MacMillan Coffee Morning

Today I joined the worlds biggest coffee morning raising money for MacMillan Cancer support when I joined Emma Russell and her helpers at Cawston Grange Primary School. The idea of lots of events all taking place at the same time is a great one and I know just how much support MacMillan provide. My mum used to be active in the organisation in Rugby and both my parents have benefitted from the back up they provide. Lots of people at the event I visited, and with I understand another half dozen in Rugby and thousands across the country I hope a good sum has been raised.

Business Feedback

Yesterday I joined many former colleagues in the foodservice packaging industry at their annual lunch at the House of Commons. The location and my current regular activity are a coincidence!It is regular date and somewhere the member enjoy attending. I was interested to learn how people were finding the current market and the consenus is that things are difficult. With little new investment in the catering sector, few new restaurant openings and a contraction in the workplace as unemployment increases, the only way for a muanufacturer or distributor to increase sales is at the expense of competitors which is leading to huge pressure on price & margins. This in turn is leading to either business failure or consolidation between companies. Once again I picked up the message of how essential it is that we quickly get business moving again and return to a more orderly market.

Rugby Rail Users Group

On Wednesday evening I attended a meeting of RRUG when Chris Gibb, Chief Operating Officer of Virgin Trains spoke. Virgin operate the London to Scotland service which passes through Rugby on the West Coast Main Line which has just been the subject of massive public investment leading to a revised service . Communcations are vital to Rugby's prosperity and so it was interesting to be involved in a discussion on recent changes among regular and knowledgeable users of the service. The service to London has settled down as much improved both on reliability and journey time as I know from my own experience of fairly infrequent jouneys down to Westminster. More contentious has been the reduced frequency from Rugby to the north west which has arisen from the political imperative to shorten journey times between London and the major connurbations of Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow. The easy way to do this is for the train to stop less frequently and so there are now fewer stops at Rugby and places like Lichfield and Crewe. Again I have had my own experience of this and have decided that it will probably be better for me to travel to party conference in Manchester by car rather than wait to change at Birmingham New Street. It will be important to continue to lobby people like Chris to ensure that the needs of all of Rugby's travellers are taken into account in any future changes.
I learnt a great deal about the structure and operation of the railway industry including the nature of the franchises offered to operators and the tender process; the intensity of use on the West Coast Mail Line and the challenges of meeting all the demands placed on it; the time for a station stop within a timetable (5 minutes) and the minimum time gap necessary between trains (7 minutes); the nature of the Christmas 2007 disruption; the problems caused by the rising price of copper leading to cable theft; the complexities of different IT systems running the ticket booking process; concerns about travelling with cycles; and the challenges of developing a new and separate High Speed Service and the possible implications of that for Rugby.
I hope to take a closer look at the impact of all of these in the near future.

Coldplay at Wembley

On Friday Tracy & I were at Wembley for the Coldplay concert. I had expected the audience to be mainly older and was surprised by the age range and the number of families. Coldplay were superb, put on a really good show of old favourites and all of their latest album, Viva la Vida. This was my first visit to the new stadium and I was very impressed by all the facilities including the link to the Tube station where we were easily able to get into central London afterwards.

The deteriorating economic position

During the County Council election campaign in May, Philip Hammond Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury came to Rugby and spoke to local business owners & managers. Philip out the state of the Governments finances in perspective by telling the audience that the country was borrowing £1 for every £4 it was spending. In today's Times leader column headed "fainting by numbers - new figures on goverment debt show the landscape is rockier than we imagined" there are more scary numbers: national debt at over £800 billion or £25,000 per family; debt increasing at £6000 per second; every day £83 million having to be found to pay the interest and by 2013/14 accounting for £63 billion a year or more than we will spend on transport & defence combined. Surely now no-one can be in any doubt of the magnitude of the task facing an incoming Government.

Leading on NHS policy

ConservativeHome has covered today's Times article here setting out the results of a poll asking which party would do the best on a series of issues. The headline is about NHS reform and the lead across the country is consistent with what Rugby voters have been telling us on this months survey. We have so far been on the doorstep in Admirals, Wolvey, Paddox, Benn & Newbold and in addion have been speaking to people across the constituency on the phone. I have heard many accounts of peoples experience of the NHS when the staff in the service receive much praise but where people find the system at fault and see huge waste and inefficiency. There is a real understanding that much needs to be changed, a point acknowledged by Andy Burnham, Health Secretary in his speech a couple of days ago. The shame is that it has taken the biggest recession for a generation which has led to huge pressure on spending for Labour to consider changes that should have been made years ago. Iain Dale blogged about Browns "cuts" speech "What was most intriguing was the moment when Brown said Labour would spend less on unnecessary things and low priorities. Which rather begs the question as to why any money was being spent in the first place on unnecessary things..." Just what have the Government been doing over the past 12 years, how much money has been wasted and how much better should our services be?

Canvassing in Wolvey

We had a great team out in Wolvey meeting residents with our survey on Saturday morning. Unfortunately our team photo obliterated the fantastic "Inspector Morse" Jag that was parked in the square!

