We Love the NHS

Nick Raynsford and Clive Efford at Queen Elizabeth Hospital

I was proud to attend two events in the last few days  to celebrate the NHS and stand up for it against the onslaught of the Tory-led Government’s Health and Social Care Bill.

On Saturday morning Labour held a street stall outside M&S on Old Dover Road,  getting messages of support for the campaign against the Bill. There was a slightly more formal event at Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Tuesday (Valentine’s Day), where the staff were presented with a Valentine’s card by local MPs Clive Efford and Nick Raynsford, and a big crowd of wellwishers, to show how much the NHS is valued by local people, as well as their MPs. 

Labour's Street Stall at Old Dover Road

A lot has been said about the Bill. My favourite comment of all is from a local GP, speaking at a public meeting at Mycenae House organised by the Labour Party last year. He said the reforms “combined the worst aspects of pre-revolutionary France, seventeenth century England and Stalinist Russia.” Which would be a very funny line in the Monty Python mould, were the very future of the NHS not at stake.

I don’t suppose he has changed his views since, given that more and more professional NHS bodies have weighed in against the “reforms” proposed, which looks increasingly like back-door privatisation.

The really telling thing is not the views of doctors or politicians, but patients. At the stall at Old Dover Road on Saturday people queued up to write their own messages about why they love the NHS, and wish to save it (you can read the messages at http://www.ilovethenhs.org.uk/sample-page/). The cuts are already biting: in Greenwich, the number of patients waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment has risen by a shocking 150% since May 2011.

Thank You to Blackheath Westcombe

To all the people of Greenwich and Woolwich who have seen a regenerated Borough, a stronger NHS, safer streets, improved public transport and the cutting of carbon emissions,and who believed in Nick’s pledge for: more jobs locally, better educational standards, an even better NHS, continued Improvements to neighbourhood policing, and further action to tackle climate change, there was a simple act from the re-elected MP last Saturday 22nd May, 2010 at the Royal Standard in the Blackheath Westcombe ward of the Constituency to show appreciation.

‘Thank You’, two simple words that bring a smile to anyone’s face.

It was a joy looking at the faces of people on the streets that morning going from one of bewilderment to surprise, then a broad smile when they are handed the letter from Nick, and they get to know that it was not asking for their votes this time, but just to aknowledge and appreciate their recognition of a hard-working MP who’s always been near his people and who works in the interest of the borough that he’s been given the mandate to represent for 18 years!

One needs to just go through Woolwich to see some of the regeneration…that Nick won by a 10000+ margin is testimony in itself to the interest of the people he has at heart! So really, he could just have taken what was rightly his due, and not been there that morning at the Royal Standard…BUT, that is the difference between an MP who is forever near his people, not just when he needs their votes, but one who genuinely respects his constituents!

These are difficult times, and whilst we in Greenwich and Woolwich are lucky to have returned our Labour MP, and a Labour Council, we need to remember that their continued success depends on our co-operation.
It is really up to us, the good people of Greenwich and Woolwich to assist our MP, and Council to keep the re-generation of our community in track…Let’s all give our Councillors a hand and ensure that Greenwich and Woolwich remains the Royal Borough ,

and a great place to work and live!!

Pat Boadu-Darko

Daffodils… and Alastair Darling

The daffodils have finally emerged around Blackheath and Westcombe Park and the sun has been doing its best to make its presence felt between the showers. Spring is here and the clocks have gone forward. Indeed, I was very pleased to be up on Sunday at 8am to get in my weekly 10k run before heading off to the doorsteps with our MP Nick Raynsford. Not everyone answering though, while of course pleased to see the Labour Party, looked as if they had readjusted their clocks!

In Westcombe Park on Saturday, we met some really excellent supporters in Ruthin Road and Glenluce Road with a small section of Westcombe Hill. A small section because we soon discovered that we were following in the well-trodden footsteps of the Jehovah Witness’ canvassers and a double knock especially after the non-voting JVs in one morning does not always go down well. So hotfoot around the corner to the very peaceful but fascinating slopes of Ruthin and Glenluce. There was general satisfaction with Labour nationally and locally though of course a few niggles on a variety of issues. A significant number of non-British EU citizens in these roads and we kept having to remind people them – Dutch, Polish, German, Spanish etc that they can vote in the local elections but not in the parliamentary election. Only UK, Irish, Maltese and Cypriot citizens within the EU can vote for their MP though, as can citizens of all other Commonwealth countries (from Australia to Zambia).

Two issues did come clearly through – the need to keep pressing ahead with raising achievement in our schools and it was excellent to hear Invicta praised as well as Halstow – but particularly our secondary schools. On this score, it is noteworthy that the three state schools in the new Greenwich and Woolwich constituency have doubled the number of 16-year olds gaining five or more good GCSEs from under a third to over two-thirds since Labour came to power in 1997. But it will and must improve further, and John Roan will be leading the way. However, there is a danger

John Roan School

with any change of Government that Conservative cuts and freezing teacher salaries will deflate morale and capacity for continued improvement. Back to the budget and hats off to Alastair Darling for putting the emphasis on jobs and enterprise, ensuring the burden is being more fairly shared but avoiding knee-jerk measures. He has actually confounded his detractors and proven to be a quiet but resilient backbone to the Government that, despite the UK’s exposure to global financial services, has weathered the global recession significantly better than predicted.

David L Gardner

Blackheath Library and a strange case of ‘déjà vu’

I had a look at the work at Blackheath Library on Old Dover Road last week with John Fahy (the councillor in charge of Libraries on Greenwich) and am pleased to report that it is on schedule to reopen in late April after its £260,000 refurbishment.

I remember, as a child in the early 1980s, when what is now the library used to be a branch of RACS (the Co-op). In those days, Blackheath Library was around the corner at 50 St John’s Park, in a red-brick Victorian building that used to be a Vicarage and is now divided into flats used as council temporary accommodation.

The building had a children’s library on the right of the entrance hall, the main adult section on the left, with the music section upstairs I recall – like most childhood memories, the building I remember is a lot bigger than what is there. I remember once visiting with my father in the early 1980s and being told off by him for forgetting to hold one of the heavy swing doors open for an elderly lady behind us.

Apparently, when the library moved to Old Dover Road (in the late 1980s I think) the number of visitors doubled overnight and the library is (or was until it closed temporarily for the refurb in January) the second-busiest in the borough, after Eltham Library. The “new” library has electronic sliding doors, so there is no scope for heavy Victorian swing doors to be closed in other people’s faces.

But twenty or so years after it opened, the library has began to show its age, with those sliding doors getting a bit squeaky (the entrance is being relocated to the centre of the frontage of the building) and the décor and carpet looking increasingly ropey. So it is excellent news the council is investing in new shelving, décor and “self-issue” technology (this creates more space for books and reading by removing the large counter area).

I have not been able to find any images of what the library will look like when opened, but to get a clue go to West Greenwich Library on Greenwich High Road, which has just reopened after a similar refurbishment of its own and is pictured below (sadly, Blackheath Library does not have the lovely Edwardian baroque domes in the ceiling, of course!).

I hope that when the library reopens it will be even more popular, and attract more passing trade for the shops on Old Dover Road, whose rents have been frozen by the Labour council but are still finding trading conditions difficult. The council has been planning improvements to paving and pedestrian crossings in the Royal Standard area for some time, but sadly Transport for London has recently told us that there are no funds for them to contribute so the council must devise a more limited scheme without their support (in the meantime, the broken bench outside the former loos –pictured here – will be replaced soon I am told).