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.

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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.

The Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO) have published the 2008 health profiles today. You can read the report for Cornwall and for each of its six districts here .

For Cornwall as a whole the APHO report is generally good news. For example, in five of the districts there is a smaller proportion of people living in the most deprived fifth of areas of England than the average for England; and in every district men and women have a higher life expectancy at birth than the average for England.

The APHO report gives information for each district too and although here the news is generally good of course there are difficult spheres where it is less rosy compared to the averages for England. For example, look at the figures in Penwith for index-of-multiple-deprivation, child poverty, and educational achievement.

There is much here to be pleased about. Not complacent, but recognising a record of progress. Cornwall, again, isn’t at the bottom.

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Source: Association of Public Health Observatories website article Welcome to health profiles

In 1980 the Thatcher government broke the link between the state retirement pension and earnings and since then the pension has been uprated by the rate of inflation. Overall earnings generally run ahead of inflation and, although the Labour government has redistributed millions of pounds to targeted pensioners, the state pension is now worth less than if it had remained linked to earnings.

How much less?

A parliamentary answer says about £43 a week less.

The average state pension is now £97 and week and had it remained linked to earnings would be £140 a week. The current pension is 44 percent less than it would have been. The details are at Hansard for 16 June 2008 column 742W.

Cornwall has a disproportionate number of pensioners many of whom - but not all of course - have only or are primarily dependent upon a state pension.

Labour aims to restore the link in the next parliament and by 2012 if possible. I am unsure whether the Conservatives, the current favourites to form the next government, have signed up to this. It would be a handbrake turn for them.

Nor do I know why Labour in Cornwall isn’t shouting all this from the rooftops.

In the post How many are Cornish? I collected together data, of varying status, for the number of people in Cornwall who describe themselves as Cornish. This post is an update.

In Britain people have a free choice as to how they describe their ethnicity and one can freely change one’s ethnic description if one wishes. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses numerous ethnic categories though only a few appear discretely on spatially constrained census forms.

There are two major local sources of information about the numbers of people in various ethnicities in Cornwall, the annual school census and the periodic Cornwall quality of life survey. The sets of data from each of these are neither comparable between the two sources nor, strictly, within them and this should be borne in mind when reading the sets or assuming apparent trends. The national census has not had an open tick-box option of the two main ethnicities in Cornwall, English and Cornish (actually, White English and White Cornish) and thus is unhelpful here.

Pupils
Here are the ethnic results from the school census (PLASC), taken in January each year, for the overall proportion of pupils described as (White) Cornish, presumably so described by their parents:
2006: 24 percent
2007: 27 percent
2008: 30 percent.

This data on the surface suggests that the proportion categorising as Cornish is rising regularly as new primary pupils enter school but that simplism is misleading. More analysis of changes within the school year groups and more years of data are needed to assess what is happening.

Adults
The 2004 Cornwall Quality of Life Survey for the county council showed that 35 percent of respondents described themselves as “White Cornish” (Table 5). In the 2007 survey this is 26 percent (table 3.1.15). The fall is unexplained in the survey. Note that there is a fall here but a rise in the pupil figures.

Data discrimination against the English?
The 2004 survey also showed 48 percent describing themselves as White English and 11 percent as White British. The 2007 survey omitted the White English tick box and offered White British which 72 percent ticked. I don’t know why the English category was omitted, especially as it was the largest single group in 2004. Whatever the reason or intention, the effect might be seen as data discrimination against those in Cornwall who regard themselves as English and is a loss of useful information about a community. I find the the omission regrettable. The Cornwall PLASC census also includes Cornish but not English as an open ethnic option; again this might be seen in effect in Cornwall as data discrimination. (The 2001 census had neither English nor Cornish as an open tick-box option; the next one will apparently include English as an open option but not Cornish, an omission which I also regret.)

There are acknowledged difficulties in how representative of the population of Cornwall the populations in the two data sets are. The response to the quality of life surveys under-represent the younger groups; the pupil surveys naturally are tilted to the young and their largely youngish parents. The populations of the school censuses are very much larger than those of the quality of life surveys.

