A few months ago, many of you will have received from me a survey concerning the provision of health and care services. We received hundreds of responses, which I have been following up since. I now want to report back to you on what I have done.

I have met with three organisations to discuss the most common findings of the survey: Blackpool Victoria Trust’s Chief Executive Aidan Kehoe, NHS Blackpool’s Chief Executive Wendy Swift and the team at the Blackpool Carers Centre. My discussions were based

 At the hospital, I raised the following issues:

• Ensuring that the dignity of patients is maintained and that mixed sex wards and toilet facilities are eradicated.
• Improvements are made to hospital parking facilities.

 At NHS Blackpool, I discussed:

• Local public health priorities and how to reach out to those who most need help but are often those hardest to reach.
• Accessing GP services, and the appropriateness of a target-driven culture.

 At the Carers Centre, we spoke of:

• The problems with the benefits system that make it so hard for carers to claim the benefits to which they are entitled.
• The ways in which young carers can be identified and supported.
• The need for GPs to identify carers and consider their special health needs.

These are just some of the issues raised. With a background in health policy, I am committed to improving the quality of NHS healthcare and social care in the area. I know those I met with are too. That doesn’t mean there won’t be the occasional hiccough when things go wrong, as they sometimes do. But if I am fortunate enough to be elected your Member of Parliament, I promise that you will have a diligent and effective advocate on your behalf.

Warmest congratulations to Blackpool North & Cleveleys’ newest councillor, David Walmsley, who won the vacancy in Jubilee ward caused by the sad death of Alan Heppenstall. Thursday result was a tremendous success against a very determined UKIP opponent and a Labour Party that did its usual polling day scare story.

For those who missed it, David took 492 votes to 345 for UKIP, 331 for Labour and a humiliating 116 for the BNP on a day that was meant to be their own given Question Time. Compared with 2007, we have transformed a majority of just 17 into 147 – almost ten times as large! It also represents a swing to us from UKIP of 4.5% compared with 2007. It shows that Wyre Council under Russ Forsyth are doing a good job, and residents recognise that.

This is a fantastic achievement, and credit should go to the team of activists who helped deliver it – I won’t name them all, for fear of missing someone out(!), but you know if you helped! David in particular has worked like a Trojan to make sure we won.

Yet I read in the papers that UKIP could deny the Conservatives victory at the General Election – according to Labour Party research. Well they would say that wouldn’t they. UKIP were around at the last election, and they’ll be around at the next. And it is clear their support in this ward in Cleveleys is ebbing.

This is just the sort of attraction we need to make Blackpool a viable resort year round.

Well done to the Council for getting developers to a ‘feasibility’ stage – let’s hope we can get it to the final hurdle too. We don’t want to add to the Council’s archive of artists’ impressions!

If nothing else, it underlines why we should remain confident and optimistic about the resorts future – and not let programmes like last nights about the Kenbarry Hotel get us down!

It has been a busy few days, to say the least. I am sure you have seen the coverage in recent days, as well as the coverage of David Cameron’s speech tonight. I was struck by his optimistic message, even though we all recognise the challenge ahead as we seek to turn things round.

George Osborne’s speech where he set the context for public finances was also important. Once again, we had some of the honesty about the state we’re in that I know so many of you have been crying out for. But George made clear that we don’t have to be harsh to be tough on public spending. I was pleased to hear, for example, that things like the winter fuel allowance and the free TV licence for the over 85s will be maintained if we are fortunate enough to form a Government.

But you’ve seen the coverage on the news, so let me tell you what I have been up to myself.

Amongst the highlights:

·         I’ve met with Sir Howard Bernstein (Manchester’s Chief Executive) to hear about the work he has done with ReBlackpool considering the future of economic regeneration in Blackpool, and the Fylde more widely.

·         Met up with the Royal British Legion to discuss their manifesto for change – and welcomed the news that soldiers on deployment will have their operational allowances increased.

·         Attended the Every Disabled Child Matters fringe meeting to hear from young people what they themselves want to see from politicians. Inspiring stuff, and makes you realise the extent of the challenges so many face.

·         Met with scouts at their “Scouts Speak Up” event to discuss not just their concerns about the new water company charges on scout huts, but also their wider ideas for how politicians need to listen to young people. They made some powerful points to me about how they want young people to not all be lumped together as trouble-makers, but to be treated as young citizens. They argued persuasively to get the vote at 16, and also told me they thought the best thing Blackpool could do for global warming would be to make the trams free when the illuminations are on!

·         Met with Network Rail to discuss everything you could imagine – from community safety at Layton Station to the future of open access services from Blackpool to East Lancashire to the reopening of the line to Fleetwood.

This is just a selection of what I got up to – but I thought it might interest people to find out what really goes on at a party conference, not just what we see on TV.

There are few more competitive environments than an agricultural show. We have read dark tales in August of sabotaged dahlias as village shows occupied the local social calendar.

