We should name and shame on home care scandal

09 APR 2009

* £165 pension per week

* non means-tested

* end the “anything for profit” care system

BBC, Britain’s Homecare Scandal 9 APR

After viewing extracts from tonight’s Panorama, including undercover footage from York, Green Party lead European Election Candidate Dr Martin Hemingway is calling for the naming and shaming of councils putting cost cutting before their duty of care. He comments :

“The footage from York, Harrow and South Lanarkshire is absolutely shocking and the blame needs to be shared by service providers and councils.

“Councils involved in contracting out care to the lowest bidder know that this cannot provide an acceptable level of care. A company cannot bid £9.95 an hour and offer the level of service that councils should deliver. Massive corners will be cut and many customers will suffer neglect, discomfort and loss of dignity.

“This “anything for a profit” approach is no different from the behaviour of the banks and those responsible should be named and shamed.

“Many older people are struggling with reduced income on savings and big fuel bills. 25% of UK pensioners are living below the official UK poverty line making many dependent on handouts from family, friends and charities.

“I would like to see a council’s league table to see how low councils are prepared to stoop on home care provision.

“The way pensioners are treated in the UK is nothing short of a disgrace. The Green Party pledges to support the National Pensioners Convention’s call for a £165 a week non-means-tested citizens’ pension for every pensioner in the UK, ensuring that none fall into poverty after a lifetime of contributing to society.”

Martin Hemingway

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party.

The Green New Deal: How not to do it

06 FEB 2009

Today’s government announcement of 400,000 “green jobs” misses the point of the Green New Deal, the Green Party said today.

On hearing the plans, Martin Hemingway, lead candidate for Yorkshire and the Humber for the European Elections, said “Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas co-authored the “Green New Deal” proposals launched in July 2008. It has taken Gordon Brown nearly 8 months to respond by ignoring common sense measures that can create green collar jobs now.

“The Kirklees “Warm Zone” project has shown that homes can be insulated with an immediate payback in job creation, energy savings and lower fuel bills. The government should be taking the scheme nationwide now.”

Professor John Whitelegg(1), leading academic and consultant and Green Party spokesperson on sustainable development, said this morning:

“The Brown New Deal is not a Green New Deal. It relies on nuclear power, which is not remotely green and which sustains the fewest jobs per megawatt of any form of electricity generation.

“Replace nuclear with renewable energy and you will get the same amount of energy with far more jobs, and ultimately at a lower cost.

“Carbon capture is neither zero-carbon nor jobs-rich. The government recently trailed a claim of only 50,000 jobs in so-called ‘clean coal’ by 2030. But figures soon to be released by the Green Party will show how wind energy could create four times as many jobs ten years sooner.”

Professor Whitelegg concludes, “We know how to achieve a zero-carbon economy through jobs-rich green energy policies, so why on earth should we tinker with jobs-poor unproven technology that keeps us dependent on fossil fuels?”

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Martin Hemingway

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party.

1. John Whitelegg is Visiting Professor of Sustainable Transport at Liverpool John Moores University, Professor in the Dept of Biology at York and at the Stockholm Environment Institute, University of York, and Managing Director of Eco-Logica Ltd transport consultancy based in Lancaster.

Green Party article

More than 92,000 properties lie empty in Yorkshire and the Humber

15 FEB 2009

Yorkshire and the Humber’s lead Green Party candidate for the European Elections writes on the growth in homes lying empty in the region causing urban blight and distress to local residents. Councils and government must take action.

Martin Hemingway said “The number of homes left empty in Yorkshire and the Humber is rising and action must be taken to reverse this trend. With a record low in home buying and a surge in repossessions we are likely to see more and more empty properties down every street. Government and local councils must get to grips with this before it gets out of control.”

“Councils need to audit the abandoned and derelict empty homes, remove council tax discounts on long term empty homes, and invest money to bring empty homes back into use. The scope of powers allowing local authorities to take possession of the most problematic empty properties should be increased. It is unpleasant for people to live alongside empty homes and reduces the vibrancy of our communities. The Empty Homes Agency has shown it takes one-sixth of the carbon emissions to refurbish a home than to build a new one.”