Summary
In summary, based on these sources the proportion of people in Cornwall describing themselves, or describing their children, as Cornish ranges from about a quarter to about a third of Cornwall’s population. The proportion is not consistent, varying by age and location. The total population of Cornwall is currently estimated at 538 000.

I discuss in a later post what these ethnic figures might mean.

Which end do you break your egg?
I’m putting here a paragraph from my post How many are Cornish? as it makes a point I think important about ethnicity and nationalism:

“I understand the point of ethnic monitoring so that we can use the data to try to ensure our public services are genuinely accessible to all parts of the population and so that we can try to provide relevant services. I understand the need to see oneself in particular ways, to enjoy various identities, including group ones. So I am not hostile to collecting and using ethnic data and giving people the chance to identify themselves. However, I have questions. How wise is it to seek out differences among people rather than concentrating on what we have in common? Can stressing ethnic, religious, and other cultural distinctions with no balancing commonalities engender antagonisms? How do we take care that these differences among people do not create unhealthy division and hostility? I suppose in the end I believe it doesn’t matter which end of the egg you open.”
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Related posts

Ethnicity and Cornwall

How many are Cornish?

And biologically speaking -

Blue-eyed Cornish and English are brothers

English and Cornish are sisters under the skin

English and Cornish have same milk gene

“which end of the egg you open” - Jonathan SWIFT, Gulliver’s travels, part 1, chapter 4

After the spats about how to spell the Cornish language, spoken fluently by about three hundred people, there is positive news. No, not the agreement last month on a spelling system - the arguments still continue - but six books written by Will Coleman in Cornish for young children. Every year three pupil in Cornwall will get a free copy of one of the books which are about an imagined village and its people and animals.

The books were commissioned by the Cornish Language Partnership (CLP), a body of various language interests and the county and district councils in Cornwall, funded by the British government, the EU, and Cornwall county council.

Look, I’m not a Cornish nationalist and I don’t share the heady linguistic visions of some, I don’t believe for one moment that Cornwall will become bilingual, but I welcome this positive move to introduce some of the language to young people. It stands in stark and magnificent contrast to the unhappy nonsenses that have bedevilled and apparently still bedevil the language. Coleman and the CLP deserve warm congratulations on a constructive move.

Last financial year in Britain there were 2.9 million children and 2.5 million pensioners in relative poverty. Both are increases over the previous year. Poverty matters because it constrains people’s lives unnecessarily and for many diminishes hope and aspiration and opportunity. Individuals, families, and the country suffer from frustrated achievement.

The eradication of such poverty has been a central Labour policy and since 1997 they have made progress with 600 000 children and 900 000 pensioners taken out of poverty. Labour started, of course, in 1997 from rock bottom, building up from the morally horrendous devastation of the Tories which had left millions of Britons in unnecessary dire need.

Labour has done well but nevertheless these latest figures are a mortifying failure. It is surely unnecessary to point out that many of these pensioners and children live in Cornwall.

In real life altruism has limits and progressives have to push it to those limits. Any government, including a progressive one, has to balance the competing claims of different groups in Britain and has to be restrained in how much tax it takes from working people to distribute to common services and people in need. Labour has struggled with this balance and lately has given more priority to the rich and comfortable middle classes than to the poor: for example, the £2.7 billion it is giving to partly right the foolish and wrong 10p attack on low income workers has gone mainly to middle class earners.

Would the Conservatives do better? Well, there’s the appalling record of the last Tory governments and David Cameron has said that poverty is not just about money. I agree but find it a scary comment from a Conservative. Does it mean they would not see more money to lift more of the poor out of relative poverty as a priority? Frankly, Labour trying and only partly succeeding in this sphere is better than the Tories not really trying.

Labour should refocus on poverty and give more importance to getting more people out of it though the bill is very large and the government is not awash with money. Nevertheless, perhaps the promised linking of pensions with wages could be brought forward. The £5 billion a year of unclaimed benefits for the elderly suggest a new approach is urgently needed there. The Conservatives should come up with some plain policies and be clear that what the poor need is encouragement to aspire and make and seize opportunity but they also need more money, higher benefits and pensions: pointing out Labour weaknesses and failures is not enough.

