Supporting our county’s teachers in the face of chronic underfunding in our grossly unequal city
Please don’t forget their plight and the plight of children and families struggling in our underfunded education system. It’s election day on 04 May 2023 – put your Qs to the candidates https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/
Although Cambridge City Council stopped being responsible for schools over half a century ago, it’s still an issue you can discuss with local representatives.
I’m adding the videos of the strike rally to the playlist here
One video that is worth watching in terms of learning about the nuts and bolts of how our schools are (under)funded is this one from Jon Duveen of the Cambridgeshire branch of the National Education Union.
Above – Jon Duveen of the NEU Cambridgeshire
Only yesterday our nurses were on strike.
Above – on the Addenbrooke’s Picket Line
One of the nurses turned out to be an old classmate of my older brother’s – which also meant we were at the same school and lived through the same period of prolonged austerity in the 1980s & 1990s in South Cambridge. We got talking about transport (amongst other things) and the two prominent points she made was that:
- The bus services still don’t synchronise with the start and end of shifts at Addenbrooke’s or any other large employer for that matter,
- The active travel network of cycleways needs to connect villages up to each other rather than being radial only. (Something CamCycle – of whom I’m a member – has been campaigning for, for years)
It was a little bit deja-vu given that only a couple of weeks or so earlier I had been standing in the same place with our junior doctors – also on strike.
In a nutshell we are at a level where ministers in the Conservative Party have all but given up on the actual business of governing, and are simply behaving like a bunch of incompetents trying to play politics – and playing it very badly.
“Yeah – whataboutthe congestion charge?”
A couple of you have raised this on another social media platform. County councillors Stephen Ferguson (Ind – St Neots East) and Dr Bulat debated this and the changes they expect to see in the policies in their video exchange here. <<– Please post any comments to their FB page as my policy for the local elections coming up in…ooh…48 hours time involves abolishing the GCP. Which means what I think about individual GCP policies going forward is neither here nor there because I want it zapped. Reasons for wanting it zapped? Read Smarter Cambridge Transport’s retiring post here.
Want a simplified, clear, and more democratically accountable system of local government for Cambridgeshire?
Please sign the House of Commons Petition at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636871/
“Accept the recommendation of the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to “bring forward … the establishment of a Bill to create a cross-party Commission on the future governance of England that is funded by and responsible to Parliament.””
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/636871/
As I mentioned at the Queen Edith’s Hustings, the cuts from central government to both Cambridgeshire County Council and Cambridge City Council have had a devastating impact on our local public services.
Above – Queen Edith’s Hustings: Responses from Antony Carpen. Footage from 7m20s
A also thump the table during that rant – not something I normally do!
Above – slashed grant funding from Central Government – which explains why your council tax bills have gone up so much to compensate as much as possible. Council tax is a much more regressive tax than income tax, which means the tax burden switches from the higher paid to the lower paid as a percentage of their earnings.
Anyway – don’t forget to vote!
I’ll leave it there because I’m a zombie and Post Exertional Malaise is kicking in even though I was only out of the house for about three hours earlier today.
Still time for you to find your candidates via https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/ <<– feel free to share that link as well!
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
- Follow me on Twitter
- Like my Facebook page
- Consider a small donation to help fund my continued research and reporting on local democracy in and around Cambridge. (If you want to help with my election expenses and are a permitted donor according to the Electoral Commission (i.e you are eligible to vote in UK local elections), please put “Elections” in the message box.
The Cambridge Town Owl 