European Code Against Cancer

Earlier this week the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organisation, launched a new code against cancer focused on what people in Europe can do to halve our chances of cancer.

Currently each year in the European Union 2.66 million new cancer cases and 1.28 million people die from cancer every year. Imagine halving this.

The code is about highlighting what we can all do to prevent cancer. Things like avoiding tabacco, excessive alcohol, excessive sunlight and taking part in organised programmes cancel screening programmes.

  1. Do not smoke. Do not use any form of tobacco.
  2. Make your home smoke-free. Support smoke-free policies in your workplace.
  3. Take action to be a healthy body weight.
  4. Be physically active in everyday life. Limit the time you spend sitting.
  5. Have a healthy diet – Eat plenty of whole grains, pulses, vegetables and fruits. Limit high-calorie foods (foods high in sugar or fat) and avoid sugary drinks. Avoid processed meat; limit red meat and foods high in salt.
  6. If you drink alcohol of any type, limit your intake. Not drinking alcohol is better for cancer prevention.
  7. Avoid too much sun, especially for children. Use sun protection. Do not use sunbeds.
  8. In the workplace, protect yourself against cancer-causing substances by following health and safety instructions
  9. Find out if you are exposed to radiation from naturally high radon levels in your home. Take action to reduce high radon levels.
  10. For women – Breastfeeding reduces the mother’s cancer risk. If you can, breastfeed your baby. Limit the use of Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) it increases the chance of cancer.
  11. Ensure your children take part in vaccination programmes for – Hepatitis B (for newborns), Human papillomavirus (HPV) (for girls).
  12. Take part in organised cancer screening programmes for – Bowel cancer (men and women), Breast cancer (women), Cervical cancer (women).

These 12 points don’t guarantee anything except that you and I would be doing the most we possibly can to avoid cancer. But that has to be a great idea.

 

 

David Laws Letter

Last year we formally launched our campaign for a new local secondary school. We’ve been so successful that over 750 families have signed up to give there support and two school providers have applied to open it – Haberdashers’ and Charter.

But the same thorny issue could potentially scupper the brilliant school we all want – a site.

The obvious site is the Dulwich Hospital site where more extensive replacement health facilities only need around a third of the site. The remaining two-thirds would be ideal for our secondary school.

But we’ve hit two snags. By far the largest is Southwark Council are refusing to re zone the site and no longer insist on lots of housing. The second snag is Southwark Council won’t zone a site for one of the two Harris primary schools for the area – we’ve even suggested sites to them.

Bizarrely Southwark Council are refusing to help. It means the land for the secondary school would cost far more than £64M. NO government is going to spend so much on land for a single school however much it is required and desired.

To try and break this deadlock Cllr Rosie Shimell and I have written to Minister of State David Laws. We’re asking for his help and advice to get Southwark Council to actually do something to make our secondary school financially viable to be built on the amount of space we all desire.

Letter to David Laws 17 October 2014

European Human Rights

Increasingly politicians and press from the right have been decrying the European Court of Human Rights.

November 1950 European Convention on Human Rights was agreed. But their is little point of a convention without the teeth of a court to uphold it. So the attacks on the court are really attacks on the convention. The convention was designed to ensure the atrocities of the previous 20 years could never start again for signatory countries. It was also meant to hold back communism. It has been wildly successful at both of those objectives so far.

The convention articles, summarised below, are the bedrock of a civilised democratic society. It’s hard to imagine Britain without them.  A number of treaties commit us to them – everything from Scottish Devolution, Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement to EU membership.

So why is it so lambasted now?

Are their plans to bring back the death penalty? monitor all emails? Make trials less fair?

The reasons given are spurious. The silly examples given are perfectly resolvable without going for this drastic proposal.

hopefully the British people will see this for what it is. An attack on all our rights.

Summarised Articles:

1. Respect and ensure rights of people within the area of countries signed-up

2. Life. No unlawful killings by the state, proper investigations of suspicious deaths, duty to prevent foreseeable loss of life.

3. Torture. Prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment of punishment.

Continue reading →

Southwark School Meals – update

Eighteen months ago I highlighted Southwark Labours appalling record of ensuring schools meals in Southwark are healthy had dramatically improved after shining a light of their terrible performance  with 32 schools having only 1-3 stars May 2012.

So how are things now?

Southwark Labour was so stung by their poor results they now keep a separate list  for schools – and by keeping school results away from the Foods Standards Agency website makes these hygiene rating less visible for parents.

Southwark state that Albion Primary School and Langbourne Primary School (now named Dulwich Woods) have only two stars when last reported as inspected 16/05/13 & 21/05/13 respectively. All four East Dulwich schools – Goodrich, Goose Green, Heber and St.Anthony’s still have five stars which is great news.

But overall only 8 schools in Southwark have 2 or 3 stars. But this is still 8 more schools too many.

When will Labour Southwark take school food hygiene seriously enough?

 

New Dulwich Police Base

Boris Johnson our conservative Mayor of London closure of East Dulwich Police station in June 2013 without a suitable replacement has been a disaster for local Policing.

By the local Police management own admission at a Dulwich Community Council meeting our local Police now spend a third of their time traveling to and from our areas from their base in Camberwell.

To solve this problem local East Dulwich councillors and Dulwich Lib Dems have been campaigning for a new base for Police enabling our Police to minimise time away form our ares. Ideally a Police base but any base that they can work from. WE also need such a base for the general public to be able to meet our police to report crimes and issues in privacy.

After working behind the scenes for nearly a year Cllr Rosie Shimell and myself have formally proposed that the Dulwich Library annexe be used for this purpose. We have found budgets we allocate that could fund this. I’m hopeful that Southwark Police and Council will agree to this solution to our dire need for a local touch down based for Dulwich Police and residents.

