The Leader of the Labour Group, Councillor Jim Grant, said:

“It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Councillor Jenny Millin. Our thoughts are with her family at this very sad time.

Since she came on to the Council back in November 2010, Jenny had been a breath of fresh air, working hard for the people she represented in Moredon and speaking passionately about matters affecting the most vulnerable people in our town . In the space of a year, her hard work was rewarded through having her surname used as a name for a recently built pathway which local residents requested and I appointed her as Labour’s Lead for Health & Social Care.

I can say with confidence that Councillor Millin will be greatly missed by her Councillor colleagues and even more by her constituents, who I know valued the hard work she put in to make the Moredon area a better place.”

]]> http://swindon-labour.co.uk/swindon/it-is-with-great-sadness-that-we-have-to-announce-the-death-of-councillor-jenny-millin/feed 1 http://swindon-labour.co.uk/st-philips/labour-celebrates-victories-in-swindon-local-elections-may-5th-2011 http://swindon-labour.co.uk/st-philips/labour-celebrates-victories-in-swindon-local-elections-may-5th-2011#comments Sat, 07 May 2011 08:55:56 +0000 Swindon Labour http://swindon-labour.co.uk/?p=3836 Ellen Osa (Walcot) and Joe Tray (St Philips) captured seats on Thursday for the Labour Party, and many Labour Candidates came close to unseating their Tory or LibDem opponents.

Success was also celebrated by Jenny Millin (Mordeon) and Steve Wakefield (Toothill & Westlea) who retained seats which were won by the Conservatives in 2007.

Labour won 9 seats in Swindon against 10 for the Tories and 1 for the LibDems (just). Voting figures are available here

The increase in Labour’s %  share of the vote since 2007 (seats are re-elected on a 4-year cycle) are as follows

• Toothill 18.5%
• Freshbrook 17.9%
• Central 12.0%
• Shaw 9.5%
• Old Town & Lawn 9.2%
• Abbey Meads 8.7%
• Eastcott 8.5%
• Covingham & Nythe 8.0%
• Walcot 7.5%
• Dorcan 7.3%
• Parks 4.9%
• Moredon 4.8%
• Penhill 4.4%
• St Philip 3.8%
• Wroughton 3.4%
• Gorsehill 2.8%
• Highworth 2.3%
• St Margaret 2.1%
• Haydon Wick 0.8%
• Western -0.4%

Across Swindon the average Labour share of the vote increased from 24.4% in 2008 and 31% in 2010 to 38.8% in 2011.

A huge vote of thanks is due to Labour campaign workers in each ward – and to the electorate of Swindon.

Please contact Swindon Labour if you wish to get involved in our activities and help shape local Labour policies during the next year.

• Support jobs with money raised from repeating the bank bonus tax – not hold back recovery with the VAT rise and cuts that will put almost one million workers out of their jobs.
• Protect police numbers – not cut them while wasting £100 million on new elected police commissioners.
• Protect your frontline local services – not make unfair cuts which will hit the least well off the most.
• Get the deficit down through strong growth and sensible cuts – not by slashing too far, too fast, and putting your local economy at risk.
• Stand up for young people – not kick away the ladder by tripling tuition fees; scrapping EMAs; cancelling Building Schools for the Future; and slashing school sport

DOWNLOAD THE SWINDON LABOUR MANIFESTO 2011

Voting Stations are open from 7am till 10pm.

Guidance on voting procedure is available from Swindon Borough Council.

Labour Candidates and their contact numbers are:

1. Abbey Meads – Mark Viner (07811 142 413).
2. Central – Derique Montaud (07711 556 261).
3. Covingham & Nythe – Peter Watts (01793 529163).
4. Dorcan – Ged Meheran (07989 918 352).
5. Eastcott – Chris Watts (07776 238 327).
6. Freshbrook & Grange Park –  Neil Heavens (07817 262 258).
7. Gorsehill & Pinehurst – John Ballman (01793 694 584).
8. Haydon Wick – Tim Page (07717 669944).
9. Highworth – Anthea Beaumont (01793 762 517).
10. Moredon – Jenny Millin (07879 023 903).
11. Old Town - Cindy Matthews (01793 644 388).
12. Parks – Fay Howard (07952 350 656).
13. Penhill – Paul Baker (01793 334 598).
14. Shaw & Nine Elms – Michael Heal (07810 872 849).
15. St Margaret – Nigel Chalk (01793 346165).
16. St Philips – Joe Tray (07813 170 202).
17. Toothill – Steve Wakefield (07775 911 922).
18. Walcot – Ellen Osa (07577 923 694) .
19. Wroughton – Geraint Day (07753 957 565).
20. Western – Des Moffatt (07709 066 707).

