Fairness for families

The support we give our families today will shape the future for all of us. Equally the way we treat our older people is an acid test of how fair we are as a society. If we look at both those fields, Gordon Brown’s Government is failing us badly. The Government’s own figures show that more than 2.5 million pensioners now live below the poverty line. Millions more people who are now working in the public sector are being moved from fixed benefit pensions where they would get a fixed income to direct contribution schemes where their employers and they can opt out of saving creating a huge gap in their retirement incomes.

Despite some improvements in parents rights to leave after a new child is born, in Wales we work more overtime than anywhere else in Europe. The Children’s Society recently published a report that showed children in the UK were the unhappy of any industrialised country because they were able to spend so little time with their parents. I have campaigned against the move to direct contribution pension schemes and have called for enhanced provision of affordable childcare.

In education and social care, the needs of children and young people with autistic spectrum disorders are often not addressed and involve very long journeys. A proper assessment of the demand for Welsh medium education in Llanelli needs to be undertaken so that we can provide and plan for adequate places in future.  

Read more about families on Myfanwy's Blog...

A safe environment

Llanelli has some of the most beautiful and fragile environments in Wales from the ancient woodlands that are part of Stradey Woods to the saltings in Pembrey to the marshland at Penclacwydd. We have wonderful places to visit like Cefn Sidan and the coastal path. Given our industrial past, it is astonishing that the variety of plant and animal life has come back so quickly. At the same time there are new threats to our environment from insufficient water treatment works and unaffordable and wasteful housing developments along the Burry Estuary and in the Gwendraeth. Alongside Helen Mary and our councillors, I will fight to make sure our environment is safe now and in the long-term.

Soon the world will have used more than half its oil supply. Plaid in Llanelli and nationally is committed to supporting sustainable alternatives and new ways of producing energy and food that make our communities stronger and fairer places to live.

Read more about the environment on Myfanwy's Blog...

A sustainable economy

I grew up against the background of Thatcher’s vicious cuts in public services and her war against the unions. In the years that followed we saw New Labour taking her devotion to the free market to ever more irresponsible extremes most recently proposing to privatise the Royal Mail. Now, faced with a worldwide banking crisis that is made much deeper in the UK by our dependence on bankers and the destruction of our industry, we are seeing tens of billions of our money pumped into banks that are still not properly regulated. The banking crisis marks the end of Thatcher’s dream but the main UK parties don’t seem able to see that we need a new kind of sustainable economy – one that includes for example local publicly owned savings and investment banks where we have a say. Llanelli has to develop long-term green jobs that our children can come back to and we need to invest in education to train our young people for the needs of that economy. We need to use this time of crisis to plan for a better future.

Read more about the economy on Myfanwy's Blog...