3.1% of homes across England have been empty for more than 6 months but in Yorkshire and the Humber region that figure is 4.1%. This is expected to get worse if the recession continues unless Government takes action to create jobs in the region by introducing a Green New Deal. This would see money invested in renewable energy and energy conservation.

New figures from the Empty Homes Agency show that between 2007 and 2008 the number of homes lying empty in our region increased from 78,850 to 92,409. Numbers fell from 2000 to 2006 and then started to rise again. People’s homes being repossessed in large numbers and new-build flats in city centres are blamed for the increase in the number of vacant properties.

In the four most Southerly regions only 2.5% are empty for that long. There is a North-South divide blighting Britain but Greens would ensure the EU would support regions hit harder by recession.

Martin Hemingway

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

Notes

Source for Statistics:

Department of Communities and Local Government – Empty Homes Agency

http://www.emptyhomes.com/index.html

Local community is base unit

Jobs available in a community should be done by members of that community.

4 FEB 2009

Letter to press

The issues surrounding the wildcat strikes are complex and we should not let ourselves be tricked by xenophobic political groups into thinking otherwise. We cannot, and nor do the majority of strikers, condemn the Portuguese and Italian workers. They are victims of the same recession and are trying to find work and better their lives, as we all might do. Neither do we condemn the strikers at Lindsey and elsewhere who are trying to save their jobs in the midst of recession.

British citizens have the right to work in other EU countries and of 2 million from the UK who live in Europe, two-thirds are working in jobs which could be done by citizens of that country. That is more than the 1 million from other EU countries who work in the UK.

The employers who bring them in, however, have refused to recruit local people. If they are doing this so that they can pay lower wages and offer worse terms and conditions of employment, then they are to be condemned. The directive which was intended to protect the rights of workers employed in EU countries other than their own has been interpreted differently across Europe. In the UK it is only taken to cover statutory duties such as the minimum wage and working time directive. In other European countries it also covers agreements on pay and terms and conditions. If it was interpreted in that way in the UK there would be little advantage in shipping in foreign workers from EU countries.

The Green Party takes the local community as the base unit. This means jobs available in a community should be done by members of that community. This would help towards making communities sustainable. The Green Party is not an advocate of unregulated economic globalisation and we do not favour the mass movement of workers all round the world as multinational companies shift their operations to minimise costs and maximise profits. Instead, we believe the recession should be used as an opportunity to invest in creating green jobs. More workers should be employed in industries such as energy efficiency and renewable energy development. This would help reduce our dependency on overseas supplies of carbon fuels, and would foster UK manufacturing again so that we produce what we use rather than transport goods from sweatshops in China and Thailand.

Martin Hemingway

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

You can’t just blame greedy banks, Gordon!

Martin Hemingway on short selling

27 JAN 2009

Dear Sir,

The government has allowed an economic boom to get out of control in increasingly unregulated markets. A massive recession has followed and billions of our money has been used to bail out the banks. Gordon Brown reassures us that only he has the experience get us out of the mess.

Despite clear warnings the ban on short selling shares ended on 16 January. On the same day the hedge funds that helped get us into this mess made big profits by targeting Barclays’ shares and the stock market then plummeted again.

You can’t just blame greedy banks, Gordon. Where are the real alternatives to failed economic policies and the tougher regulation to give us some confidence that our money is plugging the sink and not just going down the drain ?

Yours sincerely,

Martin Hemingway

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

Stand up to hatred

27 JAN 2009

We must never again stand by and let hatred take root.

The Green Party stands against racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and bigotry of all kinds.

Holocaust Memorial Day is the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides. On it, we commemorate victims, honour survivors and commit to tackling prejudice, discrimination and racism in the present day. We encourage nations to conquer genocide and atrocity and individuals to stand up against hatred.

Historians now estimate that between five and six million people were murdered during the Second World War by the Nazi regime because they were Jewish. Another five to six million were killed because of their skin colour, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious belief or political affiliation. Many more were persecuted, not allowed to work, or were moved from their homes in ghettos, including the Warsaw ghetto.

