My week ahead, 12 - 18 January 2015

Monday 12 January, 4pm – Culture portfolio meeting
6pm – Labour Group meeting

Thursday 15 January, 6pm – North East Area Partnership meeting
7pm – North East Ipswich Area Committee (St John’s Church)

Sunday 18 January, 10am – Labour campaigning in North East Ipswich

The two big stories this week, the chaos at hospital all over the UK in particular in A & E Departments and then we had the events in France which overshadow even the current failings within the NHS.

What amazed me about the A & E situation, it seemed all that Cameron and Hunt could say was that the system was close to collapse as more people were using A & E. But this winter has been very mild and if anything the call on the services of A & E should have gone down this year. But the reason demand is higher is because of drastic Tory cuts. Not directly in the NHS but in the care system, this is causing the blocking of beds which then causes some of the problems we see in A & E departments. But the Tories seem unable to do anything to help remedy the matter and today we now hear that as well as A & E Departments being close to collapse a number of ambulance trusts are failing on all their target times.

I found it almost unbelievable that with the NHS situation so bad that both Cameron and Hunt seem to have been let off lightly by both TV and the printed media.

The events in Paris were shocking, but it is has been heartening to see how the French people so far have not used the events to attack their own minority communities, if anything the dastardly events seemed to have united the French people and all others in Europe. In fact other than some very stupid remarks from Farage the UKIP leader those in authority in the UK have done their best to show their support for those in France.

There will always be a few stupid comments, and not really a surprise that Farage was one to not think through his initial comments, but maybe more of a surprise was to find that certain Tories attempted to use the events in France to drum up more support for their own campaign sessions this weekend!

Many of our leaders including David Cameron are in Paris today to support both the French people and also Freedom of Speech. Some may find it hard to stomach the fact that some of the international leaders marching in Paris today are from countries that are not great upholders of the right of freedom of speech themselves. Saudi Arabia was represented in Paris and this week they sentenced a blogger to 50 lashes of the whip, this will happen weekly until he has been flogged 1,000 times. His crime? He insulted Islam in his blog.