Three things that need to change in politics in this next parliament

There's a lot said in a political campaign and certainly I've written and spoke my fair share. On ideas and policies that matter to me. But my ability to pick out a bad policy and build an argument about it is not a reason to elect me. If that logic ran true it'd be Owen Jones fending off coalition advances, but that's not true.

Electing an MP is about electing someone for their ideals, policies and principles but also electing an individual to represent them both in terms of policy and in terms of locality. I'd happily be an MP at the heart of the debate, trying to hold reason, sending constant missives to the press on how I'm right and everyone else is wrong.  But that's not enough, being a talker and thinker is great but we also need a doer and someone with an eye not just for high politics but an eye to the grass roots. 

I've tried to be this way with my blog, I often write and campaign about lofty ideals, devolution, privatisation, austerity and so on. In between those times I've  campaigned on specific issues. Against the pasty tax and Devonwall. For Superfast Broadband in Penzance town centre. For government investment and attention in Wave Hub, among others. I don't pretend for a minute that it was me alone that shifted these issues. I do feel however I can take credit for inspiring debate and getting the situation into the media and further up the political agenda.

I guess my personal plea to you is this, I feel I can have an impact, I feel that I already do. I've had this impact as a blogger, a tweeter and more recently as a town councillor. If I have a bigger mandate from thursday's vote, I will have more influence and more people will take note of me. More importantly than all of that pay more attention to Cornwall and the issues MK has raised time and again in this election, the failures of centralisation, our poorly performing economy, our low wages and Cornwall's affordable housing need. The opportunities of rethinking politics, having the chance to set our own, new, priorities in Cornwall, the chance that by doing things differently Cornwall can be a better place to live, work and play.

I've raised these three truths at this election a number of times, 1. we don't get fair funding for our public services in Cornwall, 2. the St Ives constituency has the lowest wages in Cornwall, 3. Cornwall is one of the poorest parts of Western Europe. Tory, Lib Dem and Labour have had a chance to sort these out and they haven't. I think the time has come to change that, we must change that. The more of a vote I and Mebyon Kernow get on thursday, the more of a say, MK can have in getting the focus of political minds to address Cornwall's fundamental problems head on and unlock the brighter future that we all know is possible. 

A disappointing government response to flooding in West Cornwall

Perhaps the title is a little misleading, I certainly could write a great long post on the subject in general. If you haven't seen it already Cllr Andrew Wallis has a great blog post revealing government funding for fishermen is not in fact new at all. Other government announcements have also been tokenistic. I wrote in the Western Morning News  on the budget and the chance it was to realign priorities in general, address the unfairness in budget cuts and funding for Cornwall, I wrote that the Chancellor's budget was high time for Cameron's grand announcement that "money is no object" and government will "pick up the tab" to be turned from empty rhetoric to actual funding. This unfortunately did not happen. This post aims to deal with the response to my letter to the Prime Minister, which I have finally received. Since I wrote that on the 23rd of February, Penzance Town Council unanimously voted to support a letter to the PM roughly saying the same thing and including a call for a break water, hopefully the council gets a better reply.

My email was quickly shuffled from the Prime Minister's office to DEFRA, which I think was disappointing as I had not only addressed the question of flood defences and funding but also Penzance's rail link. If I was disappointed that neither the PM nor the Department of Transport would consider making our rail line more resilient, then that was frame of mind I could keep for the subsequent reply. It soon starts:

"As I am sure you will appreciate, we have received exceptionally high volumes of correspondence relating to the current flooding incidents. Unfortunately it will not be possible to provide a personal response to every letter as we are focusing our efforts on the recovery. However, I hope this information on the Government’s response is useful."

Then goes on to make various generic points about the flooding situation, in what is no doubt a stock reply. Quiet why it took a whole month to get such an identikit email, I'm not sure....

It carries on, explaining about the number of properties and farmland protected from flooding. A quizzical reference: "military personnel are still on standby" (when was that written!?!), government commitments to flood defences and "erosion risk management". It's hard to criticise any of it government pronouncements and government action are often two different things, but until the latter becomes the former, who knows what might happen? But there are a number of absences in the reply. There is not one mention of our rail line or transport infrastructure at all. As we've seen in the last weeks there have been adequate government pronouncements on flood defences, protecting homes but precious little -if anything- on sea defences. Everything is about protecting inland areas (quite rightly) but nothing for the coast.

Despite having two of Cornwall's MPs in DEFRA, this is the level of thought and attention that goes into policy in Cornwall. No thought at all to how extreme weather effects coastal communities. No real intent to think of it either. No flexibility that parts of the UK might need more thinking or perhaps a bespoke solution. Much like the email reply, the government's response to flooding is dated, not really relevant to Cornwall and lacks any desire to address these issues.