Tomorrow, Friday 28th June, is National Care Home Day and I am looking forward to my visit to Grovelands in Yeovil and a meeting with Somerset Care. This year the theme of the day is the role that the Arts can play in supporting the wellbeing of older people and how residential care can foster really creative communities. Social Care has rightly had a high profile of late helped by the recent Panorama programmes which featured Somerset. It’s an increasingly important area of policy making and debate.
It is said that you can judge a society on how they treat the more vulnerable and we absolutely must meet this challenge. However, whilst it’s a great responsibility and an issue with which many of us will have a strong emotional connection, we must not forget to celebrate the many instances of wonderful care and the people that make it happen and that is what tomorrow is about.
It has just been announced that Yeovil College is to be a provider of T-Levels in the second phase of the roll-out in 2021. This is great news – I wanted to see them included in the first tranche but have raised their case with the Department of Education many times in the last year and am really delighted that their success in related technical areas such as apprenticeships is now being recognised. We have so many great businesses and jobs in the South West that will be a natural fit for young people choosing to take this exciting route into a fantastic career and I can’t wait to see it in action.
Soon we will have a new Prime Minister and I am excited about moving on with a new impetus for the Government. For me Boris Johnson is the man for this job. He is hugely charismatic and a gifted communicator. He knows how to put a great team together and get results. In London he took on crime head on and achieved dramatic success. He reinvigorated our parks and green spaces and introduced hybrid buses to tackle pollution. He understood how important it is to promote our values across the globe and how politicians are salesmen for their nations.
Boris knows what is needed to get Brexit done. He is fully engaged with progress on finding solutions to the Irish border issue and totally on top of the details of plans like trusted trader schemes and checks carried out away from the physical border that I and others have been working to put together.
Finally, Boris has strong connections with Somerset and loves our part of the country. He is fully behind our infrastructure projects including the A303 and sees the potential that our economy has to play an even greater role in the country. Keeping Jeremy Corbyn out of Downing Street is still the biggest factor for the health of our nation and no one will do that better than Boris.
