Andrew George
Promoting the
Politics of Courage
I’m running a positive campaign to restore decency and honesty to our politics. To build a brighter future. To combat those who want us to become more inward-looking, backward-looking, more self-absorbed. I’ll build a campaign for an outward-looking, forward-looking and compassionate country.
We’ve been misled by a privileged clique who’ve irresponsibly played on fears to stoke prejudice. We must get beyond the Brexit chaos they’ve dragged our country into. We must restore the things that matter for the sake of our children’s future – our NHS, our schools and the very sustainability of our planet.
Come and join a growing campaign team. We’re determined to win this seat back this time, to make the difference, to build a brighter future.
Many people say “you politicians are all the same”. That statement has never been more untrue. The choice here is stark:
Andrew George - Standing up for Cornwall
National campaigner, local campaigner, former MP.
Andrew describes his role - "Seeking out the silent voices. Standing up to bullies. Fighting for justice”
Liberal Democrats - Building a brighter future
The Conservatives promised at the last election that above all they would “Fix Social Care”. This week’s Cornwall news confirms they’ve achieved the opposite. If they want to slash care provided to the sickest and vulnerable they should go and explain that to the patients and their families themselves, and not expect the heroes working on the frontline of our overstretched care services to do it for them.
They have already made a difficult social care situation far worse than it need be. Now it’s at risk of spiraling out of control. It’s no wonder they left the announcement of the ‘Critical Incident’ in social care till just after the Full Council meeting this week. Otherwise they would have faced immediate and serious questions about their appalling handling of the health and care services and the counterproductivity of their proposals for dealing with it.
As a new member of the Council’s Health Scrutiny Committee I’ve become used to the Conservatives treating it with discourtesy. Once again we found out about this after the media had been informed. Their explanation was that this was "a slow build-up of pressure" so they could have raised this within the Council before.
They say they want to discharge 180 hospital patients and to “keep people away from hospital”. They say they’ll do this by slashing in half the care currently provided for those who need it most. But this runs the risk of achieving the opposite; driving many more patients towards our already struggling hospitals, quite apart from adding to the human tragedy of leaving hundreds of people who need help in avoidable distress.
The Conservatives created this problem. They closed community hospitals, underfunded social care, refused to support care workers with inadequate pay and conditions, refused to support mandatory safe staffing, ignored those who urged them to take workforce planning seriously, pumped taxpayers’ money into second homes rather than keyworker housing and ignored all warnings of the serious detriment of staff exodus following Brexit.
The local Conservatives keep telling us that because they have total control here – ie run the Country, hold all MP seats and run the Council – they will make sure Cornwall gets the very best deal. Well, now’s a perfect opportunity for them to prove it.
The situation won’t get any easier. The Government’s announcement on the lifting of Covid restrictions (made in another desperate attempt to distract attention from the PM’s difficulties) comes before the latest wave is properly under control. And it contradicts the sensible advice from Cornwall’s Public Health Team.
The Conservatives now say they want to fill the gap with 1) more volunteering – Cornwall already has outstanding voluntary organisations, volunteer rates and neighbourliness – 2) self-denying stoicism – but the current problem is the inadequacy of care support. Not that those who need it are overwhelmed with more help than they need – 3) slashing the number of care packages provided for those most in need – the Portfolio holder says he’s asked Council staff to see if those who “have a package of care four times a day can have it two times a day instead”.
The first two proposals are feeble as a serious response to a ‘Critical Incident’ (though they should of course always be an integral part of wider longer-term strategy to consistently grow the capacity of neighbourliness, communities and the voluntary sector). But the threat to slash care packages available to those who most need them is both menacing and will have the opposite effect, making the ‘critical incident’ all the more critical. It also demonstrates naivety. How many of those who need packages of care four times a day – many of whom will have complex needs, be bed-bound and have continence issues - can really have their care support cut?
Those heartless or misguided Conservatives who say they want to slash care packages should be prepared to explain this to the patients and their families themselves.
www.andrewgeorge.org.uk/they-promised-to-fix-social-care-instead-theyve-failed-it/
They promised to "Fix Social Care" - Instead they've Failed it - Andrew George
www.andrewgeorge.org.uk
At the last election the Conservatives promised that above all they would “fix social care”. This week’s news confirms they’ve achieved the opposite. If they want to slash care provided to the...That's rather disingenuous. At the last election, when that promise was made, we didn't have a pandemic on our hands, a global pandemic, which initiated a panic everywhere, locked all doors in the name of infection control, and overloaded the NHS in what they can and cannot do. And that's without the secondary level of all of the above on care homes in particular, and in the care sector generally. And indeed the employment market as a whole. Often your criticism of the government is fair, uncomfortable but fair. This isn't one of those times.
