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Friday, 27 November, 2009 
From time to time I get a question from a constituent asking my views on a particular topic that is not often aired. The questions prove to me that many people do indeed think about politics in a thoughtful manner. I was recently asked my views on Scotland and in particular Alex Salmond’s claim that he wanted enough SNP MPs to hang England by a Scottish rope. I have reproduced my reply to this question below for any of you wondering where I stand on the issue of Scotland.
I too share your concerns raised and find the statements made by Alex Salmond to be bigoted and unpleasant.
David Cameron has stated, and I whole heartedly agree with him, that we do not wish to be just the Government of England and that we want to retain the union. There are some who not only resent the fiscal cost to England of Scotland but also see the electoral advantage to the Conservatives in independence. I do not share these views and remain a unionist.
However, I do agree that devolution has been one sided and that there is some unfinished business required to rectify this.
On the issue of Scottish MP’s being able to vote on matters that affect England and Wales, but not the other way around there are three ways in which this can be addressed. First, we are committed to reducing the number of MP’s by making constituencies larger and this will affect Scotland and it will mean they will not be over represented in parliament. Second, the slow but steady advance of the Conservative party in Wales and the North shows that people can vote for a party that will govern in the interests of the whole country and not just one part of it. Thirdly, we have said we will consider reforms to reduce the ability of Scottish MPs to vote on matters that do not affect them directly.
As regards the Barnet formula, you are indeed right that Alex Salmond is able to provide nominally free services due to a large proportion of Scotland’s income being provided by English taxpayers. Although I am not opposed in principle to the idea that less wealthy areas of the country should receive more help from wealthier areas, for example northern England receives more than southern England. However, I do believe Scotland should not be treated more favorably than other areas with equal need. We will review all spending and bring forward reforms to more adequately match funding with need for all areas of the UK.
I am sure that this issue will come to a head at some time as the pretentions of the SNP are put to the test at the General Election. I am also sure that they will do their best to gain maximum advantage from Westminster, but they will find an tougher set of ministers in London than now and we will see then if they have the courage to go ahead with a referendum on independence.
I would close by saying that at the next election only the Conservative Party will field candidates in all constituencies across the UK, and only a Conservative Party can be relied on to govern in the interests of all areas of the country and bring about the change we needed to repair the vandalism to our union of the last decade.
Thursday, 26 November, 2009
Over the last few days the political blogsphere has been hotly debating a number of polls. It all started when a Mori poll from 15 November was published which showed the Conservative lead dropping to 6%. Analysts and commentators seized on this as either a rogue poll, and therefore it should be ignored, or proof that the polls were narrowing. I tend to follow UK Polling and he believed it was rogue and further polls were needed to see if it wasn’t. As it was on Monday night (23rd November) another poll put the Tory lead on 17% which is more in line with other polls before the Mori one. As a trainee politician or would be MP, what ever you want to call me, let me tell you we follow polls with a morbid curiosity, they are like some kind of drug we need to see on a regular basis and boy are we addicted. With every poll we try to work out is it good for me, bad for me, what is the trend, what are the underlying figures saying, what does it mean?
I suppose this is no great surprise to normal people that we politicians should obsess over polls. So if a politician ever tells you that they don’t follow polls, you will know they are telling you a lie, because their mouth will be moving.
Wednesday, 25 November, 2009
Yesterday morning whilst on the way to work I heard a report in R4 claiming that arrests were being made merely to allow recording of DNA to be made. There was a time when many of us would have discounted this as scare mongering and would be certain that the British Police would not stoop so low, but those days are gone and I, like many other people, am not so sure. The story was also covered in the Times: “Jonathan Montgomery, commission chairman, said that 'function creep' over the years had transformed a database of offenders into one of suspects.
Almost one million innocent people are now on the DNA database...
...Professor Montgomery said there was some evidence that people were arrested to retain the DNA information even though they might not have been arrested in other circumstance.
He said that a retired senior police officer told the commission: 'It is now the norm to arrest offenders for everything if there is a power to do so. It is apparently understood by serving police officers that one of the reasons . . . is so that DNA can be obtained.' He said that the tradition of only arresting someone when dealing with serious offences had collapsed."
