VIEWPOINT FOR 8 MAY 2008
FROM DR RICHARD TAYLOR

I had a bad start to this week. I left home at 7.25am to get to my office in London before 11am to catch up with my assistant before an important meeting and Health Questions. Due to signalling failures and broken down trains I did not get into my office until 2.45pm - a record journey of over 7 hours. Why is it so difficult to improve the reliability of our railways?
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The Lea Castle closure is going ahead as I regret we all expected just because it is no longer financially viable and despite efforts nobody has been able to find more users of the service to make it viable. The battle now is to try to keep the service within Wyre Forest for the benefit of residents, users and staff and to this end we have to put pressure on the Worcestershire Primary Care Trust (PCT), the commissioners of the service and the Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership Trust who I presume will be the new providers. As they are both county-wide organisations and have other preferred sites this is going to be a very tough battle. I have a meeting with the chiefs of the Mental Health Partnership Trust fairly soon and they already know my views which I will remind them about. I have received an anonymous letter with allegations of irregularities about the process of closure which I will look into.
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It was no surprise that in view of the Prime Minister's poor showing ever since he dithered about the possible General Election last November, culminating in his mis-handling of the row about the abolition of the 10p income tax band, that in the local elections across the country there was wide support for the Conservatives. 

We in Health Concern were delighted to hold our own and thank our loyal supporters. The only independent group that did better, as far as I know, was the group in Blaenau Gwent where people gave Mr Brown a bloody nose by voting for the independent group as they were in one of the traditionally safest of Labour seats and would be very unlikely to support the Conservatives.
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Last Friday I enjoyed a visit to King Charles I School to meet a group of year 7 and 8 students who with the help of two more senior students and their teacher have achieved a Green Flag, the highest of the Eco–School Awards for their work on global issues including energy saving and recycling. 
They were full of enthusiasm and ideas. They are monitoring the school's energy usage with a view to improving it and I am sure their enthusiasm is spilling over into reducing energy usage at home, no doubt influencing their parents too! 

I also met sixth formers, Hannah-Jane Wilkins and Valerie Wass, who had just been with the Holocaust Educational Trust on a one day visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were both intensely moved by the experience and are determined to communicate to others their knowledge of the true horrors of the Holocaust to try to ensure that it can never ever be repeated.

RT

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