Filed under: Israel
Today I have the real privilege of travelling to Israel as part of a delegation lead by Conservative Friends of Israel. Britain and Israel share the values of democracy and freedom and are allies in the war against terrorism and the fight against Islamist fundamentalism. The relationship between our two countries is important for many reasons but all the more so when it comes to working towards a sustainable peace in the Middle East. While we in Europe assess the current Middle East conflict at an arms length through the news media, we should never lose sight of the serious threat posed by Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran and Syria to Israel and to the war against terror. Each of these organisations rejects Israel’s right to exist and they have repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction. While the human cost of the current conflict and the endless loss of civilian lives increases day after day, Europe with its history of Anti-Semitism must not lose sight of the duty it has to protect the Jewish people from the many nations pledged to destroy them as well as playing a constructive role in helping to work towards a sustainable peace in the Middle East.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Yesterday was International Missing Childrens Day and while the media continues to focus on hunt for missing Madeleine Mccann, we should all spare a thought for the families of the 70,000 children who are reported missing in the UK each year. I was truly shocked when I heard this figure on the news. We can never image the pain and anxiety experienced by those families with missing loved ones, but what we can do is support those organisations who can provide a welcome helping hand to our young people when often they feel they have nowhere else to turn. So I was only too pleased to have been able to support the Prince’s Trust yesterday at a fundraising event for young people in Essex. The Prince’s Trust works with a range of youth organisations to reach and support those who need a helping hand and to help them develop into confident and independent people, capable of making a positive contribution to their communities. With the complex difficulties faced by many young people the work of The Prince’s Trust and other charitable organisations is hugely commendable and deserves as much support as possible.
Filed under: Environment
This evening I have been through that painful process of supermarket shopping. Much as I enjoy shopping (for shoes, handbags, clothes, music), I’ve never enjoyed doing the weekly shop – I put this down to the countless hours I’ve spent in my parents shops whilst growing up. So the day after the government announces its belated attempt to improve Britain’s attitude towards environmental waste, I find myself once again cursing the food manufactures and supermarkets for inflicting me with endless amount of excess packaging on everything ranging from my choice of cereal to ready meals for the husband. To top it all off, once I’ve unpacked everything, my front garden which currently houses four recycle boxes from the local council starts to resemble an overflowing rubbish tip. Now I have no problem recycling rubbish and yes I do think the supermarkets still have a long way to go when it comes to cutting back on packaging. However, I am vexed by the prospect of being spied on by a bin chip which reports to a faceless bureaucrat who will then serve me with a bill for the rubbish that appears in my bin.Clearly the Whitehall bureaucrats, all on their above average incomes think its fine to hit hard working families with yet another tax which will come on top of their council tax. Naturally the government claims their policy will be revenue neutral, a rich claim coming from a government which has devised endless ways to tax us both directly and indirectly.
Changing public behaviour on issues such as recycling requires positive measures and not ones which punish such as fines backed by bad legislation. Positive incentives, preferably financial one’s, such as money off council tax could help to change public attitude and behaviour in a positive way on such issues, which legislation alone will fail to do. After all, how often would you turn that kind of gift horse away?
Filed under: Brown
Last night I had a delightful evening consisting of great company, thoughtful conversation and political discussion at a rather special candidates fundraising event. Topics of conversation were well and truly focussed on getting a Conservative government elected, but also on the potential challenge we could face by the so called ‘fresh faced’ Gordon Brown. Now I struggle to find anything positive to say about Brown, but nonetheless there is a great deal of speculation about what Brown may do. There’s so much speculation that I get the impression that everyone expects some kind of dramatic gesture when he takes office, perhaps his own clause four moment: Blair had that moment, apparently Cameron’s had one over Grammar school’s so I guess peer pressure dictates that Gordon must have one too. The speculation seems to be around possible troop withdrawal from Iraq, or a shift in Anglo-American relations which would be interesting to watch during the run up to the U.S Presidential election. However, for a man who one week ago called for a new kind of politics, it is interesting to see that he may already have a Blair type problem on his hand – one of expectation management.
Filed under: Law and Order
Read any newspaper today and you’d be confronted by a range of reports about Britain’s energy security, a pay-as-you-throw future for rubbish collections, the introduction of pay-as-you drive for UK motorists and surprise, surprise more failures following another 24 hours of this government being in charge. But I was particularly horrified by the news that three terror suspects were last night on the run because someone felt that these suspects could be trusted to report to various authorities every day and therefore be ‘supervised’ by Control Orders.