The reason given for taking DNA samples in the manner described above is that it will help solve crime in the future. That is if a crime is committed by a person in the future, whose DNA is already on record then it will be easier to identify this person. Supporters further argue that if you have nothing to fear then you have nothing to hide. It should be noted that this is the usual line used by all those who would remove your freedoms, and has been used by dictators down the centuries.
The logic of the argument that early detection is achieved by having a database should be questioned because I see two main issues with this.
First, prove it…prove a time when having DNA evidence in advance of a crime, helped solve the crime quicker than if the evidence wasn’t immediately available. I am fed up with statements being made but no evidence for their validity being brought forward. Prove that it is the case and I may be more prepared to surrender my freedoms for a ‘greater’ good.
Second, the logic is only true if the database is large enough, and covers everyone who may commit a crime. As this is all of us (in the words of Judge Dredd* – ‘we are all potential criminals’), you could logically argue we should be all on the database. Now I happen to believe that we should be allowed to go about our business free from interference by the state and registering on some DNA database is a massive infringement on an individuals rights and a step to close to ‘Judge Dredd’ for my liking. What would be next, screening to identify those with DNA more likely to perpetrate crime?
In addition to this there is the point that who authorised this expansion of powers, where was the debate that we should have an extensive national DNA database, and that we should arrest people to collect their DNA? The whole story is a classic example of an unaccountable bureaucracy just expanding a taking up freedoms, and we will put a stop to it.
This story comes on top of news over the weekend that Sir Hugh Orde the leader of chief police officers threatened his resignation if proposals for directly elected police commissioners became law.
So let me get this right, we the citizen, should be prepared to accept that our freedoms can be arbitrarily removed without our say so, and we shouldn’t have the right to hold accountable our police chiefs?
This creeping assault on our civil liberties needs to be stopped and a good start is to make the Police directly accountable to the people they serve. If a few Police Chiefs feel the need to resign, then so be it. Democracy cannot be held back because it may be uncomfortable for some in the establishment.
Maybe then, they will start dealing with our priorities and not their own.
* Judge Dredd is a fascistic future cop who inhabits a world were democracy has been replaced by an authoritarian state, with its laws enforced by the Judges. See 2000AD comic.
Sunday, 22 November, 2009
Thursday, 19 November, 2009
Copy of a letter I have sent to the Evening Mail: Dear Sir,
I was very disappointed to read John Hutton’s comments in the Evening Mail dated 19th November 2009. Mr. Hutton welcomes comments made by the Head of the Royal Navy that we need four deterrent submarines, and I agree with his view.
I have always valued Mr Hutton’s contributions to the defence debate, even if I did not always agree with them because I felt he did not resort to spreading untruths. Not anymore because Mr Hutton now says:
“I very much welcome the fact that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has already given his and the Labour government’s commitment to the replacement of the Trident submarines with successor submarines and is in fact the only leader of the main political parties in the UK to do so.”
Then perhaps Mr. Hutton could explain this statement by David Cameron, made here in Barrow in August last year.
“I’m proud of the fact that my party, when there was a very divided debate in the Labour Party about whether to renew or rather replace Trident with an updated nuclear deterrent, that while Labour was split, we could have played kind of silly buggers with the whole thing, but we said: ‘No, we’re voting for this.’
“We believe in nuclear deterrent, we believe we need a replacement to Trident. I also happen to think it should be built right here in Barrow-in-Furness.”
In case Mr. Hutton has forgotten how many Labour MPs voted against replacing Trident, and how it was only passed with Conservative votes, I can provide a list.
Yours faithfully
John Gough
Conservative Parliamentary Candidate
Barrow & Furness
I have to say I do feel a little let down by this turn of events. I never expected John Hutton to resort to untruths.
UPDATE: Published in the Evening Mail 26th November 2009
Wednesday, 18 November, 2009
Today I am starting an occasional new series ‘The Stupid Statement of the Week’ Award. Occasional because I think we all have better things to do with our time than search out daft statements. I am very pleased to announce that the inaugural winner is my Labour opponent in Barrow. He is complaining that we have organised an out of town Christmas shopping trip.
So let me get this straight, Labour don’t want you to shop anywhere except where you live?
Just think for one minute about this silly statement, if everyone stayed at home there would be no tourists, no visitors to the Zoo, Furness Abbey, the Dock Museum, no future tenants for the boat marina, no shoppers coming to Barrow and Ulverston for our festivals and Christmas and no tourism for the Lake District.
