Archive for March, 2010
March 30th, 2010 | 
Author: A big thank you to everyone who joined the protest march on Saturday.
Links to some of the coverage the march received is below
Burnley MP Kitty Ussher was recently interviewed by Channel 4 News for a piece about the MPs expenses scandal.
She was asked. “Is there anything you did that you feel you ought to say sorry for? The choices you made? The decisions you made?”
Kitty’s answer? “No. Because I haven’t done anything that anybody else in my position wouldn’t be perfectly able and valid to do.”
The exchange comes about 8 mins and 15 seconds into this report.
Shortly after her resignation, Labour’s replacement candidate Julie Cooper said Kitty was “a rising star and would have taken Burnley with her.”
Kitty has returned the favour. Her website says, “Kitty isn’t standing at the next general election and hopes you will support Labour’s candidate, local Councillor Julie Cooper instead.”
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Tags: cooper, expenses, julie, kitty, resignation, ussher | 
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Local Campaigner Gordon Birtwistle has hit out at plans to close Burnley hospital children’s ward and transfer most services transferred to Blackburn.
Inpatient beds will be moved to Blackburn by the end of the year. Whilst children with minor illnesses will still be treated in Burnley, anyone requiring an overnight stay will have to go to Blackburn.
Gordon said: “What we will have is a new maternity facility, but no children’s ward or paediatricians. If that is the case then the lunatics really are running the asylum.
“This is totally unacceptable. We will fight tooth and nail to prevent this happening. It’s a death by a thousand cuts and this is the latest cut in the death throes of Burnley General Hospital.
“Parents will be facing a round trip of over 20 miles to visit their sick children, and those without a car will have to struggle with public transport.
“The people who have dreamed this up should resign and have their places taken by people who understand what is needed in Burnley.”
Local health bosses have been ordered by the Government to make £50 million worth of cuts over the next three years, which they have described as the most severe they have experienced.
Bill Bennett
County Councillor Bill Bennett, much loved for his dedication to communities in Burnley, died in hospital on Saturday morning, following a brief battle with cancer.
After a career that included army Signals, Lucas and more than twenty five years service with the Royal Mail, Coun Bennett had dedicated his life to supporting many groups across Burnley. He represented Burnley residents on two local authority councils and supported Burnley Civic Society, Burnley Boys Club, Barden Lane Nursery and the Royal British Legion.
Coun Bennett’s family have expressed their sincere thanks to people from Burnley and across the county for the kindness and support that they showed to Bill during his stay in hospital.
Coun Bennett’s wife, Cathy, said, “Bill loved being a councillor. He loved helping people. He was always in the front, getting involved in everything. He was determined when he joined the County Council to make the two local councils work together and I hope that work will be carried on.”
Burnley Council colleague Darren Reynolds said, “The family have asked me to say that they were amazed by the overwhelming numbers of people who had been in touch.
“The family are very much in everyone’s thoughts. Cathy welcomes the kind offers of support people are making and is happy for anyone to get in touch at normal times of the day.
“Cathy showed me the massive stack of cards and letters that Bill had been sent whilst in hospital. Messages came from as far afield as an expatriate in Germany, but the most touching messages were those from local well-wishers. It really came home to me just how widely he was appreciated when I was working outdoors in our Queensgate ward. So many people kept asking me how he was doing that I could barely remember them all when passing their wishes on.
“Bill was an amazing man. He stayed positive right through to the end. He still had his mobile telephone switched on in his hospital bed, taking calls from people in need of help. It is so sad, and so unfair that we have lost him.”
Councillor Bennett was aged 61. Funeral arrangements will be announced later.
 Queensgate Councillor Darren Reynolds |
Burnley’s councillor responsible for health service scrutiny will tonight bluntly tell NHS officials they must fully re-open Burnley’s Accident and Emergency unit.
Coun Darren Reynolds, who chairs Burnley’s Liberal Democrat party and sits on Lancashire’s health scrutiny committee, will deliver a devastating critique of a review of Burnley’s Urgent Care Centre, and insist that re-opening Burnley’s A&E is the only solution to the failures in Blackburn.
The review is taking place after Pendle’s Gordon Prentice MP secured the intervention of the Prime Minister and met with the Secretary of State for Health. It is being conducted over a two-day period this week. But the officials conducting the review have been instructed not to consider re-opening Burnley’s A&E, leading some to claim that the Labour-inspired review is a whitewash before it has started.
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Coun Reynolds will say:
“Burnley people will never accept that routinely travelling to Blackburn for emergency treatment is better than receiving treatment in their own hospital.
“This review is looking at all the wrong things and is based on false information and untruths.
“The review makes a starting assumption that Burnley people asked to have their hospital downgraded when they chose between the options put out for consultation. There were only two options to choose from, and both of them involved closing Burnley’s A&E to emergencies. I’m sorry, but people are not that stupid.
“It is also a starting assumption that the changes had nothing to do with money. This is despite the fact that I’ve been given a copy of the minutes of the meeting which decided to press ahead with downgrading Burnley’s hospital. In them, it is declared that, ‘The option of Burnley General focussing on emergency care was considered but the amount of investment required to redesign the Burnley site to make it viable as the emergency site is unaffordable.’
“No other explanation for the closure to emergencies is given.
“Finally, it is a starting assumption that outcomes have not worsened for patients as a result of the changes. But no proof is offered. There is no comparison with other hospitals. The only group of patients that ever get a mention are cardiac patients, who are generally doing better anyway across the country thanks to improvements in medical technology. There is nothing to link this narrow set of improvements to the reconfiguration, and there are wholesale gaps in the claims for all other groups of patients.
“The review is set up only to consider Burnley’s Urgent Care Centre as it stands. They have not been told to look at the problems in Blackburn but they have been told not to consider re-opening Burnley’s A&E. Given that this is the only solution to the problem, we are at stalemate. The system is broken.”
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Now they are closing the Childrens ward at Burnley General
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