Polling Stations locations are available from THIS LINK:

To use this link you’ll need to know your Polling District. Check on your card – the Districts in each Ward are as follows:

1. Abbey Meads - AM1-AM4.
2. Central – CE1-CE4.
3. Covingham & Nythe – CN1-CN4.
4. Dorcan – DN1-DN4.
5. Eastcott – ET1-ET5.
6. Freshbrook & Grange Park –  FG1-FG4.
7. Gorsehill & Pinehurst – GH1-GH3.
8. Haydon Wick – HG1-HG5.
9. Highworth – HW1-HW5.
10. Moredon – MD1-MD6.
11. Old Town - TL1-TL5.
12. Parks – PK1-PK4.
13. Penhill – PH1-PH4.
14. Shaw & Nine Elms – SE1-SE4.
15. St Margaret – SM1-SM3.
16. St Philips – SP1-SP6
17. Toothill – TW1-TW3.
18. Walcot – WA1-WA3.
19. Wroughton – WC1-WC5.
20. Western – WE1-WE4.

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OFFER YOUR HELP IN NORTH SWINDON OR SOUTH SWINDON

Derique Montaut, Leader of the Labour Group, has pointed out that Labour-run authorities are faring much worse than Tory shire counties (some of which are receiving no cuts at all).  This is political vindictiveness of the worst kind.  But even when we look at the supposedly favourable settlement for Swindon we find that while our town may be seeing its revenue decline by ‘only’ 5.88% over two years, it is actually losing 19.11% of the ‘formula’ grant it receives from the Government.  The real situation is also worse than it seems since £2m per year is being transferred from the NHS to support social care work which is now carried out by the Council – but this is very unlikely to be enough.  The allocation of course takes no account of inflation – now running at 4.7% – or the fact that Council tax will be frozen.

Caption:  Eric Pickles – promising ‘an end to big Government’

Thanks to Martin Wicks of Swindon TUC for the following figures…

The voting was Jenny Millin (Labour) 887, Toby Elliott (Conservative) 755,  William Oram (UKIP) 129 and Chris Ward (Liberal) 98 votes.  Jenny thanked her supporters for their help during an outstanding campaign and the Borough officials for their hard work on polling day.  She is anxious to hear from residents of Moredon about issues and services which need to be improved, and is looking forward to serving all the electors.  Jenny can be contacted on moredon.millin@gmail.com

Photo – Jenny being congratulated by supporters and rival Tory, UKIP and Liberal candidates at 23.00

Here is the text of the speech… 

I want to pay tribute to the work that the CBI does as the voice of British business and I want to pay particular tribute to Richard Lambert.  He has been an outstanding advocate on many issues for progressive business sense.  As befits a party that lost the election only five months ago and a leader beginning his fifth week in charge, I am not here to give you my manifesto for 2015, but to set out our direction for the future, and begin the process of engagement we need with you, the wealth creators and entrepreneurs of Britain.

New Labour’s insight in the 1990s was to recognise that we needed to be a party that understood wealth creation as well as its distribution, that we needed to be for economic prosperity as well as social justice and that solving our society’s problems could not be done without a partnership between government and business.

With Alan Johnson as Shadow Chancellor, John Denham as the Shadow Business Secretary and Douglas Alexander as the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, we intend to carry forward all of these New Labour insights.

The argument I want to make today is that because the world has changed so much since the 1990s and because we need to learn lessons from success and failure, what it means to be pro-business in the 2010s is different to what it meant back then.  The result of the financial crisis is that we have a deficit we need to cut, but the lessons are much deeper.  In tackling the deficit, we need to recognise the fundamental weaknesses in our economy that led to it and which we need to put right if we are to have a stronger economic future.

Let me start with the deficit.  I want to be clear: if we had won power in May, there would have been cuts.  We will therefore be selective about the cuts we will oppose and will support.

On welfare, we have said that we will work with the government on reforms to Disability Living Allowance, sickness benefits and other areas where there is genuine reform.  We will support reforms which bring greater value for money.

Now, this audience will know that we have a difference with the government on the pace and scale of deficit reduction. We do believe that a four year timetable for halving the deficit would be a better approach.   And, I do fear that the path the government is pursuing is a gamble with growth and jobs.