We have a perverse situation these days where despite greater interest in food – be it the late Keith Floyd or the great Delia Smith – we spend less and less of our time actually growing, preparing and cooking it. The pre-packaged ‘ready meal’ is the order of the day in too many households.

Is this supply and demand at work though? We already have 100,000 across the country – and 800 in Blackpool alone – on a waiting list for an allotment. If we had more allotments, might there not be more demand? An allotment is more than just a shed Arthur Fowler used to get away from Pauline.

And having allotment provides more than an opportunity to potter about. It promotes healthier living – a better diet and exercise. One of my favourite charities, Thrive (www.thrive.org.uk) has demonstrated how gardening can help those with learning difficulties and mental health problems. According to Thrive, gardening can reduice the riskl of dementia by 36%! Even for the young, it has educational benefits, as Beacon Hill students are finding out with their burgeoning horticultural projects. For adults, allotment societies are a great forum for ‘informal learning’, and so help build up that all important ‘social capital’ in the community. Government is rightly ‘horizon-scanning’ out of concern for food security of supply as raw material prices creep ever upwards. The day when we are reliant once again on what we can grow in these islands may not be far away.

Allotments are also great places to try to turn the ecological tide. Done properly, they are ideal for beekeeping. I’m also keen to see people using their plots to help preserve our older breeds of fruits and vegetables which are threatened with extinction due to under-use. We have lost 97% of our native varieties since 1900 – I grew up ‘neath a spreading damson tree, and think they one of our unsung national glories.   

And we have the law on our side. Section 40 of the Natural Environment and Rural
Communities Act imposes a duty on local authorities to have regard for the conservation of biodiversity. Allotments tick that box. The Sustainable Communities Act has led a number of councils to request the updating of the confusing, messy legislative framework for allotment provision. Something I will enthuse about if fortunate enough to be elected! One of these Acts is the Small Holdings & Allotments Act of 1908 which states a local council must take into consideration ‘a representation in writing by any six registered parliamentary electors or rate payers’ when assessing demand for allotments.

So I am sure there are six of you out there … let me know who you are at paulcmaynard@aol.com.

I had a great time on Saturday with Heritage Open Day.

 I nipped into St Stephen’s-on-the-Cliff to have a look around. Their Actor’s Chapel is unique. I noticed on the list of donors Oswald Stoll. Not a well known name, but perhaps it should be. A theatrical impresario, he founded a charity in the aftermath of World War One to provided homes for wounded soldiers. The work goes on today – they estimate there are some 1100 homeless veterans in London alone. You can find out more about them at www.oswaldstoll.org.uk. The work they do is important as ever in light of the sacrifices made in Afghanistan. 

Another body which does a lot of charitable work are the many Masonic Lodges on the Fylde. As someone who – like many – knows little about the organisation, it was fascinating to look around the lodge room and examine their artefacts. Their charitable activities benefit many good causes such as Trinity Hospice and Brian House.

 Finally, in what was a packed morning, I went off to have a look at one of my favourite buildings, the votive shrine on Whinney Heys Road. A miniature masterpiece by that giant of Catholic church archiecture, F X Velarde, it’s been tidied up a bit since my last visit a year ago. The fundraising continues as they seek to turn it into a community facility. To me, it still retains both kerb appeal and a stark, inner beauty. The Twentieth Century Society, of which I am an enthusiastic supporter, is currently doing some oral recordings about the history of the chapel. It would be great if any who used the chapel could contribute – get in touch with me at paulcmaynard@aol.com and I will put you in touch with the Twentieth Century Society. This is a real jewel in Blackpool’s crown, and it deserves to be remembered.

This current Labour Government seems to have a passion for passing laws & regulations and for making law abiding citizens feel like criminals.  Take the latest pearl of wisdom – the Independent safeguarding Authority.  You would have thought this would have been an agency that looked after perhaps road safety, or something innocuous but important. You would be wrong.  The ISA is to oversee the “Vetting and Barring” process.  This process will have mums and dads, volunteers and helpers have to go through a CRB check before be involved in voluntary activity with children. Existing CRB checks are inadequate. If you volunteer for 3 or 4 bodies, you will need 3 or 4 CRB checks at £65 a throw. 

 I understand the principal behind the ISA. Child protection does matter.  But in a way typical of this Government,  good intentions are swallowed by greater and greater state control.  Instead of just making sure people d id their jobs properly and are held responsible when they fail, the Government introduce a new level of bureaucracy to keep an eye on all the other bureaucracies.

 So the fallout of all this will be less people helping local charities, teams and clubs. Not because they have something to hide but because they don’t like the state intrusion, the forms and the checks.  Even the NSPCC agree this is a bad bit of regulation.  I like to see the good in everyone and take people at face value.  But no matter what we do there will always be evil people.  The way to stop evil people is not by shutting down social interaction unless permitted by the state, but by existing agencies doing their jobs right in the first place and not over-compensating for the fear of failing.  

 We have to learn to live with risk. How we manage risk is the important question. Over-doing ‘protection’ at the expense of freedom, community, spontaneity, voluntarism and the building up of a community spirit. Instead, we are becoming ever more isolated and fearful of each other.

