Happy Birthday Boris 2007
Illustrissime Boris ultimus Romanorum floreas natali die tuo semperque futuro. Not everyone has the cojones to endorse a political candidate during the selection process. But you came through last year with a superb message of support, which had everyone who read it in hysterics. Hard not to win with friends like that. Thank you, my best as ever and Happy Birthday, Jesse.
Virginia Satir said: “Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible — the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.” Boris has nurtured an on-line family of people passionate about the world they live in. Through this blog he gives everyone a voice and we wish him a most happy birthday. You’re the best Boris!
U-turn on Community Hospitals
31 January 2006
Boris Johnson MP: We Must Hold Hewitt to her Word
Boris Johnson MP, yesterday welcomed the Health Secretary’s apparent U-turn on Community Hospitals.
Community Hospitals
17 January, 2006
MPs and local activists come together to fight for community hospitals
Local hospital campaigners from across the country joined forces yesterday in an attempt to prevent a wave of community hospital cuts and closures. Many Primary Care Trusts are in deficit and are under intense pressure to balance their books by April.
The result is likely to be front line cuts to many local community hospitals. Representatives of Leagues of Friends, local campaign groups, MPs, Councillors, community leaders, and residents, attended a one day seminar to share campaigning tips, build alliances and develop strategies to reverse the cutbacks to such vital, local health services.
The seminar comes less than ten weeks after the launch of CHANT (Community Hospitals Acting Nationally Together), a cross-party umbrella organisation set up to lobby Ministers, and raise awareness of the nation-wide threat to community hospitals. The group is chaired by Graham Stuart MP and the vice-chair is Boris Johnson MP. CHANT is supported by more than 40 MPs including Labour, Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Independent members. Chairman of CHANT, Graham Stuart MP, said:
‘This joint conference between CHANT and the Community Hospitals Association aims to support all those who are concerned about the future of their community hospital services. It will develop a network of support for campaigners who are battling hard to save their local health services.’
Over 80 community hospitals, including Townlands hospital in Henley, are currently under threat. The seminar included sessions on potential legal challenges to cutbacks and allowed campaigners to share tips and advice on working with the press and lobbying politicians.
Vice Chairman, Boris Johnson MP, commented:
‘It is appalling to see these vital hospitals facing such an unprecedented threat. If the Government persists with this policy, it should have the decency to explain the logic of this frankly bizarre decision to the British public, rather than continuing to hold up its hands and pointing the blame at the PCT’s, who are after all, unelected and unaccountable.’
Practical Action Needed on Climate Change
23 November 2005
Boris Johnson MP: Practical Action Needed on Climate Change
Speaking in yesterdays Climate Change Opposition Day Debate, Boris Johnson MP called on the Government to match its climate change rhetoric with action by removing planning restrictions, unaltered since 1995, governing the installation of rooftop solar panels.
Arguing in favour of increasing the energy efficiency of our nation’s housing stock as one of the most cost effective ways of reducing our consumption of energy and carbon dioxide emissions Mr Johnson outlined:
A single policy initiative, which I am sure will meet universal approval among Labour Members and my hon. Friends …For an outlay of £3000 Mrs. Anley (of Sonning Common) can add to her roof a wonderful panel by which she can heat her water. It is a photovoltaic pump. She assures me – I have no reason to doubt her, since I have taken the trouble to look up her plans on the internet – that she can reduce her carbon emissions by half a tonne of Co2 a year and that she can supply up to 70 per cent of her hot water needs in doing so. The kicker is that she has to get planning permission …
Mr Johnson pointed out that:
The device that Mrs Anley seeks to install is only 2ft by 4ft and only 8cm thick, but to get planning permission, she must pay a non-negotiable flat fee of £135. She must then get an architectural artist to produce drawings of her house, which, as you will readily appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker, will push her costs well over £200 … I look forward to hearing later that he (the Minister) is going to do a little bit more than set up a committee in the DTI to clarify matters, because this needs to be done urgently, and he is the man to do it.
Solar panels currently fall into Class C (roof alterations), of Schedule 2, Article 3, Part 1 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995.
Local Community Hospitals
16 November 2005
Boris Johnson MP steps up campaign to save local Community Hospitals
Boris Johnson MP, attending yesterdays Westminster launch of the Community Hospitals Acting Nationally Together (CHANT) group , denounced the Government’s failure to investigate and halt what now appears to be a nationwide programme of community hospital closures. As Vice-Chairman of the group, Boris Johnson MP called on all those present to work together, along cross-party lines, to co-ordinate efforts at a national level to better fight the closure of community hospitals throughout the country.
At a meeting held beforehand and chaired by the Shadow Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley MP, to discuss the problems facing community hospitals, Boris Johnson MP lambasted the current lack of accountability of regional ‘health quangocrats’ to the needs and views of local people:
‘It is utterly infamous that the views of local communities are being ignored. In almost all these cases the move towards care in the community is being driven not by best practice or clinical need but by the desire to balance the books and write down Primary Care and Strategic Health Authority deficits. Community hospitals are at the front line of these cost cutting drives despite the fact they play a vital intermediate care and step-down role. Local people want them, District Hospitals need them, yet nationwide over 80 of these community hospitals are being threatened with closure. Worse, no-one is taking any responsibility for these decisions. Government passes the buck to the Health Authorities who in turn pass it to the Primary Care Trusts who then pass it right back to the Government. At the end of the day though, the Government appointed these unelected quangocrats to their posts and the Government must now explain their actions’.
