In his regular blog for Caerphilly Observer South Wales East AM Lindsay Whittle gives his take on recent news.
Beci Newton
Plaid Cymru members in Caerphilly constituency will officially launch the campaign for the UK General Election this Thursday.
The Party of Wales’ candidate is Beci Newton, a married mum of two young children, who lives in Llanbradach.
Beci, a firefighter, is an impressive candidate who, if elected, would really represent a new start for Caerphilly.
Over the next few months, Beci will be talking to people across the constituency about the issues affecting their lives with the aim of bringing about real change and restoring people’s faith in politics.
The public’s view of politicians won’t have been helped last week by the start of the campaign with David Cameron and Ed Miliband involved in a slanging match. The spat really is why people are turned off by politics – full of negativity.
Beci’s launch will take place at Llanbradach Community Centre at 7pm.
And it is open to everyone – not just party members. Beci would be delighted to see you there.
Speaking alongside Beci will be Jonathan Edwards, the Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr.
Healthy Lifestyle
I spoke during First Minister’s Questions on Tuesday following a survey on lifestyles of men in the Caerphilly area carried out by Cardiff University.
Although the survey said that men who followed at least one of five healthy lifestyles such as not smoking significantly reduced their risk of suffering from diabetes, heart problems, cancers and stroke, the results did not appear to influence adults into action.
This suggests that improving the health of people in this area will rely on helping young people to adopt healthier lifestyles in future. Schools as well as parents have a key role to play in making sure that children from nursery level upwards have opportunities to take regular exercise and to eat sensibly.
People don’t respond to politicians and experts telling them how to live their lives. What we need are well-known young people such as sports stars to visit schools to spread the word about keeping fit and healthy.
Geraint Evans
I attended a concert before Christmas given by the Aber Valley Male Voice Choir and I wanted to offer my congratulations to conductor and musical director Geraint Evans. He was awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year’s Honours for his services. Geraint is a real character and it’s great news for him and the choir. Congratulations to all those that were recognised.
Children should be walking to school rather than being driven a few hundred yards to the school gate by their parents. Surely a walk to school would benefit both parent and child as both would get some excercise and the child would start the day in a more positive way. Even if the child lives too far to walk the whole way the parent could park near to the school and walk the rest of the way.
Excellent point there. I have sympathy for driving all of the way in the rain as it’s never nice to work when wet and coats don’t fully protect you, but even in the summer primary schools have parking problems from lazy parents.
If you do motor to school you are not subjecting your offspring to breath the cancer inducing fumes which hang in the air, over Caerphilly Town in particular, young lungs are particularly suseptable to severe damage from this very dangerous air quality, around many primary schools in the Caerphilly town and the Caerphilly Basin. The problem is particulaly bad in and around the Twyn in Caerphilly, hence the monitoing station on the corner of White Street and Windsor Street. Hundreds of Children cross the Twyn Square at the Zebra Crossing by the library, also adjacent to the monitoring station, people should seek professional guidence from Caerphilly Borough Council as to the possibility of their childrens health being damaged by regular exposure to these poisonous hanging in the qir cancergenic fumes.
Those who do ferry their kids back and forth to school are only adding to the pollution, and with most making such a short journey their car engines aren’t reaching their optimum operating temperature and so are producing more pollution and ruining their cars in the process by clogging the EGR valve and the diesel particle filters. A lot of schools have some kind of traffic calming outside them, road humps, 20mph zones etc these again only add more pollution with vehicles constantly breaking and accelerating. Vehicles today are far less polluting than when I walked to school 30 years ago – when every child walked to school, there were no fat kids in my class. Schools need to discourage parents from driving their kids to school, Wales has enough obese children, it and it’s NHS doesn’t need anymore.
Cers by design take air in from the outside, heat it over the engine and pump it into the car. Alternatively, they take air in from the outside and pump it into the car without heating. Even with the system not turned on, cars are not airtight allowing outside air to still enter the car.
The cars do not protect people from pollution, they only add to it. The problem will only get worse if CBBC get their way and build more houses in Caerphilly.