Major public events threatened by policing charges

Major open air events are increasingly under threat due to high costs being charged by police forces.

The Downs Mail reports that popular community events in Maidstone such as the River Festival, Maidstone Mela and Battle of Maidstone re-enactment are threatened by a £43,000 quote from the police for attending just one event for a day.

This quote, for the 28-year old River Festival, covers eight hours of one chief inspector, three inspectors, fourteen sergeants and eighty constables.

Police can use discretion and have offered a 50% discount, but that still leaves a potentially devastating charge of £21,726 (including VAT) - an almost impossible challenge for the organisers.

Questions are being asked about why public events with a largely trouble-free history are now being faced with such huge charges and the cost is no longer being budgeted into the council tax precept which funds local policing.

Maidstone Borough Commander, chief inspector Tony Henley, said that Kent Police's decision to introduce 'common charges' for events reflected Association of Chief Police Officers' national policy.

Maidstone: Campaign to save hospital services

Local campaigns to save services in Maidstone Hospital are to be co-ordinated in a new organisation called MASH (Maidstone Action for Services in Hospitals) - reports the Downs Mail.

The group is already supported by Maidstone's two MPs, cabinet members of both Kent and Maidstone councils, Maidstone Division of the British Medical Association, the two main local newspapers the Downs Mail and Kent Messenger, together with patients and relatives.

Maidstone Hospital has several mountains to climb, including better management of C-Diff infections which killed more than 90 patients and led to a damning report by the Healthcare Commission.

While the hospital's record is now improving, reports still abound of A&E patients being "stacked" in ambulances due to serious delays in emergency admissions.

December saw a significant increase in the number of people waiting over four hours from a decision to admit to admission - 941 waited more than four hours, with 4 patients waiting more than twelve hours).

The main reason was said to be a lack of beds in A&E.

The hospital also has continuing financial problems, with the trust facing a deficit of £18.7m for 2008/09 and a total savings requirement of £21.2m - amounts that could be wiped out with two days' worth of our payments into the audit-failing European Union budget, if that wasted money were diverted into hospital services.

Woman 'denied sight-save drugs'

A grandmother has said she will go blind unless she can persuade her local NHS to fund drug treatment - reports the BBC.

Margaret Coates, 79, from Bromley, south-east London, has wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which can lead to blindness in both eyes.

Her local Primary Care Trust (PCT) will not pay for a drug called Lucentis, Mrs Coates said.

Bromley PCT said patients who did not meet London-wide treatment criteria could apply for exceptional treatment.

Wet AMD, which affects the central part of the retina, is the leading cause of sight loss in the UK, affecting around a quarter of a million people.

Last year the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommended that NHS patients with wet AMD should be eligible for sight-saving drug Lucentis.

But the availability of the treatment, which can cost thousands of pounds, varies between PCTs.

Mrs Coates, 79, said: "I can't believe the PCT is abandoning me like this when I could lose my sight.

"The thought of going blind terrifies me"

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and the Macular Disease Society (MDS) are campaigning for Bromley PCT to reverse its decision and fund the treatment.

Bromley PCT said it funds Lucentis treatment for Bromley residents with AMD in line with criteria agreed for the whole of south-east London.

"Patients who do not meet these criteria can apply through their clinician to the PCT's exceptional treatments group," a spokesman said.

In order to qualify there must be an "unusual or unique clinical factor" that differentiates the patient from others with the condition, he said.

Kidney cancer man's drugs fight

A man with kidney cancer says he has been refused a drug that could save his life and is still waiting for treatment 18 months after being diagnosed - reports the BBC.

Jocelyn Hall, 60, of Tonna, Neath, is taking his local health board (LHB) to judicial review after it refused to pay for him to have the drug, Sunitinib.

Neath Port Talbot LHB said each case for the drug was reviewed individually.

Mr Hall was diagnosed with kidney cancer in September 2006, a fortnight after he gave his notice so he could retire after working in Neath's Metal Box can factory for 44 years.

