Posts Tagged ‘Labour’

Chancellor Alistair Darling today delivered his second Budget, a full transcript can be read here, however the main announcements are listed below

• Supporting people back into work with an extra £1.7 billion in Jobcentre Plus.

• Supporting 18-24 year olds with a guaranteed job, training or work placement for all who reach 12 months unemployment.

• Supporting pensioners with an additional payment alongside the Winter Fuel Payment worth £100 for households with someone aged over 80 and £50 for households with someone aged over 60

• Supporting savers by raising the tax free Individual Saving Accounts (ISAs) limit to over £10,000.

• Supporting families with children by increasing the Child Tax Credit by £20 a year from April 2010.

• Supporting those made redundant by increasing statutory redundancy pay to £380 per week.

• Supporting homeowners with a £600 million funding package to build more homes through unlocking sites currently sitting dormant

• Supporting the housing market by extending the stamp duty holiday to the end of the year for properties under £175,000.

• Supporting business by extending the Business Payment Support Service to help businesses experiencing short-term cash-flow difficulties.

• Supporting the automotive industry by enabling people who scrap vehicles older than ten years to replace them with new vehicles at a discount of £2,000.

The scrappage scheme supporting the automotive industry is particularly welcome here on Merseyside and will benefit the Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port and the Jaguar Land Rover plant in Halewood as well as the numerous firms supplying those plants, a similar scheme is operated with great success in Germany.

David Cameron’s Conservatives do nothing but talk Britain down and shockingly some Conservatives even appear to be enjoying the recession.

Councillors Ann McLachlan, Harry Smith and Jim Crabtree were out and about yesterday evening, together with other members of the Bidston St James Labour team delivering leaflets and engaging with members of the community.

Without exception the team was warmly welcomed and there was an overwhelming lack of support  for the Conservatives with comments such as ‘the Conservatives just can’t be trusted’ and ‘what have the Conservatives ever done for us?’ coming from local residents. The Liberal Democrats didn’t even get a mention, read into that what you wish.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP, who is adored by many in the Conservative Party including Wirral Conservative Councillor who is also the Prospective Conservative MP for Wallasey  Cllr Leah Fraser. Also a large number of Conservative Party members would love to see Hannan as Prime Minister, Leah are you one of them?

Hannan has recently been interviewed on Fox News. In that interview Hannan warns the American people against having a healthcare system based on need and not on the ability to pay, during which he says that our NHS was a “60 year mistake”

Below is a partial transcript of what Hannan says

"We’ve lived through this mistake; we’ve lived through this mistake for 60 years now… the reality is it hasn’t worked. It’s made people iller.

"We spend a lot of money and we get very bad results, you look at survival rates for cancer or for heart disease we are well down on all the leagues. We have very few Doctors.

"We disincentivise people from practising medicine in this country. A lot of our best and brightest Doctors emigrate. A lot of them go to North America because there’s no market."

To dismiss Hannan as a crank would be a mistake when you consider the following facts about Daniel Hannan.

• He is the Conservative number one Euro candidate for the South East
• He left the EPP centre right grouping in Europe after likening the German President of the European Parliament to Hitler, and Cameron’s Tories followed him.

John Prescott MP has produced a Video Blog in response

So come on Cllr Leah Fraser, tell the people of the Wirral where you stand on Hannan’s comments, do you back him or you call on David Cameron to sack him?

Help Save The NHS From The Tories

Remember the last time we had a Tory Government, the NHS was starved of resources, there was a shortage of Nurses, those who were Nurses were paid a pittance, there was a shortage of doctors, a shortage of hospital beds leading to patients being left in corridors for long periods of time and don’t forget that even for minor operations some people were forgotten about on the waiting list for years.

Now that has all changed, Alan Johnson Labour’s Health Secretary has joined NHS Staff in celebrating the fact that waiting times between diagnosis and the start of treatment has been reduced to an all time low.

Labour’s Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, said:
“Twelve years ago it was not uncommon for patients to have to wait well over 18 months for an operation.  Achieving the shortest waits since NHS records began is a tremendous achievement for staff and I congratulate them for all their hard work.  Meeting the standard nationally five months before it came into effect, shows the commitment of the whole health service to improving patients’ experiences.
This has improved the lives of millions of people.  Every year the NHS carries out 60,000 hip operations, in the last two years the waiting time for this procedure has fallen from around 30 weeks to 12 weeks.  It’s not just patients that benefit from this, clinicians also value the difference it makes to the quality of care they provide.”

Don’t let the Tories destroy the NHS again