Les Bonner

Rail passengers will face festive travel misery in the run-up to Christmas and the New Year, with many part-closures of lines over the holiday period.

The disruption is expected to start as early as Monday December 21 and go on until Sunday January 3.

Network Rail, who is in charge of the engineering work over the holiday period, said that more trains will run over the Christmas period period this year than the last one.

One of the biggest engineering operations is in the Southampton area, and will affect services run by First Great Western, Southern, South West Trains and Cross Country companies.

Post-Christmas disruption includes buses replacing trains between Nottingham and Derby from Sunday December 27 to Sunday January 3.

There are 28 separate engineering work projects in place on December 27, with 21 on December 28 and 16 on December 29.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Transport Secretary, Norman Baker said in the Daily Mail:

“This is unacceptable. We were promised a rail service which would operate fully all year round. Passengers will rightly feel they have been misled.

“The time has come for Network Rail to pay the fares of every passenger forced to use a replacement bus service.”

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service has been shortlisted for a national community partnerships award in the “Best Education Category”.The initiative that was set up with the help of local secondary schools in the North Lincolnshire area wanted to address the problems of young people that were not in education ,employment or training and it is designed as a high impact, life changing solution to improve the prospects of disengaged young people.

The partnership is breaking new ground with the development of the BTEC certificate, a unique qualification accredited by Edexcel and and is delivered by qualified fire fighters.

The BTEC tutors and the Humberside Fire and Rescue Services Learning centre team have put in a huge amount of extra effort to make the course unique and enjoyable to students,so much so that they have taken ownership of their course ,taking great pride in their personal and collective achievements resulting in them hosting the first youth forum for other Fire and Rescue Services around the region.

The course has been hailed as a resounding success and showing impressive results as students attendance was over 90% with not one student dropping out from the course.

Phil Leake from Humberside Fire and Rescue Service said” This is a fantastic achievement for everyone that has been involved with this ground breaking initiative.Both the students and tutors should be congratulated for their hard work and dedication to improving the lives of young people” 

Join Save the Children in calling for the government, banks and high-interest lenders to do to help families that are not allowed access to mainstream credit.

Research by Save the Children has discovered that 55% of families earning under £12,000 a year will have to use high interest lenders to get through the winter.

Show your support by texting DEBT to 84880 or sign the petition from Save the Children.

Attempts to eliminate child poverty in the UK have concentrated on improving the lives of low-income families by the use of tax credits and benefits.

Save the Children believes it is not acceptable that families in poverty are made to use high interest lenders to help them through hard times, putting money that should be benefiting children into the pockets of catalogue companies, door-step lenders and loan sharks.

Save the Children are asking the government to:

1. Reform the Social Fund, so that it has sufficient cash to help families who need grants and affordable loans in times of crisis.
2. Demand the banks do more to assist low-income families such, as boosting the credit union network, so that it has enough money to lend to struggling families at reasonable rates of interest
3. Back a voluntary code of practice for high-interest lenders, to make sure they advertise their products clearly so that customers are fully aware of the financial commitments they are making.

Show your support. Text DEBT to 84880 or sign our petition.

Find out more about the work of Save the Children to tackle UK poverty.

The UK Independence Party is expecting a “wave of resignations” following the revelation that its new leader offered to stand down candidates at the next election and disband the party if the Conservatives agreed to hold a referendum on EU membership.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the new leader, was reported in the Times on Saturday that he proposed a deal to the Tory leader in the Lords in which UKIP would have given up its plans to stand at the general election.

Gerard Batten, an MEP for London, who was the runner up in the leadership election, said he was appalled by the secret plan and argued that members would not have chosen Lord Pearson if they had known about it during the contest.

Mr Batten said:

“I am appalled they can offer to sell the party down the river to the Tories. It is a betrayal of the members, and we will probably see a wave of resignations over this.

“If he had run in the leadership election telling people that is what he had done, he would have come bottom. The membership do not want it and it has caused outrage.

“I have been saying all along we have not just got to talk to the Tory voters but also the Labour voters who are not going to vote Labour any more. This makes it much more difficult.

“Having a lord as leader of the party who is trying to do deals with the Tories is going to make it that much harder to win the disenchanted working-class votes.”

Nikki Sinclaire, an MEP for the West Midlands, who came third, said that she was being called by outraged members threatening to resign, but blamed Mr Farage for asking Lord Pearson to make the approach to Lord Strathclyde.

M/s Sinclaire said:

“I do not see what legitimacy Nigel had to make such a deal. A lot of members feel very cheated judging by the amount of phone calls I have received. Ultimately the members should have been consulted to have negotiations with any party. It should have gone to a referendum among the membership. People have contacted me talking about resigning.”

