AN OPEN LETTER TO SARAH NEWTON MP FROM CORNISH SOLIDARITY. "Cornishness is for life, not just for St Piran's Day and 80 minutes at Twickenham!" Dear Mrs Newton The following headline has attracted our attention: http://cornishstuff.com/…/sarah-newton-wades-into-row-abou…/ This followed another concerning report that ten minor injuries units in Cornwall were facing imminent closure, which was later categorically denied by an NHS spokesman on the Laurence Reed programme. Someone is lying; time and circumstance will no doubt reveal the guilty party! Politicians often forget that OUR NHS is not their plaything or a political football to be used as a command and control device when trifling with the sentiments of the masses. Given your lamentable record of dealing with your constituents' legitimate past concerns, which evidence passed to us suggests you patronise and ignore, something pretty seismic must be going on for you to leap into action in the manner you belatedly have. Some of us have had sufficient time to reflect and come to regret having voted for you. You will no doubt be aware of the disrespect and anger that your Government and Cornwall Council are currently labouring under; you may also be aware that there is a petition gathering signatures calling for the removal of its chief planning officer. www.change.org/p/cornwall-council-phil-mason-council-s-chief-planning-officer-has-failed-cornwall-and-must-resign The thousands of comments it has attracted make interesting reading leaving one in no doubt just how restless the natives really are. The current insane growth agenda so beloved of your Government via Savid Javid has caused extreme distress and frustration, which has now boiled over to anger with both your Government and Cornwall Council, as you all play the blame game while actually doing nothing to stem the lunacy. This disastrous growth agenda is resulting in a rapidly rising population at a time when health provision has in real terms faced dramatic cuts, and when coupled with a creaking and saturated infrastructure, has created a perfect storm of discontent from which you and your five colleagues are about to feel the blast. There has been continual blatant buck passing between Cornwall Council and Westminster over responsibilty for this dire state of affairs. This has got to stop. It has been noted how skilfully Cornwall's six MPs have side-stepped the issue, toeing the party line rather than fighting together for the best interests of those Cornish people you were elected to represent. Again this has got to stop! You in particular have stood idly by while the speculative developers who bankroll your party have been given free rein to trash your constituency, to the benefit of the usual privileged few, while the vast majority are forced to endure the ensuing misery and chaos. Again this has got to stop! The sooner every one of you recognises how serious the problems are, that you are jointly and severally liable for, the sooner respect for the establishments deemed responsible can begin to be rebuilt. We urge you to accept that inequality in matters such as healthcare wages and housing is not a recipe for a stable and prosperous community. The NHS is not free - we pay for it via our taxes. We are dismayed that money from our taxes can always be found for vanity projects like HS2 and Trident, but the umbrella of austerity chokes off the cash flow for everything else, no matter how worthy. These damaging and divisive policies must be re-visited. If your Government and Cornwall Council persist along the current trajectory, we suggest that the waters will get ever stormier to the serious detriment of us all. Yours faithfully The Cornish Solidarity Team We suggest that you take a moment to reflect on this video clip... https://www.facebook.com/NyeBevanNews/videos/2054852861395309/ And ponder on this which proves that little has changed in 2000 years: “Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all of our passions and appetites the love of power is the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. “The ardour of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries and the fear of future dangers all contribute to inflame the mind and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood.” Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And a response from one campaigner down west (a former planning officer with a former Cornish district council): "I was thinking this morning about why this is happening to Cornwall. As far as I can see, there are three main reasons: 1) The creation of a Unitary Authority. This was unwanted by the electorate, and undemocratically imposed on us. Prior to its creation, there were six district planning authorities, which brought greater planning control. None, of course, were perfect (we all remember the Cream Teas and Concrete scandal of North Cornwall DC, and there were shady goings-on at Restormel under its chief, a certain Phil Mason), but control divided between 6 separate teams is surely preferable and more effective than one in charge of the entire Duchy. Those 6 authorities also had the benefit of a substantial Planning Policy Guidance from central government, and District-wide Local Plans (of which more below). 2) The scrapping of the District-wide Local Plans. Local Plans for each of the six district authorities had been produced during the decade proper to the formation of the Unitary Cornwall Council. I can't speak for 5 districts, but am well aware of the contents of Penwith's (as I contributed some of it). All in all, it was a very decent local plan, with many protective policies, and I dare say that the other 5 were similarly protective of the areas that we hold dear. The first thing that the Unitary Authority did was to select some policies from those and discard the rest. Years of work wasted in one fell swoop. With the Cornwall Local Plan, they will all have been discarded by now, and then there's the drastically reduced PPG (see below). 3) Tory Government. The Planning Policy Guidance was very large, running to several volumes. Unwieldy but essential, in my own opinion as a former planner. This government pared the lot down to a single document of less than 100 pages. This inevitably left loopholes in Planning policy a mile wide, and that's where the developers swooped, and with such amazing speed that they can only have been tipped off by Ministers in advance. In no time at all, it was the developers who now held the reins of planning and not the local planning authorities, just as the previous CEO, Andrew Kerr, admitted. It was central government, in cahoots with the large developers who dictated the content of our Local Plan, and the blatant collusion between the appointed Inspector, Emerson, and the developers was plain to all who witnessed it in Newquay. We never stood a chance. So, how do we unravel this and set it right? Clearly this Tory government has to go and, with any luck, a General Election may be forced in the spring, and the Tories will not win it. Therefore, we should make contact with Labour Headquarters and try to engage Corbyn and his team in discussion, with the aim of making reform planning policy and control a priority for the new government, i.e. to undo the damage that the Tories inflicted on it. Equally clearly, the Unitary Authority itself has to go, and a massive push for a Cornwall-only regional Assembly is essential in that regard. Being subsumed (again) into a meaningless "South West Region" as Sajid Javid intends, has to be avoided at all costs, because we all know, from bitter experience, how severely disadvantageous that would be for Cornwall. What form should such as Assembly take? I think the MK's proposal is an excellent one which only needs more detailing. I attach a copy of that proposal. We also need to persuade a new Government that a Cornish Assembly is the way forward, and the likes of Bernard Deacon are well-placed to formulate a workable case for us to present."