Surgeons were unable to operate because his tumour had spread to other organs.

Mr Hall's oncologist at Swansea's Singleton Hospital, Professor John Wagstaff, said the drug treatment he wanted his patient to have cost £2,300 every six weeks.

He said: "I've got a number of patients in exactly the same situation, not just with Neath Port Talbot but with other LHBs in south west Wales.

"It's a continuing battle. If he does not get this drug, the only management available to him is to control his symptoms."

Mr Hall's sister, Rosemarie Snow, said: "He has worked all his life and paid into cancer research all his life and he's got nothing.

"The drugs won't cure him but they will help prolong his life. After he worked 44 years of his life, he wants to enjoy his retirement.

Kate Spall, who has become a patient support advocate since her mother died from a rare kidney cancer, said Mr Hall was the "most exceptional" of the more than 40 cases she had advised.

She said: "He has not treatment for nearly two years for terminal cancer. That is just unheard of.

"In Wales today, somebody has not had had one piece of active treatment. That's Third World. That's unbelievable."

A spokeswoman for Neath Port Talbot LHB said she could not comment on individual cases because of confidentiality.

But she said that the local health board took guidance from the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group, which said the use of Sumitinib should not be supported in Wales.

Post offices disappear from London

Royal Mail is facing a legal challenge over its plans to shut 169 post offices in London, the Evening Standard reports today.

The branches, which amount to a fifth of the network, face the axe under a fast-track closure programme.

The proposals provoked protest from all the main political parties, with one MP saying it was a "kick in the teeth" for Londoners.

The capital has already lost more than 300 post offices in four years, with numbers cut from 1,175 to 849. Royal Mail says more branches must go to stem losses of £3 million a week.

However, the shortfall of £3 million a week causing these cuts pales almost into insignificant compared to the £115 million a week (net) subsidy the Government is lavishing on the wasteful EU.

How is this justified, when countless post offices are closing due to a fraction of this amount, yet auditors haven't been able to confirm how the EU is spending the billions it has been given every year for the last 13 years running?

Certainly no MP who recently voted to boost our payments to the EU by an astonishing 63% can claim to be 'standing up' for any post offices facing closure, without leaving themselves open to charges of utter hypocrisy.

The cutbacks come despite new figures showing London has just one branch for every 8,460 people - compared to the national average of one branch for 3,860.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the consultation should be extended to 12 weeks, adding: "London's post offices provide vital support for those who are most in need, particularly the elderly, disabled and those with young children. For many Londoners who do not have a bank account, the post office is an amenity they cannot do without."

Labour MP Kate Hoey said: "Londoners will be angry and frustrated at the sham nature of this consultation. The Post Office has already made up its mind. This is a body blow to communities across London, particularly the most vulnerable in the city."

The Conservative shadow minister for London, Bob Neill, said the closures would reduce the network to a shell.

"Labour are putting swathes of the London post office network under threat and putting people's livelihoods on the line yet they won't reveal the extent of post office closures until after the election," he said.

Liberal Democrat business spokesman Sarah Teather said: "Today's announcement is a kick in the teeth for Londoners. We already have a second-class service with half as many post offices per head as the rest of the UK. It is no wonder we have to queue so long to post a parcel."

Royal Mail said the vast majority of Londoners would still live within one mile by road of the nearest branch, and claim that nearly 90 per cent of the capital's population would see no change in their nearest branch.

Anita Turner, Post Office Ltd's network development manager for London, said: "Taking the decision to close any post office branch is always very difficult and we know it will cause concern to many of our customers.

"Post Office Ltd's aim is to continue to provide essential services and support retail businesses and the local economy in as many communities as possible, subject to the minimum access criteria set by the Government."

