Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to one and all.



Will be enjoying with my sister and mother at her house and off to church in the morning (too ill to go tonight). If I recover from the flu, I will be supporting the local hunt and head to the races at Kempton Park. It's got to be Kauto Star again in the King George VI.

Open Primary in Spelthorne on Jan 22nd

I am thrilled to be a candidate at the Open Primary in Spelthorne (area south of Heathrow Airport including Staines, Ashford and Sunbury). Anyone who is an elected register in the Spelthorne constituency can participate but needs to register by January 18th.

Register online, email register@spelthorneconservatives.com, call 01784 453544 or write to SCA, 55 Cherry Orchard, Staines, TW18 2DQ.

If you want to contact me, leave a message on the blog, connect to my Facebook group, email me or call or text me on 07733 996068.

If you earn over 20 grand, you'll be worse off with Labour

Words fail me about the Pre-Budget Report today.  The Evening Standard was quite kind to Darling but the lines are clear - earn over 20 grand (less than the average wage) and you have to pay more.  So much tinkering around the sides about smarter spending,

To quote George Osborne, "We are all in this together" but we do need to be doing more on reducing actual spending and getting more bang for our buck. We know it can be done. Look at many councils, look at previous reviews, look in the private sector - the story (horror rather than fairy tale) is that Labour hasn't got the stomach for the battle to curb spending, especially with its principal paymasters, the trade unions.

 

 

Is the 3rd runway really the green option?

Yesterday, the Committee on Climate Change (another quango, headed up by Adair Turner of the FSA, albeit with some eminent scientists) appears to have given the green light to the 3rd runway at Heathrow, despite it promoting a rather non-green form of transport. Now, the Government will press ahead likely without a public enquiry, given the powers it has granted to another super-quango that can give planning consent with no local accountablity.

For the people of Spelthorne, I recognise that the local economy has a significant reliance on the airport but there is the quality of life and environmental damage that also has to be considered.  Theresa Villiers, Shadow Transport minister, is sticking to her guns and won't be backing the 3rd runway or indeed any new runways at Gatwick or Stansted.   Instead, if I were the MP for Spelthorne, I would be fighting for some inward investment into the constituency to offset the economic opportunity cost.

 

SBB Breakfast with Benedict Brogan

I had the pleasure yesterday of attending the Small Business Bureau Breakfast meeting with Benedict Brogan as the guest speaker. It was interesting to see a journalist on his feet doing the talking and as you may expect, a fair amount of it was peppered with questions. I found the talk really insightful and the answers certainly gave food for thought - ...what does David Cameron mean to people? how to move beyond the Tory Tony Blair? the changing pace of the media.. blogs vs logs

http://www.smallbusinessbureau.org.uk/

The New New England

Driving in the Suffolk/Essex borders, I drove through a small village called New England. I smiled to myself as at one end of the road, the old pub was now a Chinese restaurant and at the other end, an Indian restaurant with barely another house in sight.

Back to Blogging

Hi Folks - been out of action for a few weeks. My mum broke her hip and was in hospital so my sporadic blog became even more sporadic. Will be back with some stories in the next few days.