A38. It is due for completion in September 2008 and will be a very welcome relief for the people who live there - and the people who presently drive through.

* On 22 February the Department of Transport announced that in 2007/08 two railway stations in Cornwall are among those getting grants for improving access for disabled people. Saltash gets £27 000 for improvements in lighting, signing, and paving. St Austell gets £250 000 for disabled parking and a new bridge with lift access.

* Hayle day care centre has got a lottery grant of £50 000 provided it can raise another £61 000 in the next few months. The money will be used to make a new dining room for the eighty elderly who people eat lunch at the centre every day.

Original post Vorsprung Cornwall was dated 15 February 2

Once more there are complaints about the prices charged for the provision of water and sewerage services in Cornwall.

Now much of the westcountry has the highest water/sewage bills in England. The privatisation of water supply and sewage disposal by the Tories left us served by a monopoly with no competition and no choice for customers; that, a weak regulation scheme, stringent EU rules for a clean up of the water and our many beaches, and an energetic improvement program by the water company have kept prices high.

It is unfair on people here but could it feasibly be made fairer? Renationalisation is out as too costly and it wouldn’t necessarily reduce the price to customers but an alternative is to equalise charges across the whole country, that is across England or across England and Wales. People in Cornwall and other high-charge areas pay less, people in low-charge areas pay more.

The latest profits annual profits of the water and sewerage company, South West Water, which serves much of the westcountry not just Cornwall, were £156.8 million and these have prompted the Liberal Democrats to call again for an equalisation scheme.

I agree with equalisation; but there are some difficulties.

The Libdems make their call for an equalisation scheme here in Cornwall where bills would go down. They do not, as far as I am aware, point out to people in other places that their bills will go up. I’d like to see this equalisation argument made in those other places, and especially where there is a Libdem MP or council. I have made a similar point in the post about increasing education spending in Cornwall.

It would be interesting to make the argument in Wales also and see what people there think of having higher bills so that Cornwall and Devon (and parts of Dorset and Somerset) could have lower ones.

It is hard to tell people in areas where there are water restrictions that, nevertheless, they must pay more in order to be fair to people in the westcountry. Has anyone tried it?

For those who support Cornish nationalism, who want the constricting reins of the Westminster parliament off Cornish backs, who want Cornwall standing on its own feet, an all-England water policy is frankly incoherent, an ad hoc device to meet a local problem not part of an organised philosophy. Of course one can argue for both local devolution and subsidies from people from elsewhere; but it isn’t convincing. It looks like, Give me your money and go away. However, since Cornish economic nationalism seems to see a devolved Cornwall as another Barnett-dependency perhaps this incoherence doesn’t disturb.