Racism, ethnic division and intolerance have continued to fuel violence and genocide in countries like Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda. It’s vital we should take this time to remember the survivors of all such tragedies and those who go on suffering around the world.

The key lesson we must remember from the Holocaust is that we must never again stand by and let hatred take root.

Greens are determined not to forget, and to fight always against prejudice, discrimination and the forces of fascism.”

Martin Hemingway

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

Martin Hemingway asks Obama to keep his promise of a better future together.

The president is talking of a better world. He is talking of using the position and influence of the United States to forge a future where there will be less violence and less inequality.  He wants to take action on climate change and provide all US citizens with healthcare.

We agree with many of his aims but would like him to promote peace in Afghanistan as well as in Gaza and Iraq .  We want a stop to the arms trade which provides aggressive regimes with cluster bombs, depleted uranium and phosphorus bombs.

Palestine will need help after the end of hostilities if further deaths from disease resulting from the lack of amenities such as clean water are not prevented.  Basic healthcare, clean water and food supplies will be urgently needed.

We would like to see support from the US for human rights around the world, but its own house needs to be set in order as well. Though the richest country in the world it has one of the greatest levels of inequality and does not even provide free health care which has been available in the UK since 1948.

The solution to climate change should not include an expansion of nuclear power production. People in the US are massively wasteful of energy and they could learn from initiatives in the UK such as free insulation for householders in Kirklees.

We welcome the new president and have hopes that he will bring in a new era of negotiation rather than aggression, caring for communities rather than rampant consumerism, and recognition of the human rights and dignity of all the world’s citizens.

Martin Hemingway

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party.

mhemingway@ntlworld.com

Martin Hemingway congratulates the new President of the United States

18 JAN 2009

Dear President Barack Obama,

Congratulations on your election and best wishes for your inauguration on January 20th

You bring new hope to the people of the world as you become the president of the most powerful country, with the greatest economic and military power.

Having read with care many of your speeches and policies on your readable and informative website we anticipate that you will show ethical and moral leadership in meeting the extreme challenges that face us today..

Your inauguration brings a new opportunity to promote environmental and social justice in the US and worldwide.  You will be able to develop and implement many policies which will rebuild people’s belief in the fairness of the USA and its ability to influence the human rights and environmental agendas.

Climate change is the greatest challenge the people of the world have ever faced.  Action must be immediate, far-reaching, and fundamental.  It will mean a change for rich and poor alike and will mean that affluent countries will have to cease their squandering of the world resources and excessive use of fossil fuels, leading to the USA having the greatest greenhouse gas emissions per capita of any country in the world.

We have held street clinics and stalls here in Yorkshire in the UK where people have told us that they will do what they can to reduce their carbon emissions but that they do not expect to make a difference to climate change while the US does nothing to reduce it’s far greater per capita emissions. Some state this as an excuse to do nothing themselves.

We expect and hope that you will close Guantanamo and cease the degradation and torture of prisoners.  They should also be brought before recognised civilian courts within a reasonable time.

Please act quickly to end the USA ’s support of the Israeli bombing of Gaza.

We would like a new stronger and more comprehensive UN International Human Rights Convention which includes protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation, transgender identity and HIV status; on disability including through mental health problems; on gender; race; religion and age.

Diplomatic, economic and military support should be withdrawn from regimes like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria that persistently deny freedom to their own people and oppress their own citizens.

The USA should support the International Criminal Court, to bring to justice the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Withdraw troops from Iraq.

Develop a fairer international economic framework, which effectively introduces a fairer and less exploitative economic system.

Ensure that nourishing food, clean water, the treatment of sewage and  health care are available to all the people of the world.

End the USA ’s practice of tying aid to poor countries to the banning of termination of pregnancy and contraception.

With your inauguration we have a chance to improve the conditions in which billions of people live across the world.  We do not expect this to happen in the next four years but that term will offer the time to make a new beginning, one which will bring hope to the hearts of the citizens of the world.

Martin Hemingway

Leeds

Lead Euro-candidate for the Yorkshire and the Humber Green Party.

mhemingway@ntlworld.com