Romsey Advertiser - 20 June 2008

Written by Sandra Gidley on Fri 20th Jun 2008

Last Saturday, after wishing Bill luck on his tandem ride down the Rhine Valley, I took a car load of party supporters to Henley. Following the election of Boris Johnson there is a by election there. Having been the beneficiary of a lot of help from party workers in the Romsey 2000 by election then I like to return the favour whenever possible. It struck me that there are a lot of similarities between the two constituencies so it will be interesting to see what the result is next week.

I visited St Mary's stadium on Monday. This was not a free ticket to a football match but a chance to see what was going on at the junior citizen event being run by Southampton City Council. I sat in on a couple of workshops on knife crime and cyber bullying and it was good to see that the children were all engaged and actively participating.

It was then time to travel back to Westminster and the beginning of the London part of my week. A lot of talk has been around the strange resignation of David Davis which happened after I had submitted last week's column. In Westminster there is a good deal of speculation and healthy cynicism about the whole affair but a fair section of the public seem to be supportive. In some ways this has surprised me as many people tell me that they want politicians to get on with the job and stop playing games.

One of the topical debates this week was on the subject of polyclinics. There is more heat than light generated on this subject. Locally, we are not directly affected by any current plans. There is to be a GP led health centre in Basingstoke and this is unlikely to have much impact on local people. The Minister assured us that GP led centres are not the same as polyclinics but then struggled to define what the difference was. I had to reflect that if the Minister was confused then what chance do the public and health professionals have of understanding everything that is going on?

I have also been considering how to take the issue of the rail link bus forward. Stagecoach are dropping some of the less profitable services and Hampshire County Council have said in the past that there is little money available and they have actually been cutting bus subsidies. A recent letter from the Minister confirms that the Council made no representations about the non inclusion of the rail bus link in the franchise consultation process so maybe they should compensate for their previous oversight? I would be interested to know what people think.