Graham Jones

Haslingden MP

BEST wishes to everyone for Christmas and the New Year.

I sat in the new posh wine bar on Deardengate enjoying the conversations about how perceptions of Haslingden had changed. If you’ve not been you must go. I asked the couple at the next table where they were from. “We’ve come from Burnley for an evening out. It’s very nice”.

I recently sat in a Haslingden headteacher’s office and listened to how he thought perceptions of Haslingden have dramatically changed. They have.

So my big thanks at the year-end is to all the volunteers who have helped make Haslingden a much better place. To those sat at home who want to help, get involved. Live a happier life in the company of other good people. Start with @lovehaslingden on Facebook or Twitter.

Talking of still here I’d like to thank Susan for her kind words on Twitter; that she didn’t want to lose me as her MP in the boundary review. I don’t want to lose Haslingden either and I’ll be opposing the Tory national gerrymandering of constituencies.

Thirty four per cent of calls to the police are welfare related; of those 20% health related. My gran suffered from dementia and she was one of those callers before she died.

This spring I spent half a day at Hutton visiting the Police call centre. They expressed their frustration that such calls consumed time, that the Police could not resolve the complexities of many of them and crucially they had nowhere to redirect them to.

This spring I met with, as I regularly do, our East Lancs Clinical Commissioning Group who decide local health policies. They wanted to set up a new telephone hub service with care navigators.

At my request and initiative, the CCG visited Hutton and as a result vulnerable people who call the police will now be redirected to the CCG and given the proper care they need. If it’s done right, it will probably be my biggest ‘quiet’ achievement this year.

The scenes from Aleppo have been shocking. I warned back in 2012 that aggression, or the backing of the Free Syrian rebel Army was both futile and would only add to the innocent death total.

The way forward in Syria (excluding ISIS) has to be peace and negotiation.

Liberal interventionism has been in the dog house since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 but the horrific barbarity of ISIS has put interventionism back as a policy option.

There is now a growing acceptance that noninterventionism has serious consequences too.

The world must take a balanced approach and our goal should be to use all options available to achieve peaceful end.

In the Yemen that is to back the UN and a negotiated peace process, not pick sides between Iran and Saudi Arabia as some are doing.

2016 has been the year that we stood up to ISIS and began to defeat their evil ideology.

In 2016 I took the opportunity to see for myself first-hand the issue.

I visited the Turkish border and the refugee camps north of Raqqa.

In Iraq I visited the front line at Mosul including the liberated town of Bartella and I spent two days at our RAF airbase with the pilots and ground crew fighting ISIS in Iraq/Syria at Akrotiri, Cyprus.

Without UK and coalition airstrikes against ISIS, ISIS would probably have overrun Baghdad.

They would certainly have overrun other cities including Erbil.

Their war crimes and genocide are increasingly and barbarically evidenced.

Mass murder, beheadings, brutal torture with power tools and amputations, rape of women and girls as young as age two as well as rape of little boys.

Voting against RAF airstrikes would have led to more of this - the consequences of no-action.

It is therefore 100% the right decision to vote for RAF airstrikes.