The G7 Summit has been a part of my world for a long time now. From the outset the agenda has been to grapple with how the world recovers and rebuilds following the pandemic and how this can be done, not just to revert to what was before but to build a fairer more equal green resilient future. This basically means finding a way to ensure people have access to what they need and the opportunity to live full lives irrespective of the country they live in. Fundamental to this is the need to reduce our harmful impact on the natural environment. It is predominantly the world’s poorest countries that are exposed to crop failure, rising temperatures, flooding and loss of biodiversity. Another dominant subject of our discussions has been how to enable and also ensure peaceful protest before and during the summit. I know that protests are planned to raise how urgent it is to cut harmful emissions the world over. I’m hopeful that the many people I know who care about this issue are able to make their views known freely and without risk of being inadvertently caught up in violent and aggressive behaviour. If you set out to cause disruption, aggravation and break the law, don’t set out.
Behind the scenes of the Summit is an army of people working tirelessly to ensure the Summit goes off without a hitch and that the minimal amount of disruption is experienced by people living in the area. Obviously this is still very disruptive but I’m grateful to all these men and women who are finding ways to ensure this global event is a success.
Anyone who has worked closely with my office on one of many community priorities will have come across the steady hand and unflappable presence of John Williams who sadly retired last week. Many of you will remember John from his days as Community Editor at the Cornishman and I was glad to employ him in my constituency office knowing of his local knowledge and experience. John has been at the heart of a great deal of the work I’ve prioritised; the efforts to drive the upgrade of the A30, find a way to deliver a sports hall for St Ives School, reopen the branch line to Helston, upgrade West Cornwall Hospital, deliver the resilient transport link to Scilly, drive down the speed in rural villages and press Post Office Ltd to maintain services and branches across West Cornwall. These and other priorities have been helped along and held together by John and his proficient administrative skills. John has also been the link and organiser of my work in support of our town and parish councils which has included annual conferences until the pandemic stopped this kind of gathering. John has always been someone to go to for sound advice and feedback and I will miss this. Having now interviewed a number of people for his post I’m confident that this work can continue at pace with John’s successor and we can continue to push on with the issues that are important to all of us who live in West Cornwall and on Scilly.
