Town Centre Campaigning

On Saturday we had great team out in the town centre with our campaign to protect front line NHS services. People are depending on us to support the NHS with the funding it needs and making sure that the money goes to doctors and nurses on the front line. With a survey asking abour peoples experiences of local health services, we heard about how much our local hospital, St Cross is appreciated, but also the occasional account of what happens when things go wrong. I will be visiting St Cross later this week with Andrew Lansley, Shadow Health Minister when I will pass on the information we gathered. The local children loved the balloons!

Defence matters

On Thursday evening I attended a social event where the guest speaker was Liam Fox, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. At a time when rightly our concentration is on our troops on active sevice in Afghanistan, Liam reminded us about the threats and challeges in other parts of the world. Liam has been in his current role for four years and has built up great knowledge of defence matters which contrasts with his Ministerial opposite who is the most recent in a long line. I enjoyed meeting up again with Liam who I found to be an excellent Party Chairman when I was a candidate in the 2005 General Election.

House Meeting Brownsover

Continuing my series of meetings in the homes of people who are kind enough to act as host, I joined a small group in Brownsover for a discussion of topical issues. If time passing quickly is a measure of the effectiveness of a meeting then we did well, since after starting at 7.30 and covering a broad range of issues I looked at my watch to find it was 10pm! I was challenged about my reasons for wanting to become an MP which led to a long discussion about expenses; two strong characters in the room felt that we are not being strong enough about the seriousness of the country's financial position and laying the blame for this on Labour's actions in Government while another person was put off by the adversarial nature of politics - which shows how difficult it is to get the message just right. We spoke at length about the trends that are causing some people to think about supporting the peripheral parties; and the opportunity that we will offer to Parilament of a free vote on the repeal of the Hunting Act. We spent more time on national issues than at previous house meetings and I enjoyed our discussion. Many thanks to Alma for making her house available to us.

The All Blacks at Twickenham

With more happening on Saturday morning as the election approaches I've been able to go down for just one game in the Autumn International series and though the New Zealand match woulds be the pick of the three. England did better than in the previous two games and against pretty ordinary opposition apart from McCaw, but with only one try from 3 games there is plenty of work to do before the six nations.

Citizenship

I was very pleased to join Cllr Tom Day at Binley Woods Primary School on Friday morning and not just because over 40 years ago I was a pupil at the school albeit in now demolished premises. Tom was leading the year 6 class in citizenship and spoke about the different level of Government, with my contribution being my aspirations to represent Rugby in Westminster. Tom arranged for house teams within the class to form a political party and prersent their aspirations for how Binley Woods could be made better. We heard some ambitious ideas including more shops with a local Marks & Spencer (!) and a fishing lake together with some practical ones based around the local environment. All groups referred to the prize asset the village has, which is access to the woods, where I remember spending much of my time when I was growing up. The manifestos were voted on and the wining group will have the chance to present their ideas to the Parish Council. I was impressed by the constructive ideas of the children and how well they got them down on paper and the confidence with which they presented them. I'm sure I met some of the politicians of the future. Thanks to Mrs Watts of the School for the photos and Tom for a well planned and organised morning. The children dont usually have such wacky hairstyles - the school was holding a mad hair day to raise money for Children in Need.

Football Shirts Project

Since I returned from Rwanda, the soccer shirts have continued to roll in. Today I visited St James School in Bulkington to pick up several bags full. These have been brought in by the children and Headteacher, Paul Ison introduced me to soccer enthusiast Todd Loveitt who had contributed several of them. I shall send off a consignment to Rwanda for distribution to children there pretty soon & will be pleased

to accept any other that are no longer wanted and which people are willing to donate. I have been speaking to Paul about his wish for children at his school to make contact with a school in Rwanda and I'm very much hoping that this will happen. I know youngsters in Rwanda will be interested to hear from their counterparts here and there is much that can be learnt from one another.

Preparing for Government

The General Election counter shows less than 200 days to the election. The polls are largely in our favour with a good prospect of a Conservative victory and so many people are considering the process of handover between Governments. In the past 30 years there has only been one such handover which took place in 1997 after the Labour victory that year. Prior to that the last change from Labour to Conservative was in 1979 so there isn't a great deal of experience in the process. A further complication is that a new Prime Minister takes office the day the election result is announced which contrasts with the position in the US where a new President has a two month handover. Much of the process and preparation is covered in a report by The Institute of Government "Transitions: Preparing for Changes of Government" which is available here.