Those wishing to register their views should contact http://www.postoffice.co.uk/networkchange or write to Post Office Ltd at Freepost Consultation (no stamp required) or email consultation@postoffice.co.uk

BAE to lose billions in defence cuts

BAE Systems will have billions of pounds worth of government orders torn up under budget cuts being drawn up this month by ministers - reports The Observer.

Defence sources said the government would scrap plans to buy four more Astute nuclear submarines from BAE, worth £3.5bn.

Ministers also want to cancel their contract to buy a third tranche of Eurofighter jets, worth more than £5bn, from the company.

The government wants to make up to £15bn of cuts in its military budget over the next decade as it tries to rein in public spending (despite agreeing to increase our payments to the audit-failing EU's budget by an astonishing 63% - to £6bn net or £11.5bn gross a year).

The defence industry and the MoD have been locked in fraught negotiations about how to make the savings.

The government is also set to axe plans to order two further Type 45 destroyers from shipbuilding partners VT Group and BAE. The two companies are building six destroyers, which cost about £600m apiece (only a few weeks worth of our net payments to the EU budget), but had hoped to receive an order for another two.

Howard Wheeldon, senior strategist at BGC Partners, said defence companies have been trying to co-operate with the government over how best to make the cuts.

'The industry in my view will have done its utmost to support the government over its financial constraints,' he said. He added that he expected the Royal Navy to bear the brunt of the budget cuts.

A spokeswoman for the ministry said: 'The MoD is currently in the middle of its planning round, when it considers a very wide range of options as a matter of course. We are not prepared to comment on any specific proposals before the planning round has run its full course.'

Not only are these cuts potentially over-stretching our armed forces even further than at present, and possibly even putting military lives at risk by trying to over-extend the life of old equipment, but they could also cause the loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs at BAE's British plants.

Yet another example of the utterly misplaced priorities of the government and those MPs who irresponsibly approved the 63% increase in our payments to the audit-failing EU.

That's billions of pounds a year that could be used to prevent these cuts, if they weren't being handed to the EU instead.

Skies dim for British astronomers

British astronomers will lose access to two of the world's finest telescopes in February due to a government funding shortfall, reports the BBC.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which looks after UK astronomy funding, has signalled that formal notice to withdraw from the Gemini organisation - the consortium that runs two of the biggest, most-modern optical-infrared reflecting telescopes in the world - would be issued shortly, as it seeks to plug a large hole in its budget.

The STFC's problems have emerged out of the government's latest spending round, which has left the council short of £80m in the three-year budget plan to 2011.

This is an amount equivalent to just five days worth of money the government is, however, prepared to shower on the audit-failing and wasteful EU.

The result will be that British astronomers will no longer view the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope.

To manage its way out of this crisis, the STFC has announced its intention to close certain programmes and cut research grants. Science societies and union officials have warned the damage to UK physics and astronomy will be incalculable and will lead to hundreds of job losses.

Researchers say they are aghast at the administrators' decision.

Professor Paul Crowther from Sheffield University said: "To withdraw from the state-of-the-art Gemini facilities leaves the UK ground-based astronomy strategy in disarray - some would say deliberately sabotaged."

"This will badly affect the UK astronomical community's ability to address questions such as how galaxies form, or look for planets around other stars, or be able to adequately exploit space observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope," explained the current chair of the UK telescope allocation committee for Gemini.

"The loss of Gemini North is particularly acute, since the majority of the UK past investment has been focused upon the Northern Hemisphere," he told BBC News.

In future, the only way British astronomers can look at the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope is if they are working on projects with co-researchers whose national funding agencies are sponsors of one of these facilities.

Those MPs who voted to approve the recent 63% increase in our contributions to the EU, despite no end to the EU's annual audit failures, are the ones responsible for this problem.

Doubtless the EU could live without our contributions for just five days, so we can save the £80m required and our international scientific reputation. But those politicians have now made their irresponsible and short-sighted decision to give the money to the EU instead. And we can now only cast our verdict on that decision at the ballot box, come the next general election.