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg today pledged to put fair taxes at the heart of the party’s message to the British people.

The party’s new tax plans will see tax cuts for millions of people, paid for by closing tax loopholes, making polluters pay and introducing a ‘mansion tax’ on homes worth over £2m.

Nick Clegg said:

“If you want to know how committed a government is to fairness then look at its tax system.

“Gordon Brown has created a tax regime that forces some of the lowest earners in society to pay hundreds of pounds in tax they can’t afford, while polluters and rich  tax dodgers avoid paying their fair share.  

“Meanwhile the Conservatives want tax cuts for millionaires, but say there might be tax rises for everyone else.

“Under our plans people won’t pay a penny on the first ten thousand pounds they earn. That would put £700 back in the pockets of the vast majority of tax payers, and take millions of people on low pay out of paying income tax altogether.

“Our plans represent the most radical, far reaching tax reform in a generation.

“They embody everything the Liberal Democrats stand for: fairness, protecting the environment, rewarding hard work.

“It is right to ask those with the broadest shoulders to bear a little more of the burden so that millions of people on normal earnings get the break they desperately need.”

See the video of Nick Clegg announcing the new policy >>>>>>HERE<<<<<<

Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman, Vince Cable commented today that suggestions that introducing a ‘mansion tax’ on properties valued over £2million would result in wealthy people leaving the country, which would reduce total tax revenues.

Mr Cable said:

“You can’t put a mansion in a suitcase and take it to Monaco.That’s one of the points of taxing assets of physical form,” 

He said that the measure, which is a part of today’s package of tax announcements, is about “dealiing with unfairness” by raising the threshold for income tax.

“It’s tax cuts for very large number of people, but we’re not talking about an overall tax cut. That’s not possible”.

“We’re in a country at the moment where if you’re in the top 10% of the population you pay less tax as a share of your income than you do at the bottom”.

Speaking on this morning’s Today programme on Radio 4, Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg described changes to the proposed “mansion tax” that the Liberal Democrats would levy to fund an increase in the threshold at which people start paying tax.

When the proposals were first made at the Liberal Democrat conference in September, the tax was to proposed for homes worth over £1 million, but today the party are set to announce that it will now apply only to those worth over £2 million.

“This is the way that policies work, we established a principle,  Both Vince (Cable) and I launched this plan at our party conference, subsequently we looked at it, we refined it, we fleshed it out.

“Actually our change increases the value of the mansion tax, it actually increases the amount of money that you would generate because not only are we doubling it to £2m, we’re doubling the levy from 1/2%to 1%,”.

Mr Clegg claims the tax proposals will make a fairer tax system by taking lower-paid workers out of tax altogether. He said the lower-paid had been “squeezed and strangled by an unfair tax system for far far too long.”

“I don’t think anyone can dispute the fact that a 1% levy on the value of properties over £2m is exactly what it says on the tin, it’s asking people in very very large houses, a tiny fraction of the total … to pay some more money to give a break to hard-pressed tax payers at the lower end.”

The levy is expected to raise about £1.7 billion a year, similar to the amount of tax taken under the previous lower tax threshold.

Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg’s response to the Prime Minister’s statement on Afghanistan:

I join the Prime Minister in recognising and commending the enormously impressive work of our Armed Forces in Afghanistan.

Finally it has become mainstream to talk about the need for a big shift in strategy in Afghanistan.

When I first questioned the effectiveness of our action there six months ago and called for this kind of step-change, I was told it was unpatriotic.

The Prime Minister’s change of tone since then has been dramatic – and welcome.

The Liberal Democrat approach to Afghanistan has always been simple: we should do this properly or not at all.

Does the Prime Minister agree with me that success is not just about troop numbers?

And that focusing on troop numbers to the exclusion of all else is like putting the cart before the horse.

There is no point sending a single extra soldier unless the strategy they need to succeed in their mission is in place.

So why is the Prime Minister making any announcements at all about troop numbers when we won’t know until President Obama’s announcement tomorrow what the new strategy is, and what chances it has of success?

I have in the past criticised the Prime Minister for keeping quiet over Afghanistan, failing to speak out in support of our troops and their mission.

Has he not now swung a little too far in the opposite direction, making an announcement before we know whether things are in place which will make it a success or not? 

We know from previous successful peacekeeping missions, such as in the Balkans, that you will not succeed unless you have buy-in from all the big regional powers.

