|  |
Home |  | |
Events | | |
Contact Us | | |
Links | |
|
In this section
- News RSS |
|
Tuesday, 22 December, 2009 
On Radio 4 tonight, John wriggled and wriggled but finally admitted he did say: “It would be a f***ing disaster if Gordon Brown became PM”
For once, I completely agree.
Monday, 21 December, 2009
Normal political activities have largely come to a close for the Christmas period so I had my first ‘normal’ weekend for a while. There was no canvassing, no leafleting and I didn’t even blog, as you may have noticed. Instead I began my long overdue tidy out of the garage, just how many half used bags of plaster do you need and do I really need to keep broken glow plugs from a 92 VW Passat?
Yesterday, we had our cousins round (twin girls of 12 years old and boy of 3) and they made Gingerbread men with my wife and son John. I helped by testing the cooking and eating lots of gingerbread! When you are involved in politics you can forget from time to time the really important things in life, kids and families so it is nice to get back to normality for a while. Don’t worry but, politics will resume in the New Year!
The big debate in my house yesterday was over the successful internet based campaign to prevent the X Factor winner reaching number one. My aforementioned cousins think he should be number one but as a ‘Smiths’ fan in the 80’s and ‘Nirvana’ in the 90’s I have to confess I’m a bit of an ‘Indie’ music person so I’m quite partial to a bit of ‘Rage against the Machine’. I even found an old cassette tape which I listened to in the car this morning, made a change from Radio 4. Now I know it is left wing clap trap, and you could argue that RATM in their anti commercialism stance are guilty of hypocrisy given that they make money through a commercial system, whereas Simon Cowell is at least honest about what he is doing, but it sounds good to me.
It is also a salutary lesson in the power of the internet and grass roots organisation against the ‘establishment’. If people can do this, imagine what they will do if they were given the chance to exercise control over their public services, choosing a school, hospital or local police chief for example?
Wednesday, 16 December, 2009
This article appeared in the Times on 22nd September 2009. I have resisted publishing this because I wanted to give the local Labour Party the opportunity to desist from scare mongering on the Trident replacement. However they have failed to do this so here is the article.
Labour backing away from plans to replace Trident nuclear deterrent
by Tom Baldwin, Chief Reporter Times
Labour may be backing away from plans to replace Trident, as senior government figures predict that the pledge will be struck from the party’s election manifesto next year.
The fate of the £20 billion project now appears to be tied to the outcome of international talks in which Britain is under pressure to join President Obama in tabling proposals for significant reductions in nuclear firepower. There is little prospect, however, of Labour reneging altogether on its longstanding pledge “to maintain an independent British nuclear deterrent”.
The debate has particular resonance in Scotland where Trident supports about 8,000 jobs.
Tuesday, 15 December, 2009
Bob Ainsworth today announced a mini defence review which he claimed was about re-prioritising defence spending. He did this because the MOD is funding a major war in Afghanistan but is operating on a peacetime budget and so in order to fund the war cuts are being made to other forces. You do have to wonder why this Government would ever bother holding a Strategic Defence Review, as they claim they will if re-elected, if they are going to just cut capability regardless and in advance. First the good points which I welcome:
But the cost of this is a reduction in some key core capabilities:
Some of this you could argue is a price worth paying and in necessary given the budget pressures but some of it is just plain stupid, and these are:
It is the last point which makes it abundantly clear to me just how clueless this Government are about defence capabilities. We currently have 3 frontline Harrier squadrons, there should actually be 4 but the 4th squadron has never formed because the Harrier force has been engaged in Afghanistan for 8 years, only recently returning. This active service has meant that the role of naval strike for the Carriers has been restricted over the last 8 years and there have not been enough pilots and crew to form the 4th squadron.
A key component of the future Navy is the new Carriers and the RN was working towards re-activating the Carrier Strike capability with the reformation of the 4th Harrier squadron and then a series of exercises to build up the capability again. Will the Navy still be able to do this now that the Harrier force is being reduced, and is it being reduced from 3 to 2 or the nominal 4 to 3?
It is an act of stupidity to cut away at core capabilities in such a way. We need a proper defence review to assess what we want our foreign policy posture to be, what capabilities we will need and then fund it.
This is how Brown repays the Harrier pilots after 8 years active service in Afghanistan, he disbands them.
Liam Fox statement:
BBC news story:
Monday, 14 December, 2009
A number of people have asked me what the Conservative Party position is on nuclear power. I presume this is because of a rather misleading article in the Evening Mail that implied we were opposed to nuclear power because of the statements of a particular Conservative Candidate, Zac Goldsmith made to the ‘Guardian’ newspaper.