They have a programme which will lead to the disappearance of a million private and public sector jobs but no credible plan to replace them.  And their refusal to accept that a deficit reduction plan has to be sensitive to changing economic circumstances needlessly makes the British economy a hostage to fortune.  Time will tell whether they turn out to be right.

But my wider point is this – we don’t just need to pay down the deficit in a way that ensures growth now: we need to understand the causes of the high deficit and the deeper lessons about our economy to prevent a recurrence of the financial crash and build a strong economy for the future.  There is a view that the deficit arose solely because of spending choices made in the last decade.  In fact, the deficit was 2.4% of national income in 2007/8, broadly the same level as public sector capital investment.

It was what happened next that led to led to a deficit of over 10%: a combination of the loss of 6% of our national income, and the tax receipts that went with them; the consequent rise in benefit spending; and the discretionary decisions to stabilise the economy.  Not everything the last government did was right, but if we misread history we will fail to tackle the big structural issues we face in our economy.  There are important lessons to be learned about why the deficit went up so significantly and we need a wider plan for our economy which understands these deeper lessons.  Without profound change in the way we manage our economy, we are at risk of at best, sleepwalking back to an economy riddled with the same risks as we saw before the recession hit.

First, a new system of financial regulation which avoids a repeat of the crash and creates a banking system that works better in the interests of our economy.

Second, a new approach to industrial policy so we have a more balanced economy.

And third, we need to do more to create an economy which by supporting everyone to make a decent living, whether in employment or a by starting a small business, creates a more stable platform of economic growth.

First, on financial regulation. British political debate in the last thirty years has been dominated by debate about the dangers of excessive regulation.  Government should always be vigilant about the substance and implementation of regulation.  But as is now widely recognised, the financial crisis revealed the real dangers of the opposite.

If government fails to play its proper role, businesses suffer.  The financial services industry in Britain is a major employer and it is important that it remains strong.  But over time, support for financial services led to competitive deregulation as countries sought to extract comparative advantage.

We need policy-makers and regulators who recognise that we need stronger rules but also that we need a culture that balances the need to support financial services with the need to protect our wider economy.   And, change shouldn’t just be about reducing risk but also about increasing opportunity.   We must also use this moment to tackle the historic problem that we have long faced in the British economy: our financial services industry is a great employer but does not do enough to support small business and industry.

As Richard Lambert said in a speech earlier this month: “One constant complaint I hear from SMEs around the country is that decisions which affect their business are not being taken by people who know anything about it. Instead, they are referred up to the centre, where loan requests are decided against a set of box-ticking benchmarks.”

This has been a decades-long problem and business as usual will not tackle it. That is why I hope the banking commission and indeed the government looks radically at the structure of the banking system but also at the case for new models of ownership in the banking sector.  Both Richard and Paul Myners have suggested the case for greater public involvement in helping to finance the small business sector, for example through a new small business bank, like the ICFC created after the Second World War.

Others have made the case for mutuals and for public/private structures of banking ownership, as we make decisions about the stakes we have in the banks.   All of these issues should be on the table if we are to get the banking system our economy needs.

Secondly, we should learn the lessons of the financial crisis: that we need to more fundamentally reform our economy if we are to broaden our economic base.  The truth is that over time, Britain became over-reliant on the financial services sector – for jobs and for tax revenues. Financial services became the goose that laid the golden egg.  This is why, in part, the deficit went up so much in the UK after the financial crash happened.  Until late in its time in office, I believe our government did not do enough to support other sorts of industry in this country.   Scarred by the failed exercise in picking winners decades ago, government has been too afraid to support the industries of the future.

Under governments of both parties, we let other countries steal a march on us and I fear the same may happen again: from creative industries to green manufacturing to bio-sciences.  Despite all the talent in engineering and work in our universities, I fear Britain still suffers from an anti-manufacturing bias.  The way to support British businesses who want to lead in the industries of the future isn’t for government to do nothing.  Government action can make a difference, and government inaction can make life harder.

Where do we need to do better?  In finance as I have already said.  As Energy Secretary, I was constantly struck by the risk aversion in relation to new green industries compared to say, construction.
And in the absence of commercial finance, sometimes government needs to step in.  For example, the decision to withdraw support from Sheffield Forgemasters risks our traditional problem: bought by Britain, made elsewhere.   We need to do better in public procurement, where we do not yet do enough to get bang for our buck when it comes to supporting British business.   We need support for infrastructure that provides a platform for new industries, from ports for the wind industry to broadband and high speed rail.  And we need to make sure we have the right skills base, growing the pool of talent in Britain which can attract new industries.

