Tag: Save the NHS

Campaign gratitude and Whipps Cross

My euphoria at receiving 129 beautiful votes last Thursday remains unabated! Thank you so much! Click here to watch the Walthamstow constituency count being announced at about 6am on Friday 08 May. My thanks to Polling Station staff, the Returning Officer’s team, Electoral Services at the Council, and the Counters at Walthamstow Assembly Halls who all did an amazing job.

I didn’t celebrate with a drink in the end because after spending 9 hours at the count all I really wanted was breakfast, care of amazing musician friend, Zami. It was then home to sleep for about 24 hours on and off, before heading back out to counter the EDL (see other posts) and thank constituents for their support.

My heartfelt thanks to Andy for being my electoral agent, to Jo, El and those who joined me leafleting, and those who provided advice. I also want to thank my family and friends for offering unstinting love and encouragement.

I am especially grateful to all those who voted for me, but also to the hundreds who spoke to me at length around Walthamstow, and all those many people who listened to me enough to go and vote and exercise their democratic rights, even if it was not to vote for me. I also want to thank the many Walthamstow residents and single issue campaigners who got in touch online to discuss their views in various ways – by twitter, by email and on facebook.

And I am grateful for the willingness of party campaigners to talk about the issues and be encouraging about saving Whipps Cross Hospital, whatever their parties’ policies. I learned a huge amount from my fellow candidates and their agents, and I’d like to thank them so much for their strong debating, which I hope Walthamstow was proud of. The constituency was lucky to have eight candidates who put in so much effort and tried to overcome electoral communication difficulties with hard graft and good grace.

I really enjoyed the campaign and will treasure every last bit of conversation that the local community offered me about their lives and their concerns for Walthamstow.

Those conversations are continuing to motivate me now to lend my support to existing campaigns to save Whipps Cross and campaign for a nationalised NHS, free from PFI. To those ends, overnight during the count, I was lucky enough to have some fascinating cross-party conversations about saving our hospital and I intend to follow them up.

I realise our local MPs may well be distracted for a while by internal party politics, probably without much focus on saving Whipps Cross or the NHS. For example, Stella will be campaigning to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and IDS will be sorting out his continuing role in Cabinet, applying a further £12b in welfare cuts and £13b in government spending cuts.

The effort is more urgently needed than ever, however, to bring together Waltham Forest’s MPs, other MPs in neighbouring boroughs whose constituents also use Whipps, borough council members and community groups to focus their collective attention on the issue of rescuing Whipps from Barts before Barts senior management goes ahead with the land sale and other asset stripping of our vital health facility. IDS and John Cryer have already indicated they would be willing to accept new ideas on how to help Whipps.

Please let me know if you want to help me build this local cross-party initiative by using the ‘comment’ form on my website, or get in touch on twitter and facebook.

Thank you so much for your generosity of time and interest, and here’s to Walthamstow’s campaign to win back its fully nationalised hospital and healthcare services!

What I stand for

Here is what I stand for: some of the national policy changes that I think will benefit Walthamstow residents.

I believe in renationalising public services, from housing to environment and social care. I support renewable energy and oppose fracking.

I believe in renationalising Whipps Cross and extracting it from Barts Health Trust. I support the NHS Reinstatement Bill, standing to repeal HSCA and for an end to PFI, the Private Finance Initiative which treats the NHS like a bank and puts business debt servicing and profits before people. I oppose TTIP.

I believe in trade unions and their role in improving working conditions around the UK. And I believe in investing in start-ups, social enterprise and small business particularly in the arts and technology, to increase employment and pay into the Walthamstow economy.

I stand for diversity and social cohesion, particularly championing anti-racism and campaigning against religious prejudice, protesting against fascists like the EDL.

On schools I stand for giving our young people the best possible start in life by investing in both core subject teaching but also the arts and sports.

My focus for schools is music, and the positive impact learning music and participating in music has on cognitive and childhood development. We need far more state-funded music provision in schools and colleges. But that also goes for all the arts, and sports provision. It is the extra curricula activities that develop a child and young adult and give them the broadest options in life. Arts and sports activities sustain and develop adult well-being and social cohesion.

On education generally, I believe in renationlising our education system from top to bottom, and removing business profit from it – renationalising schools, scrapping the expensive student loans system, bringing back grants and eradicating top-up fees. I stand for radically increasing publicly funded scientific research and improving academic pay and conditions for qualified lecturers and post-docs, increasing opportunities for women in science.

I believe in supporting human and civil rights and particularly the rights of refugees. We need to de-criminalise the treatment of refugees in the UK and support the rights of overseas refugees to be able to return to their homes in safety. This means the UK holding countries to account for violations of international law and Geneva conventions against Palestinians, Tibetans, Kashmiris and Tamils. Israel, China, India and Sri Lanka persistently violate international law. They have created international refugee crises by military occupying, annexing or blockading another people’s lands and ethnically cleansing the indigenous inhabitants who ought to be allowed to live in peace and safety, with self determination. The UK, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has to address these human rights violations stretching back over decades.

Underpinning all of this, I believe in the rights of women and girls to live lives of equality and safety, with equal life chances and equal pay.

Photos copyright (c) Ellie Merton

Yesterday in the sun, and the chilly breeze!

Another cracking day of canvassing and learning.

First up a roadside chat in the sun outside a local mosque, talking about faith, no faith, politics and Islam. I am constantly impressed by the depth of humanity, understanding and caring I experience when talking to anyone in our local Muslim community. We’re lucky to have such diversity in our borough.

The highlight of the day had to be party time with local hero, Tommy Anderson, and the ladies and gentlemen of WF Social Club celebrating St George’s Day in fine style. I was just a bit excited to meet a pearly king and queen and learn how they get selected and the types of charity work they do. It is staggering the number of projects they support and the time and effort they put in. And I learned the origin of ‘flash harry’.

My plan had been just to pop in and say hello, but I was honoured to be firmly sat down at a table to have a hearty natter about life in Walthamstow during the war, how much the streets have now changed, housing difficulties, volunteering up at Whipps and social care provision locally. Francis (shown in the photo) and I had a top conversation about care allowances, how he’d worked for the same organisation since age 16, and his views on Whipps. A very special afternoon.

Then it was off to a meeting on health, which confirmed all my personal suspicions about the way Whipps is managed and taught me a huge amount about how social and health care try to integrate, or not.

General canvassing highlights included musicians, civil servants, lots of great women, my window cleaner on a bus the other side of town, a retired railway man who started his first job the same day as Bob Crowe, and a bit of late night Kebab Kampaigning.

Save the NHS, Save Whipps Cross

Barts dwarfs Whipps. That is exactly what patients experience all the time – central Trust PFI debts dwarfing their local health treatment. Super-level PFI contracting must be stopped and mega trusts split back into sustainable constituent hospitals within the NHS. I believe Whipps Cross Hospital should be extracted from the mega, centralised Barts Health Trust that is draining Whipps dry,…

My values reflecting your concerns

Whipps matters most, and having a non-party candidate to vote for!

Hectic but brilliant afternoons yesterday and today on the High Street market, meeting campaigning colleagues from the parties and having a chuckle at each other whilst worrying about the big issues. Meeting loads of residents who all want Whipps Cross saved. That’s the one thing that really made me stand in the end, wanting to help to save Whipps, so…