http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articlearchive.php Recent Press Articles from Jenny Randerson AM en-GB Jenny Randerson AM http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/ Prater Raines Ltd http://www.praterraines.co.uk/ (c) 2008 Jenny Randerson AM 2008-08-27T23:56+01:00 United Kingdom http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000039/the_economy_is_in_trouble.html I was talking to my researcher the other day about the economy. I was quite shocked when I realised that he had never experienced the horror of recession, being too young to remember the devastation of the early nineties. We have an entire generation of twenty-somethings who are fortunate not to have experienced the repossessions, mass unemployment and inflation of the last time a government made a hash of handling the economy. 2008-08-21T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000038/get_involved.html As someone who has been involved in the Welsh party for many years, I have been a member of many committees, most recently Welsh Policy Committee and Welsh Campaigns and Candidates Committee (CCC). I was chair of CCC for several years and was therefore an ex-efficio member of Welsh National Executive Committee (NEC). I have also previously served on Federal Policy Committee. The Welsh Assembly is the only legislature in Europe that is completely gender balanced but in all parties, it is still the case that men are more likely than women to put themselves forward as candidates for committee places. 2008-08-13T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000037/the_eisteddfod_comes_to_town.html This week has seen the arrival of one of Europe's, indeed the World's largest cultural festivals in Cardiff. The National Eisteddfod has returned to the Capital for the first time in 30years and I for one looked forward to experiencing a part of Welsh history and culture in our city. 2008-08-07T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000036/bigger_isnt_always_better__community_health_councils_could_be_the_future_of_an_open_and_accountable_nhs.html In the dying hours of the Assembly term, the Health Minister made a startling announcement. The initial stages of her consultation into plans to reconfigure the health service had come back and there seemed to be one thing that almost all respondents agreed with, that Local Health Boards did not have a future. LHBs were set up during the Welsh Lib Dem/Labour partnership agreement at the beginning of the decade. I am happy to put my hand up and say that I supported their creation at the time. The NHS had become too unwieldy and distant from patients. Decisions were being made in a way that was completely unresponsive to local needs, at a great distance from patients and in a way that took no account of varying concerns of patients from one end of a Health authority to the other. The other great strength of the LHB system has been the sharing of boundaries between LHBs and Local Authorities which has allowed much better joint working to plan services and reduce bed-blocking. 2008-08-03T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000035/carers_have_been_massively_let_down.html I was delighted a few weeks ago when it was announced that the UK Government had found tens of millions of pounds to support Carers across the UK. It appeared at first that this would result in around £11m of new money coming to Wales. Carers are the unsung heroes of our society. They spend time, money and enormous amounts of energy and passion on looking after their loved ones, be they friends or family. 2008-07-15T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000034/more_change_at_the_top_would_be_a_disaster_for_ambulance_service.html Last month, the Minister for Health launched an unprecedented media assault to distance herself from the ongoing problems in the Welsh Ambulance Service. The Minister told the Service that it had six months to start delivering improvements or face the consequences. The Welsh Ambulance Service has been in ongoing crisis for many years and saw four different Chief Executives during 2006. In August of that year, the Trust appointed Alan Murray, the Former boss of the Northern Ireland Service and renowned "trouble-shooter". 2008-06-30T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000033/rubbish.html I have been thinking about rubbish a lot this week. Many members of the public are probably thinking that this is what most politicians spend their time thinking about normally but I have quite literally been thinking about how we deal with our rubbish. This follows the announcement by Cardiff Council that weekly food waste collections will be introduced, in line with a promise in the Lib Dems election Manifesto back in May. 2008-06-30T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000032/worrying_news_for_healthcare_in_cardiff.html Just last week an interesting, and perhaps deeply worrying piece of news came out. Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust seem to be planning a long term strategy of reducing the number of acute beds in the area by aiding the recovery of hundreds of patients in the community. 2008-06-17T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000031/hospital_infections_need_a_sensible_approach_without_gimmicks.html Last week, the BBC's Week in Week Out Programme uncovered a shocking state of cleanliness in the Royal Gwent hospital. In particular, the ability of the undercover reporter to gain a job without references and the poor attention to detail of some cleaning staff were terrifying. Most worrying of all, there is little reason to believe that the RGH is greatly different from any other trust in Wales. All face the same pressure to spend more on patients and less on essential background services like cleaning. 2008-06-10T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000030/a_night_of_drama.html Election nights are often full of drama and intrigue, but rarely as much so as the night of May 1st 2008. In the run up to the elections, nobody across Cardiff really knew what was going to happen, although many commentators were fairly sure that it would be a bad night for the Labour party. 2008-05-12T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000029/we_must_look_at_all_the_options_to_protect_our_nhs_staff.html Last week, the Assembly Government's task force on violence against NHS staff made recommendations to deal with what is evidently one of the most serious and unjust problems facing our NHS staff today. Figures show that there are around 22 reports per day of physical or verbal abuse against staff in hospitals alone, and this is surely only the tip of the iceberg. 2008-04-10T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000028/crime_and_elections.html With the local elections fast approaching, it is a good time for residents of Cardiff to have a good think about the local issues that really matter to them. There are three issues that always seem to come up in this sort of elections. These are: council tax; cleanliness and crime, as well as many other issues of course. 2008-04-10T00:01+01:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000026/parking_decision_risks_frontline_care.html The recent announcement that all car parking charges in Welsh Hospitals would be abandoned has received a mixed reaction. Personally, I am extremely disappointed with the decision. 2008-03-13T00:01+00:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000027/car_parking_idea_is_bad.html The Health Minister announced last week that from April, car parking at hospitals will be free. Of course that will not apply at University Hospital of Wales because they have a commercial contract with a private car park operator which binds them in for the foreseeable future. Free parking at hospitals sounds great in theory but it has a massive downside. In hospitals near to town and city centres for instance, there could be a free-for-all with local office workers, commuters and so on taking advantage of the free parking leaving genuine patients and their visitors without a space at all. 2008-03-10T00:01+00:00 http://www.jennyranderson.org.uk/articles/000025/good_weather_and_a_great_city.html The un-seasonally good weather over the half-term Assembly recess allowed me a small amount of time to wander around the city centre and do some shopping. It is not often that I get the chance to do this but I felt it was important to take the time to visit this unique part of my constituency. 2008-02-08T00:01+00:00