In Afghanistan that does not just mean Pakistan, China and Russia – it also means Iran, which is now at loggerheads with the West over its unacceptable announcement of ten new nuclear facilities.

Can the Prime Minister tell us how he will find a way to take a tough stance with Iran while seeking to keep them engaged in securing peace in Afghanistan?

A centrepiece of the Prime Minister’s announcement today was his benchmark-setting for President Karzai on training the Afghan National Army.

But what is the alternative if Karzai doesn’t achieve these benchmarks?

What efforts are he and others in the alliance making to develop a Plan B of bypassing the government in Kabul and dealing direct with local and regional government?

Surely the Prime Minister agrees that, given Karzai’s record, in particular on corruption, we shouldn’t hold our breath for him to change, but work on finding ways to succeed without him if he will not.

Finally, let me address the issue of troop deployments from our NATO allies.

The Prime Minister himself said that the deployment of extra British troops would be conditional on other countries sharing the burden.

So will he now be clear and detailed in setting out what he expects:

Which countries are offering troops? When will they arrive in Afghanistan? And what will their role be on the ground?

Since our troops first stepped into Afghanistan, the Government strategy has been over-ambitious in aim and under-resourced in practice.

I hope today’s announcement and the one that will follow tomorrow from President Obama finally turn the situation around.

So that finally our troops have what they need for success and can come home as soon as possible with their heads held high.

Patients’ lives are being risked by profiteering pharmacists, hospitals and wholesalers who are selling prescription drugs to the European market whileUK patients are left without or have to wait for their prescriptions.

Nearly 50 drugs needed by patients, with conditions from breast cancer and Parkinson’s disease to depression and epilepsy, are in short supply because traders are selling the drugs abroad for more money in a businessworth worth more than £360m a year.

The medicines and healthcare regulator, the MHRA, will write to all drug manufacturers and wholesale licence holders to warn them that they could face legal action if they are found to be exporting drugs needed by British patients. This follows recent guidance issued by the Department of Health, regulators and professional bodies to remind all traders of their legal obligations to give UK patients priority over profit.

Pharmacists and patient groups warn that it is only a matter of time before a patient suffers serious harm unless the whole industry accepts it’s responsibility to put patients first. Industry insiders suggest some patients have been missing doses of essential medicines for more than a year.

A detailed “shopping list” of drugs in demand for export in November currently circulating among pharmacies, dispensing doctors, wholesalers and hospitals includes several drugs which are in short supply, which should not be bought or sold.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb said:

“There is no doubt there are unethical and criminal activities going on, yet the reaction so far has been wholly inadequate and the problem has been allowed to get worse. While a total crisis may have been averted so far, in that no one has died as far as we know, this is causing immense disruption and distress for many patients already struggling to cope with illness.”

Research by the consultants IMS revealed that 11% of UK pharmacies and a small proportion of dispensing doctors are exploiting the European market and are exporting £30million worth of medicines meant to be used in Britain every month. Wholesalers are also believed to be taking a very significant role, according to the pharmaceutical trade association, ABPI. An increase in production has led to increased exports at the same time as shortages continue.

Many pharmacists find themselves caught between wholesalers and manufacturers, who both blame each other. There were 77,000 emergency deliveries made to pharmacies by three drug companies in the first five months of this year, which is a 12-fold increase on the same period last year, according to the ABPI.

James Wood, a pharmacist in Sheffield, spent two hours on the phone last Wednesday trying to obtain emergency supplies for four patients, and this is now part of his daily routine, which means that he, and thousands of other pharmacists, has less time to spend with their patients.

Drug companies sell the same drug at a different price in every country. Britain was one of Europe’s biggest importers of cheap drugs from Spain and Greece, but since the pound lost value against the euro and UK drug prices dropped, there is now a massive demand for British medicines overseas.

The MHRA has issued 180 new wholesale licences so far this year, an increase of 59% on the number issued in 2008. Authorised traders do not need to seek permission to import or export within the EU as free-market principles also apply to medicines but they have a legal duty to ensure that the needs of patients in the UK needs are met.

 Norman Lamb said:

“The DoH must initiate an urgent investigation into those companies and individuals involved and put a stop to this despicable, unethical and illegal trade.”

After more revelations about standards of care at several NHS hospital trusts, the Liberal Democrats have said the case for a public inquiry is overwhelming.

Liberal Democrat Health spokesman Norman Lamb said:

“We were told that the Mid Staffordshire case was a one-off scandal.

“At the time I called for a public inquiry and it was rejected then.

“Now the case is overwhelming and we appear to have a system which seems to be able to deliver ‘paper-safety’ but not real ‘patient safety’.”