Do you agree we need such a base?

 

Bakerloo Line Extension

For over 100 years London has talked about extending the Bakerloo line south. Extending it even started in the 1950’s but stopped after 18 months of building work.

The Mayor of London and Transport for London have released their London Infrastructure Plan 2050. It includes a Bakerloo line extension with little relationship to the past 100 years of historic proposals. Their proposal is to extend via the Old Kent Road via Lewisham to Beckenham and Bromley.

They are consulting on this extension please do respond.

Liberal Democrats have always said we want the Bakerloo line extended. For some time we’ve suggest it have two branches – one via Camberwell to Tulse Hill and terminating in Streatham and the second branch along the Old Kent Road to Lewisham and beyond. That each branch have 15 trains per hour of the maximum 32 possible in the central section of the Bakerloo line.

The Plan also shows clearly how poor public transport is in the Dulwich and West Norwood area proving the need for a Bakerloo branch. That road congestion will rocket between now and 2030 by 25% and ultimately London population increase by 2050 to something between 9.5 and 13.4 million people. Staggering growth.

Paedophilia Iceberg

Reflecting on the appalling Rotherham long-term child abuse, Jimmy Saville decades of abuse, many other public figures accused of casual child and other abuse, child abuse rings uncovered in Derby, Oxford, Rochdale, Telford and this week a paediatric haematologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital convicted of child abuse. Other systemic appearing abuse from religious leaders. The scale of child and adult abuse is colossal but increasingly what we’ve become aware of appears just the tip of the iceberg.

It is clear that for decades child abuse was ignored and covered up country wide. That suspicions were ignored. Victims ignored and worse – often the victims punished.

A number of separate enquiries have taken place essentially showing at best complacency on epic scales.

I’ve had a casework involving historic abuse and the police dealt with it sensitively and promptly.

We need every local authority and public body needs to assume that such abuse has occurred until they prove differently. We need to assume every public body is guilty of harbouring this historically. That every such body needs a systemic review of all the people ever in their charge confirming they didn’t receive abuse. That all Police reports need to be trawled to assess which ones abuse was not recorded but lesser crimes if any recorded and wrong police reports corrected and investigated where the victims wish this.

When we’ve purged our society of historic abuse and ensured all new allegations are properly investigated will we be truly fair and just society.

If you believe abuse is or has taken place whether you’re an adult or child get advice from the NSPCC   0808 800 5000, help@nspcc.org.uk or text 88858.

eSurgeries

For some time face to face surgeries have seen far fewer people attending.

Cllr Rosie Shimell and I have offered home visits, phone calls and mobile surgeries. The next logical step is eSurgeries.

If you’d like to see me for a face to face chat but over a Skype video call then please just get in touch and we will make it happen. My Skype username is CllrJamesBarber. Most evening I;ll be logging in but for a definitely appointment ping me an email or text.

james.barber@southwark.gov.uk

07900 227366

Ensuring Proper Dulwich School Provision

Southwark Council is about to embark on the journey towards a new Southwark Plan.

We have three local problems around the planning designation we need to resolve to ensure proper state school provision in the Dulwich area.

I have formally requested the councillor Cabinet member for Regeneration who is responsible for this mark.williams@southwark.gov.uk please let him know if you agree with me and copy me. Without these changes we will not have enough primary or secondary places in the right cirumstances and places:

1. Dulwich Hospital. After new health care provision that the remainder of the site, circa 18,000-20,000m2, be allocated for a new secondary school. Without such a planning designation change the government DfE will be unable to afford this much land as the cost would be more than £60m. (The East Dulwich Police station was sold for £6M and is 1/10th of the space because it wasn’t in planning terms protected as a site for eudcational use).

2. 520 Lordship Lane (former Harvester pub) That this be designated for education use. This would enable the Harris Primary school looking for a home to be placed there. Without this it seems likely that the new Harris Primary school will be placed at the Dulwich Hospital site OR they will apply to build on the East Dulwich Harris Girls Academy Metropolitan Open Land. Both of these options are much less desirable than 520 Lordship Lane.

3. 62-68 Half Moon Lane. The Dulwich Estate carved the absolute minimum space from the former Kings Biological Sciences centre for the Judith Kerr Bilingual Free School that opened 2013. Effectively they provided the main building and a tiny tiny playground – fencing off most of the site for future residential use. The lease includes a condition that the school must never talk about the minimal space leased to them. Ideally the whole site would be designated for educational use helping to push the Dulwich Estate towards being more charitable and the whole site being made available for the Judith Kerr Bilingual School. Effectively the Dulwich Estate have carved 2/3rds of the site for future residential building so that they provide more subsidy for private schools more over the state provided free school pupils having reasonable outside space.

To see the full email comunications – Dulwich Education Planning Status Request Email 26 August 2014

What other planning designations do we need changed?

Lib Dems Bring Greater Fairness For Council Leaseholders

One of the biggest problems is local councils out of the blue charging council leaseholders huge amounts for general maintenance. Often this appears to come from councils just not professionally planning ahead.

I’m proud to say that A cap has just been introduced to limit the amount local authorities and housing associations can charge leaseholders for repairs to council homes.

The new directions limit the amount authorities can charge for future major repair, maintenance, or improvement works when they are wholly or partly funded by the government.

Outside London the maximum amount residents can be charged for repairs on a property will be £10,000 in any five-year period. In London, the cap is £15,000 over the same time period.

If repair works cost more than the set limit, authorities will have to pay the rest.