These people pose a serious risk to the public and to our country and yet this government has clearly lost the plot over one fundamental issue – protecting British citizens from the threat of terror. Government accountability over such failures is virtually non-existent and although John Reid is due to give a statement in the Commons ’s on this matter, this will not address the fundamental fact that the current Control Order regime is a farce and that Control Orders are a disgrace and an embarrassment to our security policy.
Filed under: Education
I’m back on the subject of education but not that ‘pointless’ debate, which I’ll leave you to judge whether it should or should not have taken place… The Times today reports that the Conservative education policy review is expected to recommend that schools have ‘fewer, but tougher’ exams, as we are an ‘over examined and over tested nation’. I couldn’t agree more, as school children in England are the most tested in the world. However, testing is only one area of educational reform the Conservative party desperately needs to address. Pupil behaviour is a major problem in our schools, yes it is the result of many ’societal’ factors, but it still needs to be addressed.
Yesterday the Education Secretary Alan Johnson said protecting teachers from web bullies (an ever-growing area), is a top priority. Easier said than done, as our teachers who are under ever increasing pressure to meet targets don’t have the powers to tackle the wide range of behavioural problems that turn up in our schools every day. Let’s hope that the Party’s education policy review gets to the point and gives teachers and schools the powers they need to address the range of behavioural problems that seem to have become the norm in our schools.
Filed under: Localism
The Daily Telegraph in association with Direct Democracy has begun a six-week series seeking the public’s view on how to quite literally return power to the people. A series of papers – The Localist Papers, will propose ideas covering various areas of our lives such as health, education, local and open government.
In an era where the public have become increasingly removed from the political process and frustrated by their lack of say on the decisions which affect their lives, calling for local action on local issues is a much needed step forward in bringing back political accountability and ultimately power to the people.
Filed under: Openness
David Cameron has today turned up the heat on Gordon Brown and his call for more openness in government, by saying that Conservative Peers will vote down David Maclean’s Freedom of Information Bill in the House of Lords. Thankfully the Party has recognised damage this Bill is doing to trust in Parliament and to politics.
Filed under: Immigratiom
Having so moved on from that ‘pointless’ debate which has consumed the Conservative Party over the past few days, I wanted to flag up another area of public policy where one MP and a Labour MP is not afraid to tell it how it is – even if does whip up a bit of unease ‘out there’.
Margaret Hodge, a government minister has said that established British families should be given priority over economic migrants for council housing and called for housing rules to “promote tolerance rather than inviting division”.
One Labour MP has already responded by calling Hodge’s remark’s ‘offensive’, which is his view, but it fails to address the fact that immigration has become one of the issues which most concerns the British public – whether it’s the amount of immigration, government policy or its impact upon local services, schools, housing and health care across the country.
So without stating the obvious Labour and Margaret Hodge have had ten long years to grasp this issue and they have failed. This country needs annual limits on immigration and for all political parties to stop hiding behind the cloak of political correctness so that a full and frank debate about immigration and its implications can take place – and not more hot air from this failed Labour government.
Filed under: Health
The ‘debate’ about education and in particular grammar schools is apparently ‘pointless’ – even though there isn’t much else in the Sunday papers to talk about and even though this subject affects the majority of parents across the country – all of whom no doubt have strong views on what is and is not going on in our education system today.
That said I found one story today on yet another fundamental bread and butter issue which warrant’s a mention – our health service.
The Mail on Sunday reports that Labour’s policy of bringing back matrons to hospitals is in disarray due to, surprise, surprise the lack of money in the NHS or to put it bluntly cash-strapped NHS trusts across the country cannot afford to pay them. So where matron does exist she will be made redundant as the Trust cannot afford her any longer.
Firstly, it was news to me that Labour even had a ‘robust’ approach to bringing back matron, apparently this was part of their drive to reduced MRSA – another failure. Secondly and no surprises here, where the hell has all the money gone in the NHS? With the countless number of ‘managers’ being employed to ‘run’ local NHS Trusts, it seems to me that some of them need to go back to school to learn the basics around adding up and balancing the books. Now who says that the ‘debate’ about how we educate in this country is ‘pointless’.