Zac Goldsmith does not have, and never has had, any special authority to speak for the Conservative party on nuclear issues. It is totally misleading for the MP for Copeland to suggest that Zac was "handpicked to oversee Conservative policy" in this area, he wasn’t.
When the Conservative party reviewed its policies several years ago, the Quality of Life commission which looked at nuclear policy was deliberately balanced with two co-chairmen, representing both sides of the nuclear debate. Zac represented the anti-nuclear viewpoint and John Gummer, the pro-nuclear viewpoint. All political parties have internal debates and the Conservatives did just that, the result was that we committed ourselves to a new generation of nuclear power stations, as indeed the Labour Party did also.
Indeed both the Labour and Conservative parties contain a range of views on nuclear issues, including an anti-nuclear minority, but in the case of the Conservative party that minority is very small indeed. In fact when the decision to go nuclear was presented to the House of Commons on January 10th last year every single Conservative who spoke supported it. It was Labour which had an outspoken anti-nuclear minority. For example Labour MP Paul Flynn described new nuclear build as “folly” and anti-nuclear Labour MP Colin Challen insulted both his own minister’s policy and the nuclear industry in Copeland, saying that the decision was “as full of holes as the Sellafield reprocessing plant”.
Conservative Party policy is that:
I personally have always supported civil nuclear power and I think the anti nuclear debate in the past has been damaging. It has meant there has been a long gap in development which has meant a lot of the expertise has been lost and will now need to be rebuilt. I find it ironic that the same people who twenty years ago were chanting ‘nuclear power, no thanks’ are now championing it.
Perhaps if they hadn’t led us down a pointless anti nuclear debate we wouldn’t now be playing catch up?
Sunday, 13 December, 2009
Today on the Politics Show Liam said: "If we are unable to look at the potential threats in any detail, you've got to protect against what they all might be and it's prudent to maintain a nuclear deterrent.
"Because countries like Iran are trying to develop nuclear weapons, North Korea has just developed a nuclear weapon. To start to equivocate is a signal we're not absolutely totally committed to protecting the United Kingdom against nuclear blackmail from anywhere that comes in the times ahead,"
He also discussed the need to maintain a submarine based system and said:
"If you look at the alternatives - a land-based system, an air based system - where are we going to put it? ... People who want a different alternative need to tell us what it's going to be," he said.
"They tell us they're not going to have a Trident like-for-like replacement ... That either means they're going to abandon the nuclear deterrent or going to have another system, and this is just vague and woolly and won't be in terms of defending the country."
See:http://page.politicshome.com/uk/fox_attacks_vague_and_woolly_plans_for_nuclear_deterrent.html
When will my opponent get it in Barrow, we will build the Trident Replacement submarines in Barrow, anyone who says we won’t is just not telling the truth.
Friday, 11 December, 2009
Thursday, 10 December, 2009
Yesterday I had a very busy and varied day with a number of appointments in between Christmas shopping. First up, I visited Dowdales School in Dalton. This was my first visit to this school and a number of the blocks reminded me of my old school. I went round with the Deputy Head and saw the pupils cooking, practicing drama and dance, doing English and French and even orienteering in PE. I was hugely impressed by the friendly atmosphere in the school and it is clear you are in a good school when you visit. I would like to thank the staff and pupils for welcoming me and also congratulate them on having a school they can be proud of.
Second, was a meeting with Keep Our Future Afloat at Furness Enterprise. Although I may have different political views from some members of this campaign group it is nice to meet a group of people who have the interests of naval shipbuilding in Barrow as their primary focus. I was very pleased to re-iterate my party’s commitment to the yard through the Astute and Trident Successor programme and I hope to work more closely with KOFAC if elected.
On the back of this I contacted our Defence Team to brief them and Liam Fox (Shadow Defence Secretary) issued a very clear statement of our continuing support for the Trident Successor programme and you can read about this in the news section.
Finally, last night I attended a meeting hosted by the Barrow Peace Forum. I was joined by Jack Richardson leader of the Barrow Borough Council and the Lib Dem candidate for Barrow and Furness also attended. I thoroughly enjoyed the debate which covered the future of the shipyard, sustainable development, nuclear power, whether we should replace Trident and UK foreign policy. It will come as no surprise that I had little support in this meeting, given that the majority of attendees were opposed to nuclear weapons, opposed to nuclear power and wished to scale back our defence forces to be able to merely defend the UK and not allow us to play an active part in the world. Still I enjoyed the debate even if I was in a minority of one for most of the time.