An event occurs which has opinion column writers scurrying off to put pen to paper and opine on behalf of the nation. Such was the response to the dark and disconcerting events in a former pit village outside Doncaster. Two young boys, placed with foster parents in the village only a few weeks previously, had humiliated, abused and terrorised two other young boys and left them for dead. For some, this re-awoke memories of the tragic murder of James Bulger, or allowed for a reheating of the Shannon Matthews’ non-kidnap. For others, it was yet another invite to have a kick at social workers and their perceived inadequacies. For another group, it was a chance to have a pop at the straw man of ‘Broken Britain’ – a much maligned theme.

The events in Doncaster should not have occurred. With that valuable benefit of hindsight, it is probably clear that the elderly couple, however well-meaning, were not best-placed to cope with the specific traumas and needs of these two brothers. Had they not gone off the rails in Edlington, though, they would probably have gone off the rails somewhere else before too long.

That society has failed these children would appear axiomatic – and indeed society has also failed their victims, since they should not be overlooked amidst all this hand-wringing. But it then becomes a very easy step for politicians to take to start making references to Broken Britain and the Broken Society. For those who struggle to cope with the notion that the Conservative Party could have a social conscience, these phrases are like red rags to a bull.

Yet it is easily overlooked, even by Conservative spokesmen, that the notion of a ‘broken society8 0 is quite specific. It is not a damning of individuals. It is a reflection on how Conservatives believe we should perceive the world around us. Margaret Thatcher famously said there was no such thing as society, and her defenders such as me almost as famously go on to point out that she completed by saying that there were only families and individuals. And there is an important truth in there. A functioning society is made up of individuals who agglomerate in smaller social units – families and communities – which when they in turn are agglomerated become what Polly Toynbee likes to think of as ‘society’.

However, society is ‘broken’ (or almost non-existent) if those basal units no longer function or are weakened. If family breakdown weakens the smallest unit of our human relationships, it also weakens those community units based around a single street, a local pub or a village. “Widespread social change, greater social mobility and the decline of the extended family have all put much greater pressure on the nuclear family and the local community” as Liam Fox has said in the past.

There is a golden thread that needs to run through our human relationships. That thread is civility and a recognition of our common humanity.

To accept this premise fully may seem to require a belief that society did once ‘work’. This is dangerous territory. Politicians are not historians. They like to paint portraits of golden ages to which we could return if only we elected them – John Major famously described the Thatcher years as a ‘golden age that never was’ in what was a counter-intuitive strike for accuracy over hagiography. Historians know the past is never so simple. Maybe society has always been broken but in very different ways. The extended family may have been stronger 50 years ago, but that is also because much of what is now in the public domain was concealed within families – domestic violence is perhaps no more common, now, just more openly-acknowledged (though with a long-way to go).

What I believe has changed has been a chiselling away of societal norms. Fifty years ago, there was an ‘acceptance’ of how society should be ‘ordered’ – what was ‘done’ and ‘not done’. To diverge from that was common, but it was done in ‘private’ so to speak, with an outward observance of societal norms. I don’t suggest for a minute we should return to an era when we all suffered in silence. But one consequence of greater personal liberty – indubitably a good thing – is that we have the freedom to defy societal norms, and those norms become less normative.

But I believe our ‘broken-ness’ is more pervasive than that even. It is the almost imperceptible element in all our lives that suggests something is lacking. In a world of increasing connectivity and 24-hours new channels, we have retreated into our smaller social circles. We have little time for the wider community activities we once did. We now spend our time worrying about the unknown round the corner. Emile Durkheim, the great French founder of sociology, called it ‘anomie’.

Building up our communities, building up the links between ourselves, between families, friends and neighbours is more important than ever, The state cannot solve a ‘broken society’ – only the emergency of new societal norms can do that. But to see such norms re-emerge is aspirational at best. It is a commonplace to speak of our ever-changing world – but ‘change’ and how we respond to it lies at the heart of how humankind governs itself. For some are afraid of change, yet others embrace it. And that is the real divide in politics – and the challenge for politicians of all parties is how to ensure that as social and economic change impacts on daily life, government does not seek to diminish the remaining bonds of community, but rather seeks to build them up.

I take no pleasure in seeing my prediction of bingo’s demise in this area coming true. The closure of Orion Bingo in Cleveleys was something I warned about in my first edition of Coastline magazine: “For many people, a night out at the bingo is something they really enjoy. But their days look to be numbered thanks to Labour. Gordon Brown has been busy squeezing bingo halls out of existence by double taxing them – for gross profits and VAT purposes. It is the only form of gambling which has this. The 2005 Gambling Act placed even more burdens on bingo halls. In the past three years, 80 bingo clubs have had to shut their doors. And part of the local sense of community has disappeared with them. We should be building up our communities, not letting them slowly die like Labour does”.

Sadly, we now have one more to add to the eighty-plus which have closed.