I presume in order to live up to these lofty ideals he never shops anywhere else, or buys anything of the internet, or goes on holiday?
What an idiotic statement.
Tuesday, 17 November, 2009
The inflation figures were out today and ominously inflation has started to pick up. For readers of this blog who go back to 12th January, you will see that I blogged on the subject of quantitative easing and its attendant risks when I said: “The risk is that such an increase in the money supply will result in higher inflation once more normal circumstances return.”
Well after creating/printing about £200 billion and putting this into the economy, prices are starting to rise. Inflation is back, as once again, we learn that printing more money devalues the worth of the currency.
Inflation happens when too much money is chasing too few goods and assets. A Keynesian economist would have you believe that the economy would expand, when in a recession, before inflation took off.
However given that the economy is still in recession and that inflationary pressures are building up this is very bad news. Indeed, the economy is 6% smaller now than when this started, yet inflation is now rising. In fact all it is doing is proving the old Monetarist orthodoxy that monetary expansion is inflationary.
Guido Fawkes at: http://order-order.com/2009/11/17/yo-dude-wheres-the-deflation/ has the following blog entry:
“With inflation now upticking this experiment in Mugabenomics* has to be reversed without setting off hyper-inflation or collapsing the government debt market. The policy authorities have figured out how to prop up the gilt market – they are changing the regulations to force banks to buy government debt to the tune of hundreds of billions. It remains to be seen if they can avoid an inflationary catastrophe, surging record gold prices suggest the markets suspect not…
*©Vince Cable, who was against QE before he was in favour of it. God knows what he thinks now.”
The reckoning is about to begin.
Monday, 16 November, 2009
My views on the EU have been documented on this blog so I am pleased that the Taxpayers Alliance is attempting to start a debate on our membership of the EU. Here is Dan Hannan giving his views.
Thursday, 12 November, 2009
One of the usual complaints made about Prime Minister Questions is that Gordon Brown does not answer the questions he is asked. Instead he just drones out a series of questionable claims, which may be fine in ‘Brownland’ but for the rest of us are no relation to the reality we face. It is indeed a shame that his former advisors have picked up the same traits to judge from my opponent in Barrow who commented on a piece I had in today’s Evening Mail. I had raised the very real issue of the cost of the bank bailouts and how the evidence was that they were not actually helping to get credit flowing again, I then set out three proposals which we would do to try and counter the problems. Instead of dealing with the three issues of debt, unemployment and the continuing lack of credit my opponent decided to resort to the usual Downing Street bunker one liners.
He said our proposals would:
Maybe I missed the economic policy in these one liners, or maybe I didn’t and there isn’t any. They are just the clapped out, repetitive rhetoric of a party in office, but not in power and a party with any idea of how to get us out of the mess they have helped create.
See: http://www.furnessconservatives.co.uk/index.php?sectionid=3&pagenumber=179
Tuesday, 10 November, 2009
Monday, 09 November, 2009
Yesterday I attended both Barrow and Ulverston Remembrance Parades and laid wreaths on behalf of Barrow & Furness Conservatives. It was made more poignant by the further loss of life in Afghanistan yesterday.
There are people out there who are giving their ‘today’ for our ‘tomorrow’ and I am humbled to lay a wreath to remember them. It is up to Politicians to make sure that they do not give their lives in vain and that all steps that can be taken, are taken to minimise casualties and we should all remember that.
Friday, 06 November, 2009
On Wednesday night I joined fellow guests at the launch of Furness Training for a meal. I am hugely impressed by the efforts that many people put into regeneration and revitalising the local economy. It reminds you, as a politician, that all we can really do is to get the framework right to unleash this latent power locally. Sure, central Government can help from time to time, but more often than not it is local initiatives that really make a difference.
Next week I am visiting the docks to see for myself the dock regeneration project as well as hopefully finding out more than the LED industry.
Thursday, 05 November, 2009
As an ardent Eurosceptic I woke up yesterday with a feeling of unease at what the day would bring. I had hoped, against hope and probably realism given the timescales that we would be able to honour our referendum pledge on the Lisbon Treaty, that is that the British people would have their say before the Treaty was ratified. However, it has been ratified, and no amount of anger can undo this simple fact. I was actually doing an interview with the Evening Mail at 4pm yesterday (4th November) when David Cameron announced the new Conservative Party policy now that Lisbon has been ratified. I therefore gave my own personal view on what I hoped he would say and as it happened I said something similar.