All too often, British success is undermined by one or more missing elements. Too often poor public policy or a lack of action leads to failure.  As an opposition, a focus on the future sources of prosperity and growth will be at the heart of our policy review.  Nobody should pretend these are easy questions to answer but we must not ignore them and continue with business as usual.

Third, we must address a deeper and perhaps the most challenging lesson of the financial crisis.  We went into it with an economy in which rising living standards for too many lower and middle income families, depended on high levels of personal debt and rising asset prices.  Why was this?  We were successful as an economy at creating jobs but not good enough at creating and sustaining well-paying, high productivity jobs.  Indeed globalisation – trade and immigration – had the effect of squeezing out middle-income jobs, and holding down wages in a number of sectors in our economy.  And while for individual companies, this had benefits, for too many families they had no option but to take on higher levels of debt to sustain their standards of living.

In the world after the credit crunch, this is not a credible route to sustaining higher living standards or overall demand in our economy.  So the long-term task we face is to move towards an economy in which good quality jobs attract rising salaries, alongside rising productivity, both for the good of those families and the prosperity of our economy.

This requires the kind of broader industrial base I talked about earlier, but it also requires a shift away from Britain’s competitive advantage being in low paid, low skilled jobs.  As the last government and many of you have rightly said, this depends on having a better skilled and higher productivity workforce.  Government must play a role in this: sometimes through direct support for training, but that does not always make it happen.   We therefore need to find new ways of rewarding those employers who invest in their workforce.   So I have suggested, for example, tax cuts for those employers who pay the living wage as an incentive to develop the skills of the people who work for them. We also need to do more to support people and local communities to take control of their own economic future.

That means much greater emphasis on small business.  There have been and still are too few in British politics who speak up for small business.  The change Tony Blair brought to our party rightly made us more open to the business community, but we have not yet done enough to understand the real importance of small business as a way of liberating individuals and creating the economy we need.

I want our party to stand up for small business and entrepreneurs.  And I look forward to working with you to help create this high wage high productivity economy in Britain. Our country faces some big choices in the months and years ahead.  We can accept an analysis that nothing matters bar deficit reduction.  But I fear that is a gamble with growth and jobs. Even more importantly, it does not address the deeper risks and flaws in our economy.  To think this is the best we can hope for is a deeply pessimistic view.

I believe we need to take a different and more optimistic approach – an approach that sees deficit reduction as a start not an end and is willing to learn the profound lessons of the crisis.  My view is that it is only this that truly serves the interests of British business. It is only this that will insulate business from the risks that are part and parcel of the financial services industry. It is only this that will actively support the creation of British industries that can lead in the global economy of tomorrow.  It is only this that can combine fairness, prosperity and economic stability.  That is what I believe it means to be pro-business in the wake of the financial crisis.

It is the pro-business approach I will adopt.  I look forward to working with you in the months and years ahead. Thank you.

On Wednesday 13th October economists at PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that the half-million jobs which the ConDems plan to remove from the public sector would be matched by the same numbers of private sector jobs .  The outlook for the UK economy, PwC says, “remains in the balance“, and  ”There is no escaping the fact that the fiscal squeeze will have a significant adverse effect on many sectors and regions.”

As the public sector embarks on a near-ban on the use of management consultants, PwC say that the large business services sector faces a potential output loss of about 4%, leading to a drop of 180,000 jobs. In relative terms though, construction jobs will suffer most, with a 5% loss in contracts for building and maintenance in everything from roads to social housing implying a loss of 100,000 jobs.  Many economists are concerned that the UK may follow the US into a “jobless recovery“. In Britain, such job creation as there has been has been heavily weighted towards part-time and temporary work, generally less secure or well paid than traditional full-time employment. Employers have been cautious to take new people on even when business confidence was running higher than now, preferring instead to extend overtime or hire temps to meet any upturn in demand.

One danger for the economy as a whole is if the long-term unemployed become unemployable, and cyclical unemployment becomes structural – especially if new private sector jobs are created in parts of the country and demand the type of skills that ex-public sector staff in the Midlands or North will find it difficult to move to and retrain.

Remember that when in April when Labour was still in charge the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast that the UK would grow faster than almost every other economy in Europe.  Now look what the Tories have done to the recovery!!  They cut much more nationally than is needed for reasons of ideology – and were seeing just the same from Swindon Borough Council.

