Saturday, October 07, 2006

Tories who trebled care charges say champion vulnerable people!

I’ve just received a letter asking me to ‘champion’ the cause of vulnerable people.

Astonishingly, it’s from Christine Talbot, the Executive councillor responsible for trebling home care charges for some vulnerable Lincolnshire people!

The letter was written by Christine before she went off to Bournemouth for this week’s Tory Conference – missing the controversial Executive meeting where an officer was left to present her new policy HERE.

Christine is worried about getting the right ticks in the boxes next time the council is inspected. She writes to all councillors:
“…it would be helpful if all Members could champion the cause of Supporting People and the contribution the service makes to many vulnerable groups across
the county.”

I'm sure Christine is serious, but may I suggest she leads by example. She should meet the two gentlemen in my photograph, who camped outside County offices this week for 24-hours in a dignified protest against the prospect of their home care charges going up from £40 to £120 every week.

Ironically, Supporting People is the programme in Lincolnshire which is supposed to:

offer vulnerable the support services they need to enable them to live as
independently as possible in their own accommodation.”

It’s not been a good week for Christine.

As well as failing to show up for the Exec meeting which rubber-stamped trebling care charges, she went on national radio criticising David Cameron’s Tories for spending £40,000 on a new logo – just months after doing exactly the same thing herself HERE.

The only difference is that the £40,000 spent on Lincolnshire County Council’s new logo came out of our pockets as council taxpayers.

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