Bang them up, bunch of lying crooks, they don't serve us
Local Conservatives MPs last night backed plans to force all electors to show photo ID before they're permitted to vote. This will again favour the Tories, and will be to the detriment of the less well-off, many of whom support other Parties.
Some of these MPs recently refused to back vaccine passports. Demonstrating a cynical lack of consistency.
While we're all distracted and entertained by the preposterous denials of the "one-rule-for-us ; another-for-the-rest" elite who run this show, they're continuing to quietly rig and gerrymander the system to their advantage.
One local Tory MP has even shown Johnsonian-level distain for truth and integrity by publicly claiming to back fair voting and electoral reform campaigns but who has consistently voted against every one of these sensible measures to improve our democracy. Just as he did again last night.
www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/uk-government-accused-of-rigging-democracy-with-election...
UK government accused of ‘rigging democracy’ with election changes
www.opendemocracy.net
Plans to impose First Past the Post voting system on mayoral and police crime commissioner elections were ‘sneaked out’, critics sayThe article attached appears to deal with the proposed abolition of limited preferential voting for certain positions, which is a completely retrograde step and hopefully will be so opposed as not to come into effect. Had the proposal for preferential voting in parliamentary elections some time back been promulgated in a more effective way, it might have received more support and the general public might have more appreciation of the benefits of preferential voting for public positions. . However, the matter of voter ID is a different thing altogether. In this modern world, you need to show ID (usually photographic) for virtually everything and it is absolutely reasonable to propose that voter ID should be required at the time individuals cast their votes. The Lib Dems need to cut the hyperbole on these matters and respond in a more factually based and logical manner on such matters.
They will try every dirty trick to stay in power and keep stealing from the public purse.
Thank you for drawing this to my attention. In the maelstrom of scandal and lies I seem to lose sight of important stories these days
I still don't have photo ID. I will be disenfranchised.
Where's the humans rights law when one needs it?
Politicians drawer their wages from the U.K. taxpayers purse...but politicians are all against the British as can be seen by their enforced globalisation of Britain....there will be a bloody war fought on Britain’s streets based on this political globalisation enforcement...by the end of this decade..Britain will burn that’ll be followed by France, Germany...🔥🔥🔥🔥
The Conservatives are NOT closing the multi-million £ tax loophole for second home owners. They're just making yet another purposeful-sounding announcement in their desperate attempt to save face.
The Conservatives were shamed into announcing in 2018 they would close the tax loophole they first created 2012, and which I've campaigned against for the past decade.
Four years later, and after hundreds of millions more of taxpayers' money has been lavished on second home property investors, Tory Minister Gove today makes yet another announcement (this is but the fourth occasion!) that they "close the loophole". Yet this extremely limp rule - which I predict will have no effect whatsoever - will not come in until April 2023.
They insist that second homes should be let for at least 70 of the 365 days a year. How many factories or shops call themselves serious businesses when they operate for less than one fifth of the year? This is preposterous.
If they want to do something useful they should claw back the £104 million of Cornwall's covid aid handed out to those second homers who use this loophole and instead use it to help the thousands of local families in serious housing insecurity. Taxpayers' money should be used to help people who need a secure first home, not to feather-bed the wealthy in their second homes.
I think we all know that if this level of taxpayers' money was instead inadvertently being overpaid on less well-off benefit recipients the Conservatives would have closed the loophole many years before!
It's no wonder local Tory MPs have proven themselves to be so confused. One of them wagging his finger at me just last week insisting that the the Government had closed the tax loophole! Will he apologise...?
cornishstuff.com/2022/01/14/gove-announces-new-rules-for-second-homes-to-change-tax-loophole/
Gove announces new rules for second homes to change tax loophole
cornishstuff.com
Michael Gove announces new rules for holiday lets and second homes that he claims will close the tax loophole Read Morewww.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-59995877?at_custom3=LR+BBC+Radio+Cornwall&at_custom1=link&...
Care to break this down into non ranty bitesize chunks that can be followed?
The loophole was created for the benefit of Tory patronage. Gove is the go to for procrastination and sleight of hand. I can't work out if he is as cynical as his peers or frustrated by them. Closing the loophole in a fair way is simple. via no rate relief on domestic or holiday let properties whatever their use. Claiming COVID assistance without evidence of actual financial loss as a result of the pandemic is simply fraud, isn't it? If I am missing something important, please let me know.