Office of the Schools Adjudicator meeting

I have just returned from a meeting called by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator to take the views of members of the public over the admission arrangements to Rugby’s secondary schools. The key issue being considered is the extent to which places should be made available to pupils from other education authorities and a decision needs to be taken quickly so that both schools and parents will be clear about the situation for September 2010 entry. I heard a number of parents speak who were passionate about the education their children receive, quite reasonably wanting to make sure that they have the opportunity to receive the best.

It seems to me that adjudicator has a most difficult task, that of setting out access arrangements for something which is extremely rare and very precious, namely grammar school places. The tragedy is that there are so few of them, and as they are scarce in supply they are highly prized and contested. It is this which has led to the conflict between parents from different areas. I am a product of one our grammar schools, one of my children was in the 6th form, one has just started at one of the schools and so I know from my own experience just how valuable these places are. We are extremely fortunate that such schools exist in Rugby and that they do so is thanks to the hard work and commitment of Rugby's elected representatives a generation ago. In the 70s a campaign was fought to resist the imposition of a comprehensive system and instead to retain grammar schools in Rugby. At that time those engaged in the campaign sought to do so not as a principled stand for the country as a whole, but for the benefit of the people they represented, Rugby parents and their children. For this reason, it is my view that in coming to a decision, the adjudicator should have regard to how it is that here in Rugby there remains real choice in education and as such the priority in allocating those places should be to Rugby's children.

On a broader point, listening to parents tonight, I came away with a real understanding of how important quality and choice in education is for many parents. I was left in no doubt that raising standards across the system as a whole, and ensuring that all children get the education they deserve will be so important for us once we are in Government.

Well done England

I'm not a great follower of football, but really enjoyed the England match last night. It showed the difference that confidence can make to a team which is credit to the manager. It's great news that England will be at the World Cup in South Africa and gives many people something to look forward to next summer.

Cycling & traffic

The weather first thing today was superb so, fair weather cyclist that I am, I rode the 7 miles or so to the office this morning. Rugby has a number of new cycle lanes which I used wherever I could but much of my journey was at the mercy of the traffic. It would be great if motorists more general had a better appreciation of the difficulties faced by cyclists, not least potholes at the side of the road which force the rider towards the centre. For this reason, I felt much safer in a cycle lane marked on a footpath, although these have a habit of suddenly disappearing

as at the town end of Dunchurch Rd. Today's Times takes up the cause of cyclists with an article here and a leader column, all of which adds to ensuring awareness of a method of transport which benefits both the individual and the environment. For my part I felt that by cycling today I dont need to go to the gym later!

Election night campaign

As someone who has attended their fair share of counts over recent years, I too am concerned about moves to push the count back to a Friday morning, as was the case at the recent County Council elections here in Rugby. There's nothing quite like the atmosphere at the end of election day waiting for results to come in, both locally and across the country. I'm pleased ConservativeHome are campaigning to retain the tradition. Details here.

Back from holiday

I am now back from holiday. With Tracy and Sara I have just returned from a really interesting holiday in Cuba. Regrettably there was little opportunity to blog from Cuba, with internet access in hotels limited and on one occasion not capable of use as the entry code cards hadn’t been delivered.

Cuba is now a fairly standard holiday destination, but we were keen to see a little more than just the capital or beaches and learn something of the country's recent history . So after arriving in Havana and spending a few days there we drove to a resort into the east of the country at Cayo Lavisa. After resting for a few days on the beach there we flew to the second city in the south of the country, Santiago da Cuba, before another car journey to an “All In Resort” at Guradalavaca. We then took a further plane journey back to Havana before coming home.

I hadn't previously visited a Communist country and what I saw was a society continually looking backwards towards the 1950s revolution rather than one looking forwards. The vintage American cars are well-known, and now a tourist attraction, but the whole economy, industry and infrastructure is left behind in the 1950s as well. Some development took place in the 60s and 70s a time when Cuba was allied to Soviet Russia and so attractive colonial buildings sit side-by-side with more recent brutal concrete blocks. Many of the buildings are run down, most of the roads are a very poor state, factories are crumbling and there is evidence of much poverty.

We visited several museums and monuments to the revolution aiming to understand what happened at that time. In Santiago we visited the barracks where the revolution was launched and where the bullet marks in the external plasterwork have been preserved. We saw the balcony where Castro addressed the people once the previous president had fled in 1959. We went to the museum in Havana housing the boat that Castro and Che Guevara took from Mexico to launch the revolution. All very interesting, but little compensation for the low standard of living we could see experienced by the people living in the countryside as we drove by .

Cuba has finally recognised that it has one big asset, which is fantastic beaches and a very warm climate, making it ideal for tourism. Interestingly the all-in-resort we visited was opened by Castro five years ago and the speech he made at that time is written on the wall where he claimed credit for the entire enterprise being of Cuban construction. Now that tourists are welcomed and with a possible relaxation on travel arrangements from the USA it is likely that Cuba will be able to earn valuable overseas exchange and reinvest in its economy and provide growth which will enable living standards to rise.

We enjoyed spending time in a society very different from our own and experiencing a different culture. Everywhere people were pleased to talk to us and learn about where we were from (as well as trying to sell us cigars or earn a tip!). I have returned refreshed and ready for the next few months leading up to the General Election.