Once more the financial inequalities between the countries of Britain are exposed. The office of national statistics (ONS) has issued United Kingdom health statistics 2008 and these statistics in Table 8.5, page 114 give the spending per head on health and personal social care for 2006/07:

Scotland £2313

Wales £2109

N Ireland £2096

England £1915.

Thus someone in England - and that includes Cornwall - has nearly £400 less spent on him than someone in Scotland. Concern about public spending inequalities like these will not go away. They are part of the perceived unfairness that is, I think, slowly dissolving the United Kingdom, an unfairness that the Labour government appears indifferent to.

Will the Liberal Democrat MPs for the Cornwall constituencies cry foul? I doubt it.

Will Cornish nationalists complain of inequality and injustice? I’m not holding my breath.

Will Labour and the Conservatives in Cornwall complain? I’m still not holding my breath.

Come on, surprise me.

There was a debate in the House of Commons the other day about water usage and bills (Hansard 2 June 2008 column 614 onwards).

The main focus was on the high bills in the southwest and the especial difficulties that those on low income have in paying them. Linda Gilroy, a Labour MP from Plymouth who initiated the debate, put the context well: “too many people are struggling to pay bills that are unacceptably high. As things stand, the problem looks set to get worse.”

There was the usual nod to water meters which make people more aware of their water use and, according to Phil Woolas, the minister, reduce overall consumption by ten percent. However, I don’t see meters reducing prices as opposed to consumption in the long run as I explained in my previous water and sewerage post. Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, made the interesting point that metering benefited second-home owners by keeping their water usage bills low. Fairness is always complicated.

In the Commons there was a recital of small measures to help but no one seemed to have any effective major idea about getting to more affordable prices here (apart from the Libdem idea of a national equalisation scheme, in effect a subsidy of bills in Cornwall and the southwest by the rest of England, an idea which has its own problems as I outlined in my previous post). The (im)practicality of southwest customers breaking out of the geographic straitjacket into a genuine choice of supplier was not discussed.

I’m afraid it reminded me of HG Wells’s comment about the Fabians: piddling under the door and calling it the stream of progress. I think it’s obvious that customers in the southwest are stuffed: high bills and no choice in supplier. The problem of how to unstuff them is truly difficult. Phil Woolas said that “affordability continues to be a key concern of the government” which shows how desperately bereft of transformative ideas the government is.

Who’s to blame for our present position? Linda Gilroy put it crystal clearly when she spoke of “the botched privatisation by the Conservative government.” Indeed.

I repeat what I said before: it is time the Conservatives came up with some ideas for making better this situation that their party created. They keep very quiet about this problem and I think they aren’t going to volunteer a solution so let’s press them.

related posts

Can Cornwall’s water bills be cut? 6 June 2007

The water of affliction 2 October 2007

I wondered in this post why organised Cornish nationalism was not responding to Labour’s pauperisation of the poor. The government has since helped most of those affected but pro rata there are still nearly 10 000 people in Cornwall who have been only half-helped.

Consider also:

How many people in Cornwall are in fuel poverty, households where gas and electricity cost more than ten percent of income? How many people in Cornwall with low incomes are on prepayment meters which charge more for heating and cooking fuel than direct debit payments? How many, in rural places without mains gas, are paying heavily for heating oil? Of course these questions affect people all over Britain not just Cornwall and, apart from the prepayment issue, are not easily and immediately solvable by a national government without vast subsidies.

These are real life questions which affect the everyday life of too many in Cornwall. They are not remote questions, not issues in the far past, they are current, they are about real life now for people here.

Now another small entertainment. Using your knowledge, skill, and judgement, which of these do you think best represents the present overall position:

(a) Yes, organised Cornish nationalism and the Cornish nationalist websites collectively - the Cornish nationalist movement, if you will - are aroused and publicly campaigning hard on these issues, fiery with denunciation, and gung ho with ideas for remedies

or

(b) No, they’re saying nothing, zilch, nada, sod all, not a sausage.

(Of course, individual nationalists may be engaged with these issues.)

My own view is that the government should immediately urge the companies to eradicate completely the higher differential price charged to domestic customers, mainly among the poorest in our country, for prepayment meter fuel; and if urging does not speedily work, a way should be found to outlaw it.