It is quite unbelievable that holiday home owners, who were charging £1500+ a week last summer, are avoiding paying council tax which is around £1500 a year, yet still expect rubbish to be collected from their holiday homes, as well as benefit from other services the council provides.
They should be paying double council tax. Their guests use up scarce resources and put pressure on a frail infrastructure.
Why don't they just make it so you can't classify as a business unless it is your primary source of income?
Tories are a total shambolic mess of a party. They look as if they are corrupt to core. Developers eating out of their hands, Airbnb rampant, throwing decent people onto the streets. Second home owners destroying communities up and down the country. Perhaps the privileged few should remember, when their toilets haven't been cleaned for a while, that their selfish activity got rid of the workforce that these vile interlopers relied on!
Unfortunately as time goes on, first time buyers like myself who are desperate to own their own home will simply leave! Once I finish college (after returning to retrain) I shall be leaving Cornwall as I simply cannot afford to buy and there is no sign of that changing
Heavens sake, my sister in a seaside town rents her ACTUAL home for that long in the summer because she's looking after our parents, and still doesn't call it a business!
Charging the second home owners is not going to hurt them as they are mostly very rich. I don't know what the answer is to creating houses for locals who need a first and only home. For some reason they won't build social housing, or just a token gesture of a couple on each development. I recently heard that someone building big flash houses put in for permission to build a couple of smaller ones for local people. Once the permission was given and propertys built they are actually going to be used as air b abd b. 🤬
Perhaps if second home owners,after the holiday period,is then forced to let out their properties at a reasonable rent to those in desperate need.i know it wont solve the problem and i suppose when the rental period finishes for the ne xt holiday period,at least it would give some the chance to look for somewhere more permanent
Well there's a surprise, Tories lied again. Say one thing do another, especially if it helps protect the interests of those who vote Tory.
An apology from a Tory is about as convincing as a python kindly stroking a sheep.
250 days a year would be more like it
Oh Please Andrew I was enjoying my meal and suddenly a picture of Gove arrived to spoil it I wonder who the next PM will be? No I'm not even guessing I want to enjoy my day ☺️
Fair point
Severe cuts mean the Environment Agency will in future only investigate the most severe pollution incidents.
As Rivers Trust CEO, Mark Lloyd says "Imagine the public outcry if the police said it would only investigate murders but ignore crimes which did not involve loss of life".
Conservative MPs were shamed into reversing their vote relaxing the permits on water company sewage discharges last autumn. So, to get around it this is what they do behind the scenes...
www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/10/ignore-low-impact-pollution-events-environment-agency...
Ignore reports of low-impact pollution events, Environment Agency tells staff
www.theguardian.com
Exclusive: river groups appalled by strategy set out in briefing that says agency has capacity to deal with only most severe casesHow I wish you were still our MP.
It's how they work. As a % of the monies involved they spend far more on benefit fraud than investigating tax evasion. If they cant change the law, they hinder the investigators. That's also why the electoral commission is underfunded.
That's not on
Disgraceful
It's obvious Johnson cannot cling on any longer.
But after he's gone, how will the Party which defended his evident lack of respect for truth and integrity assure the country it has learned any lessons?
Playgrounds locked, schools shut, group walks banned - but No10 was planning a lockdown party
inews.co.uk
The alleged party took place on the same day as ministers and police told Britons they could only meet one person outdoorsLock them up
The whole system has been discredited. The Tories might just salvage something if they get rid of the whole of this corrupt crew. Although even that seems unlikely. They should do the honest thing, all resign, and call a general election.
The problem lies with the Tory party and has done for a very very long time. Their values and ideology keeps returning leaders who will look after their privileged access to capital and power at the expense of the majority of inhabitants of the country. An open and meaningful Progressive Alliance to defeat them, then true proportional representation and fair devolution of power please.
Changing the ringmaster may be desirable but if there is one thing the Tories do not lack it is arrogant politicians who think they should rule. Getting rid of the ringmaster is not the answer but until the Great British Public stop voting Tory and ignoring their adject failings it appears we will continue to be governed by these arrogant, incompetent clowns.
People must gossip in Parliament. Surely other Tories knew.
When's the review result due? I've not heard any data attached to it.
Too late, the rot has set in! 😡🏴
Common Platform for Cornwall
