We’ll only charge if you have savings
I want to reassure residents following last week’s story (Council pulls cord on free safety for elderly and disabled, Southwark News, May 12, 2016)?on safety alarms that the council’s priority to continue keeping people safe and well in their homes has not changed.
Southwark is facing a huge challenge in balancing significant budget cuts with rising care costs on all its care services.
Our Fairer Contributions Policy ensures we are fair and balanced to all of our service users. As the number of people needing care services grows, asking those who can afford to pay to make a contribution ensures we are able to keep services free for our most vulnerable residents.
This brings the council in line with neighbouring boroughs. We will only charge for a care package if someone has savings of more that £23,250 and in most cases there will be no charge or only a proportion of all the care they receive. Any contribution is for the total care package received, not just safety alarms.
All the income the council receives through the 2% council tax precept will continue to fund care services for residents, but unfortunately this won’t come close to filling the huge gap we face in social care funding.
We will continue to prioritise our most vulnerable residents, as well as pushing the Government to fairly fund our public care system.
Cllr Stephanie Cryan, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Housing
Public are sick of career politicians
I’m disappointed that Neil Coyle has once again taken to print to express opposition to his (and my) party’s leadership.
He says that he regrets helping Jeremy Corbyn onto the leadership ballot. I’m sure he does. In fact, I suspect he regretted it as soon as it became clear that Corbyn was going poll more votes than the rest of the candidates combined.
He, along with several other MPs, helped Corbyn to stand in order to ‘broaden the debate’. I suspect they imagined a scenario where his so called ‘hard left’ ideology would be utterly humiliated, and that the charge that Labour under Ed Miliband had been ‘too far left’ would be put to bed and the Media placated. That went well.
In the Southwark News, Neil says no one has ever raised the Falklands or Trident on the doorsteps of Bermondsey. I don’t doubt that, it’s probably the same in most of the country. However, it’s worth pointing out that any political party will have a position on these; as well as housing, education, the economy and the NHS.
For example on housing, Jeremy Corbyn said: “My priorities are one, invest in council housing with lifetime tenancies.
Two, regulate the private rented sector on quality, on length of tenure and in areas of high rent levels like London, there has to be maximum rent levels put in by region or by income level there’s got to be an affordability there…”
You have to ask yourself why the media made so much of the former and why some Labour MPs chose to go along with it?
I believe the concerns and priorities of the Labour leadership do reflect those of the people Neil meets on the doorstep.
So, in the absence of wider reporting, it’s up to Neil, and people like me to get that message across (try http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/priorities/). How’s that for an ambition?
As long as there’s a queue at the TV studio to air the laundry in public, the impression will be one of a collection of selfish individuals, vying for a seat at the top table. Who’s going to vote for that?
I think the fact that the non-voting public make up the largest part of the electorate, tells you that they are sick of career politicians.
Billy Pearce, Bermondsey
I want out of Europe
The older one gets, the more one worries about what sort of country my grandchildren and great grandchildren are likely to inherit.
Our PM, David Cameron, who perhaps sees his next career move as President of Europe, could see this as his rich reward for blackmailing the British people into staying in the corrupt EU club.
Parliaments are filled with careerist placemen and opportunitistic pygmies on the make, feathering their own nests and lining their pockets at tax-payers’ expense.
Only recently we learnt that MPs are to receive a £1,000 a year pay rise, on top of the inflation busting £7,000 they received last year.
You would have thought that after the parliamentary allowances scandal they’d have a little more self-awareness and ask themselves how this would seem to the outside public.
Then there are the people waiting weeks or months for a hospital appointment for vital operations.
Young families still paying off student loans at 30 plus and having to rent a property because they will never have the money to buy.
This country probably has the worst infrastructure (roads, rail and airports), in Europe, an NHS creaking at the seams, a manufacturing industry that is still declining and defence cuts beyond safe limits.
All this can be blamed on poor successive government decision making for decades. That’s it – end of rant.
Reg O’Donoghue, Walworth
Remain in the EU
I was born in 1944 – during the Second World War.
If the present European structure had existed at the begining of the 20th century, millions of people would not have been killed and injured.
To prevent any repetition of this terrible history it is vital that Britain remains part of the European Union.
John D. Beasley, Peckham