I do believe the time for a pre-ratification referendum has now passed. We are now in a different situation and a post-ratification referendum would indeed be pointless. On this point I think the logic is clear, you cannot turn back the clock, you have to deal with the situation now and that requires a new approach.
On to the substance of what the new policy is:
The first step is to prevent any further erosion of powers. It is true that the Lisbon Treaty has a ratchet clause which allows it to extend it’s competencies without the need for a new Treaty. To stop this it is proposed to amend the 1972 European Communities Act that will make it law for any further transfer of sovereignty to be subject by law to a referendum.
Although technical, this is a crucial point because the 1972 Act is the key founding piece of legislation through which all legal force of our membership of the EU applies. Therefore the 1972 Act will be amended in such a way so that the standard legal devices whereby EU Treaty amendments create variations in UK law will not apply to any future such amendments, except via referendum. This therefore unmakes that aspect of the Lisbon Treaty that means that future variations to the EU Treaty do not require future treaties with ratification by national Parliaments. This would straightforwardly negate the most fundamental constitutional aspect of the Lisbon Treaty that many of us are so opposed to. This law would also apply to prevent us ever joining the Euro and prevent us losing the remaining national veto’s.
Second, a new UK Sovereignty Bill will make it explicit that Britain’s Parliament is sovereign and cannot be overruled by the EU. This will mean that rulings of the European Union will only have effect in British law only through the auspices of Parliament.
Third, having established that never again can the betrayal that Labour inflicted upon us, by signing the Lisbon Treaty and then reneging on the referendum promise, David set out proposals to repatriate powers to the UK in certain areas. I am content with a process by which we repatriate powers on a piecemeal manner as opposed to a ‘big bang/all at once approach’. The problem with the latter is you may miss something and by moving through this programme stage by stage this will not happen.
I also accept that this will take time and setting a timetable to achieve this within the lifetime of the next Parliament does not seem unreasonable.
So when I came out of my speech I was relieved to read this approach, it seems practical, reasonable and workable and one that is achievable. I have written before on this blog (26th June) that I believe a re-negotiated position is achievable and that I could see no reasonable and practical reason why the EU would stand in our way.
However, there is a cloud on the horizon, and that is some in the EU itself.
Within hours of David speaking Pierre Lellouche, France's Europe minister, described the proposals as "pathetic" and warned they would not succeed "for a minute". Some people, Better Off Out and UKIP, argue that you cannot reform the EU, but I have always believed that the EU would be reasonable. Statements like those of Lellouche make you wonder if some people within the EU are reasonable after all.
I have often heard the analogy that being in the EU is like a marriage and that you cannot pick and choose which bits of the marriage you want to adhere too, it is all or nothing. Well, I have always been of the view that in marriage you should try and resolve your difficulties and give each other a little bit of leeway and that talk and compromise is the way to make a marriage work.
I think it is quite simple, we have set out a policy direction, we have been and will be reasonable, we have stated clearly we are not trying to wreck the EU merely develop a permanent solution that the EU and the British people are happy with. The ball is now in the EU’s court to respond with equal reasonableness. If they refuse to discuss this then they may find that the strength of feeling in the UK to pull out all together becomes unstoppable.
We are I now believe in the end game, I hope that the EU will respond positively to our policies because one way or another I believe this issue will be resolved within the lifetime of the next Parliament.
I know this approach will not satisfy everyone but the only real choice is between Labour, who perpetrated this betrayal, or the Conservatives, who will prevent it happening again and renegotiate our relationship. This is real life, use your vote wisely and know that only the Conservatives can beat Labour in Barrow & Furness.
Monday, 02 November, 2009
It was my Dad’s 80th birthday last Friday so we took the weekend off from campaigning to celebrate. Suffice to say I had a bit of a sore head on Sunday! Interestingly enough the Barrow team seemed to function very well without me and our indomitable Campaign Manager sent out boxes of the latest leaflet to be distributed.
Maybe there is some truth the joke that William Hague tells that the candidate is just a ‘legal necessity’
Thanks to all my team and normal service by this ‘legal necessity’ will be resumed shortly.
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