Bournemouth Borough Council Post Offices Meeting

Straight off the plane this afternoon and down to the Town Hall to attend a meeting of the Developing Communities and Tackling Crime Scrutiny and Review Panel. The meeting was about the Post Office closure programme in Dorset and a number of councillors and members of the public attended.

I'm delighted to report that a motion deploring the closure programme was passed by the panel unanimously. They also called for Bournemouth Council to approach Poole and Christchurch to organise a joint approach to any proposed closures, starting with Bournemouth offering support to Poole over their opposition to the closure of the Post Office at Adastral Square, Canford Heath.

The motion now goes to Bournemouth's Cabinet for their approval and action.

A salutory lesson from the US

I have been to Florida before, but never to the part where I am currently staying, which is the coastal strip to the north of Miami. My previous trip was limited to the Keys and Miami itself.

The one thing that has struck me is that there really are no facilities for pedestrians in this area. The communities to the north of Miami create one huge strip of suburbia, strung out along the beaches. The beach fronts themselves are not disimilar to similar areas in Spain or France, however there any similarity ends.

Unless you have a car I can't see how you can reach facilities. It took us some time to find a grocery store yesterday. There are the odd Seven - 11s, however these don't sell fresh fruit, vegetables or bread. Unless you are able to take your car to the local out of town supermarket there are no facilities to buy food. There are of course the ubiquitous malls, however even these have no food shops in them. How do the elderly and vulnerable manage?

The announcement of the closure of the Adastral Square Post Office in Canford Heath this week brings home again how fragile our local services are. If we're not to become like Florida we need to ensure our local communities retain these services.

We announced on Tuesday the extension of our petition to specifically cover the Adastral Square closure, asking the post office to ensure that the service is retained in this area of the Heath. Local facilities have to be fought for these days, I'm determined we'll lead that fight.

A salutory lesson from the US

I have been to Florida before, but never to the part where I am currently staying, which is the coastal strip to the north of Miami. My previous trip was limited to the Keys and Miami itself.

The one thing that has struck me is that there really are no facilities for pedestrians in this area. The communities to the north of Miami create one huge strip of suburbia, strung out along the beaches. The beach fronts themselves are not disimilar to similar areas in Spain or France, however there any similarity ends.

Unless you have a car I can't see how you can reach facilities. It took us some time to find a grocery store yesterday. There are the odd Seven - 11s, however these don't sell fresh fruit, vegetables or bread. Unless you are able to take your car to the local out of town supermarket there are no facilities to buy food. There are of course the ubiquitous malls, however even these have no food shops in them. How do the elderly and vulnerable manage?

The announcement of the closure of the Adastral Square Post Office in Canford Heath this week brings home again how fragile our local services are. If we're not to become like Florida we need to ensure our local communities retain these services.

We announced on Tuesday the extension of our petition to specifically cover the Adastral Square closure, asking the post office to ensure that the service is retained in this area of the Heath. Local facilities have to be fought for these days, I'm determined we'll lead that fight.

Adastral Square Post Office Closure

I've been contacted by a number of very concerned residents of Canford Heath this evening. It appears that the Post Office in Adastral Square has announced it will be closing at the end of next month.

I'm not sure if this is the first of the closures we anticipated as a result of the Government's restructuring announcement last month. I'm attempting to find out more detail at the moment and will keep you abreast of developments.

Campaigning against NHS cuts

Thanks to everyone who signed our Stop Gordon Brown's NHS Cuts petition on Saturday. We spent some time in Wareham, Poole Town Centre and outside ASDA at Canford Heath and collected over 500 signatures to boost the petition.

If you didn't get a chance to sign out petition, you can do so online here.

Why are we campaigning on these issues?

The Royal College of Nursing estimated in August that 18,000 jobs have been cut from NHS hospitals in recent months, 81 community hospitals are still threatened by cutbacks or closure, according to the Community Hospitals Association; 2,036 bed losses have occurred since April

This is on top of the 2,500 beds which were lost from NHS hospitals in 2004-05 and the 6,000 beds cut from NHS hospitals in 2005-06. In just three years, therefore, the NHS is set to lose 12,500 beds – a cut in capacity of 7 per cent.

We want an end to Labour's interference, the NHS has just gone through its tenth reorganisation since Labour came to power nine years ago. We believe decisions affecting local services should not be taken by distant politicians, but by the patients and frontline staff who use and work in our local NHS.

Too much money has been diverted from patient care by an NHS bureaucracy which has swelled its ranks by over 100,000 people since 1997. Gordon Brown's financial mismanagement is forcing short-term decision-making. Hospitals are closing their wards to patients without replacing them with the services needed in the community.

We believe that short-term cuts in the NHS at the expense of building services for the future are unacceptable, and that this short-sightedness will prove even more costly in the long run.

I have a number of friends and family members who work in the NHS, their experiences bear these comments out. We should be very proud of our health service, the dedication of the staff working within it is examplary. It's such a shame that it's the politicians who have let it down, it's time it was freed from being a political football and placed under the control of an independent board.

Finally, it was good too to see our local Lib Dems campaigning at ASDA as well, I support wholeheartedly their campaign for more funding for our local police force. I wish them luck with their campaign and I hope we'll be seeing them campaigning as often as we are on these vital issues.