Interestingly the Labour candidate did not turn up, could it be that he is scared of a debate with his parties former CND allies?
Monday, 07 December, 2009
One of the great dividing lines for the next election has become apparent over the last few days, and that is that Labour will try to portray the Tories as ‘upper class toffs’. Most people can see this for what it is, a hollow, nasty tactic born of desperation by a Government with no answers and who try instead to cover their tracks with unwarranted smears and insults.
It is also inaccurate to say the least because the Labour Government includes plenty of toffs. Harriet Harman, the niece of the Earl of Longford, was educated at St Paul's Girls' School, Ed Balls was educated privately at Nottingham High School and Alistair Darling went to the fee-paying Loretto School in East Lothian.
Let’s not forget Baron Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy, who hobnobs with oligarchs on shooting parties and who once said he was 'seriously relaxed about people getting filthy rich’.
Labour are desperate to resort to this and try and portray us all as toffs, they are also wrong in most cases. For what it is worth, and I personally think that a persons background is irrelevant, I am no toff. I come from the North East, my Mam and Dad lived in terrace houses with outside toilets and through hard work bettered themselves. I went to the local comprehensive school and from then on to University, the first in my family. I can’t afford not to work and just be a candidate so I still work full time and apart from a couple of brief periods of unemployment I have worked ever since I left university for both organisations in the private and public sector.
Quite frankly I couldn’t give a hoot whether someone went to a private school or not or has a posh sounding name. I thought we had left all this class war rubbish behind, along with the other great bigotries of the 20th Century.
It’s what you do with your life, not where you come from that is important.
Thursday, 03 December, 2009
This story broke today about the decline in manufacturing and it is pertinent given that this week I visited three manufacturing companies in Ulverston. One of the big questions about the recovery is where will the growth come from? These shocking figures show just how depleted our manufacturing base is after a decade of an unsustainable, unbalanced economy built on a mountain of debt.
Conservatives believe we need to focus on building up Britain's unique strengths in high-tech industry in order to meet the goal that the Conservatives have set - to become the largest high-tech exporter in Europe. And we need radical change to build a sustainable, balanced economy based on savings and investment not on borrowing and debt, and make Britain open for business again.
Poverty: UP Police on the beat: DOWN Manufacturing industry: DOWN
After over decade of Labour this is what we get:
Poverty was growing BEFORE the recession struck
"Levels of poverty, unemployment and repossessions have all been on the rise since 2004, a report reveals. An audit carried out by social research charity, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, says the country needs to recover from "deep-seated" problems which were emerging before the economic downturn. The foundation's data analysis found that 2004-05 marked a "key turning point", with poverty, unemployment and repossessions on the increase. Poverty is at the same level as it was in 2000, with two million children in low-income households, unemployment at a 12-year high and repossessions at six times the level of 2004, the report says. Julia Unwin, the foundation's chief executive, said: "The report highlights the scale of the challenge the Government faces if it is to reduce poverty significantly in Britain." The study calls in to question the Government's record on tackling poverty."
Police not spending any more time on the beat – according to the Government itself
"Police officers are spending no more time on the beat now than they were two years ago, despite a series of initiatives intended to get them out of stations, the Government’s adviser on cutting red tape said yesterday. Jan Berry undermined the introduction of a Home Office White Paper on the future of policing by highlighting continuing problems with attempts to cut red tape and make efficiency savings. As the Government announced proposals to overhaul policing, including standard uniforms across England and Wales and officers patrolling alone in town centres, Ms Berry pointed to problems with Home Office efforts to change working practices. Many of the 27,000 portable hand-held computers given to officers in an attempt to keep them away from their desks are ineffective because they lack the right programs, she said
The decline in manufacturing has been greater under Brown-Blair than Thatcher-Major – according to the Financial Times
"The importance of manufacturing to the economy declined more rapidly under Labour administrations since 1997 than it did during the Margaret Thatcher era, according to a Financial Times study. The big winners in the same period were bankers, estate agents and public sector workers, whose share of output increased under the Labour governments of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, and Gordon Brown, his successor. The findings about the state of the economy were uncovered during a study of data held by the Office for National Statistics.
Manufacturing accounted for more than 20 per cent of the economy in 1997, when Labour came to power critical of the country having too narrow an industrial base. But by 2007, that share had declined to 12.4 per cent."
See: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8c257da6-dfab-11de-98ca-00144feab49a.html?&nclick_check=1
| |
Blog RSS feed