Photo: Jenny Millin at the Moredon Medical Centre – just one of the many investments in Swindon paid for totally by the last Labour Government.

Jenny Millin (Labour Candidate on 4th November)

I am delighted to have been selected as the Labour Candidate in Moredon ward, and hope I can justify the confidence shown in me.  I’d like to pay particular tribute to the work of Maureen Caton, an excellent and long-standing Labour councillor, who was candidate in May 2010 and brought Labour to within 150 votes of victory.  Now is the time to elect a Labour Councillor in Moredon, to oppose the Tory’s cruel cuts and to fight to protect local services.  Please contact me with your questions and with offers of help in my campaign!

I was born into a working class family, and my father went down the pit in South Wales at 14 years old.  I’ve been active in the Labour Movement throughout my life and have campaigned particularly hard on health, disability and youth services.   The past 6 years have seen the Tory Council make shocking closures in youth centres and homes for the elderly  in Moredon.  Had it not been for the huge investment made in Moredon’s schools and health centres by the last Labour Government the situation would be many times worse.  But now we are seeing the Coalition cuts starting to bite, and are at the mercy of a local Tory Council who are determined to make £45m of cuts, and have not even offered a whimper of complaint to the Government that Swindon is being much worse affected than almost any other authority in the country.

My commitment to Swindon and the Ward of Mordon in absolute. When I came to the Borough in 2000 I found that the local residents in my area had been suffering for many years with increasing heavy traffic, despite a Tory promise to return the residential area into the cul-de-sac it originally was before the building of the industrial estates that surround the homes there.  So I started a campaign to redress this and organised petitions and meetings.  I set up a community group and lobbied at Council meetings. Eventually the residents were listened to and, with the help and support of our then MP Michael Wills and our local Labour Councillors, the cul-de-sac has been restored and the environment in our area has greatly improved in both safety and pollution emissions.

I am now retired, and will work even harder as a campaigning Councillor in Moredon, and am looking forward to working together with you to ensure we improve the environment and the quality of life for everyone.  Like you I am concerned about the Tory mismanagement of our services, and the proposed cuts to the most vulnerable in our community.  I will be opposing the unnecessarily savage Tory cuts with all my might and will fight to ensure that we do not lose our existing services – like bus passes.

I am also concerned that we do not lose our youth centres, and that we do more for our young people. Teenagers and youngsters need a focus and activities to support their development, and the importance of these provisions are paramount to our society – both for the reduction of anti-social behaviour, and the benefit of the children themselves.

Finally I am deeply worried about the Tory plans to renege on their promise to protect the Heath Service.  The white paper they are rushing through will move our national treasure piecemeal into private enterprise hands. This must be fought by all of us.  We must not allow the Tories to put commercial profit before health care that is free for all. Please email me if you have any thoughts about this, and any other concerns, I will always be available to listen to all your problems, and will do my utmost to resolve them for you.

Jenny Millin, Labour Candidate

I can be contacted on moredon.millin@gmail.com

This  gives you a chance to give your verdict on…

• proposed financial cuts which are targeted at the vulnerable, the disabled, the elderly and the poor;
• the Tory Group’s failure to protest at the much deeper cuts in Government grants to Swindon than to neighbouring authorities;
• the Tory Group’s mismanagement of Swindon’s finances and expenditure on vanity schemes like Wi-Fi and consultants;
• the Tory Group’s plans for much deeper cuts (£45m) than required by Government;
• Dogma driven decisions that put in doubt the future of Moredon Library, Moredon Community Centre and Moredon golf course;
• proposals to turn off street lighting in Moredon in the early hours of the morning;
• plans to cut the number of police on our streets – which according to the Chair of the Police Federation with lead to “Christmas for criminals” in Moredon.

If you want to do more than simply voting Labour on 4th November,  please press the “Join Labour” or “Subscribe to Swindon Labour” in the boxes opposite.  We can be contacted on  info@swindon-labour.co.uk

This cartoon was published during the financial crisis of the 1930s.  Then the Tory slogan was “Equality of Sacrifice”. Today the Tories in Swindon are saying “We’re all in this together”.  Things don’t change – its the ordinary people that suffer the pain.

While green parks must be kept green, there is scope small areas of grass to be used for temporary parking.  These days you can get a cellular lattice of concrete that allows grass to grow through and keep a natural look to the area, while allowing free drainage of rainwater.   Here I am with Maureen Caton, the Labour Candidate in the local elections, looking at one of the problem areas.

Victor Agarwal