Pembroke South West MP Louise Jackson says she is sorely disappointed by her first year in Parliament, but she is determined to stay in politics.

Until, that is, she can marshal some “compassion” for the Island's senior citizens.

“I'm going to stay there until I see some compassion shown to our seniors,” Mrs. Jackson said in an interview this week.

“I am going forward in this second year with even more vigour because I believe that within government there are people who have a heart. Somebody is going to stop and say ‘wait a minute, this is an issue that we should be dealing with. This supersedes a new bus terminal and spending hours on gaming. This is a human being who needs some help.'”

She said she had entered her first year with high hopes for seniors because many of the issues seemed “solvable”.

“Some of the issues were actually at the crisis stage and I naively expected that these issues will be dealt with with despatch - particularly the ones that I would call crisis issues. This did not happen.”

And she pointed to the $1,000 prescription benefit and the St. George's Rest Home as the only tangible seniors' initiatives introduced by the Government, while other issues like health care and housing for seniors have been ignored.

Even the prescription benefit, she added, was poorly implemented.

“Many seniors went over $1,000 because no one tells them when the $1,000 is up. The computers at the pharmacists don't talk to each other which means there is no one to notify the seniors when the benefit is up. So many of them have gone over the $1,000 and are now receiving notification that they owe hundreds of dollars which they don't have.”

Her disappointments also included what she said was a failure to enforce standards and safety regulations in the nursing homes and the absence of an agency for the mentally challenged.

Raising awareness of seniors issues was among her first year accomplishments, she said.

“I'm in Opposition and I can only stand there and present a case for our seniors and I am not in a position to do anything about it. I think that I have perhaps drawn more attention than most.”

She added: “I think I've raised the level of awareness of the plight of seniors in this country and I'm hoping that eventually it will catch the attention of Government and they will just take a little time and a little effort to help our people.

“They say they want to get on with the social agenda in a couple of years. Well, many seniors don't have a couple of years and I think it's very sad - why should we put the seniors in that position? Many of them are in substandard housing or no housing at all.”

And a “retroactive” financial assistance bill and an inadequate health insurance and health care programme just make matters worse for seniors, she continued.

“If we had become government we would have had a full time health care clinic with a geriatrician and we would have given seniors in need their free medications, free prescriptions and free eyeglasses. A year on we would have been up and running.”

Still being in Opposition has its good points.

“I just get a really good feeling when I know that I am helping the country to be a better place, a happier place, a more comfortable place, a healthier place to live in - if I'm a party to that, that gives me a really good feeling. I've spent most of my life with children, the other end of the spectrum, and I'm at the other end myself so I certainly speak from experience because I am a senior.”

Mrs. Jackson was born into a working-class family and spent her early years in Philadelphia where her father, William Carpenter, became one of the first black registered master plumbers - a distinction he had to fight for in court, she says.

“He had to go to court because they refused to pass him, and the courts ruled that he had in fact passed (the certifying examinations),” she told The Royal Gazette.

Later on after he became a master plumber he then fought to get into the union and that was not an easy thing to do.

Her mother, Luttie Carpenter, was a school teacher and seniors activist who worked with the American Association for Retired Persons.

As a child she often found herself on the frontlines of racial integration because of her parents' activism.

Young Louise became one of the first black children to use Philadelphia's ice skating rink after her father threatened to call the Police if they were denied admission,

And she was among the first black children at the Stevens School of Practice for gifted and talented children.

And the family also forced the integration of the local YMCA when she got on her school swim team and found that the Y's swimming pool - the team's practice pool - was out of bound to blacks.

“Once people get called on it, you can break things down pretty quickly so, I'm from a family of fighters I can tell you that now,” she said.

Politically she described herself as a liberal and a Democrat. Mrs. Jackson won elective office for the first time in the 2003 General Election.