Thanks to Norman Tebbit

I enjoy canvassing. You get to hear ordinary people's views and it can throw up some real surprises. Yesterday I was in Bulkington with candidate for Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council, Julian Gutteridge. A man of retirement age with a north eastern accent called me over. "Do you know what the Tories did for me?" he asked. Fearing a tirade against Mrs Thatcher & how she single handedly destroyed British Industry and put millions on the dole, as I had heard many times while the Parliamentary candidate in Nuneaton, I replied "No" and prepared myself for the onslaught. But I was told a different story. The man said he had been working in the shipyards in Sunderland and had been intermittently out of work, with no job security when he heard Norman Tebbit speaking about has father getting on his bike and looking for work. The man said to me that after listening to that speech he decided to leave the north-east and move to the Midlands where he found a permanent position working in a local authority where he worked until retirement. His biggest complaint was the fact that he is being taxed on a modest income additional to his pension where the tax rate has just doubled from 10p to 20p and whatever fudge Brown & Darling are bringing in to compensate him doesn't impress him in the least. I left with a spring in my step!

Success of The Scouts

A year ago I wrote on the blog about Rugby Scout's St George's Day Service. On Sunday I was again a guest at the Parish Church and once again marvelled at the good work the Scouts do with young people. This year I also learnt that in the past 12 months numbers involved in Scouting in Rugby have increased by 10% and in The Time the other day, there was an article about an increase of about 3% over the country as a whole. This is a tremendous credit to all of the volunteers who give freely of their time to provide our youngsters with a range of new experiences and an organisation to belong to and provide a sense of purpose. The wider community owes them a debt of gratitude.

Polyclinics and Rugby

I have just returned from a meeting in Coventry where David Cameron spoke to General Practice Doctors and Patients including a number of people from Rugby about the Government's proposals to introduce Polyclinics . It's clear that many in the profession are totally opposed to this idea to introduce large practices of up to 25 GPs where the doctor/patient link will be broken, where many patients, particularly the elderly and the young, will have to travel longer distances, and where the management will be undertaken by business rather than the doctors themselves. I was impressed by one doctor who spoke of himself as a "patients advocate", a role he felt would be lost in a larger, more impersonal organisation and another who felt that the imposition of Polyclinics would lead to many GPs seeking work outside the UK.
In Rugby we have much to fear from these proposals. There is already a threat to our local hospital from the moving of more specialist services to larger regional hospitals; now this proposal seeks to move more low level and routine services from the local hospital to the clinic. Time after time Rugby people have shown that they want to retain as many services as are feasable at their local hospital. We will need to win this part of the argument as part of our campaign to defend St Cross.

Local elections

The local election campaign is well and truly under way with just two weeks to polling day. I have been out with candidates across the constituency canvassing and taking soundings of how people feel on the doorstep. There's a real sense that people are pleased with how our Councillors have managed the borough well and at the same time they will want to show their diappointment with Government. I've no wish to set our expectations too high, but am confident that we will have some good results on May 1st. Last night out in Wolston we had a large, entusiastic team out, and I really enjoyed the response from the people I met.

Unintended consequences of the new tax rates?

One of the churches in Bulkington has drawn my attention to a consequence of the changes in personal tax rates that came into effect at the beginning of this month and how it affects the income of a charity under the Gift Aid scheme. Quite simply the reduction in basic rate from 22% to 20% means that if a donor leaves their pre tax amount unchanged, the gift aid income to a charity will fall by 11%.
The sums are as follows:
2007/8 a gross donation of £100 means the taxpayer pays £78 and the taxman adds £22 where the gift aid element is 28.2% of the total.
2008/9 a gross donation of £100 means the taxpayer pays £80 and the taxman adds £20 where the gift aid element falls to 25% of the total.
If the taxpayer leaves their payment at £78, the taxman will only add £19.50 giving the charity an income of £97.50 instead of the £100 they will have budgeted for.
Was this consequence of a change anticipated? Was it thought through?
In addition, the effect of taking away the 10% band means that those on lower incomes who may be supporting a charity will have less income left from which to make the charitable payment. Lots of people will have seen the leaflet the Conservatives have produced showing how a nursery nurse is £154 worse off,; a catering assistant £161; a library clerk £203.
So what Gordon Brown trumpeted as a great benefit has turned out to be nothing of the sort. And those who need support most will end up suffering.

Old Laurentian Dinner 2008

Last year I attended the dinner to meet up with old friends and listen to a speaker; this year I was the speaker & this was the first time I have spoken in Big School. A broad range of ages of Old Laurentians attended and when I saw the younger guys hitting the Port with the first course I realised I would need to be on my toes; I reckoned that handling their interruptions would stand me in good stead for dealing with the Labour benches in the House of Commons. As it was, I think I got off lightly, enjoyed the evening and sitting next to the Headmaster learnt a great deal about the progress of and plans for the School. A great disapointment was that my son, Will, who left the 6th form last year wasn't able to join me at what would have been his first OL Dinner as he is on a visit to Egypt with a party from University.

A new era dawns

For the past few months I have been involved in negotiations for the sale of the business my brother, Mike, and I set up 25 years ago. The matter was finally concluded on Friday after an intense few days. In fact the only activity that I have ever been involved in with the same level of intensity has been fighting a General Election. The magnitude of the change that this will mean for me hasn’t yet sunk in, but it will mean that I will have more time to spend as a Parliamentary candidate over the next few months and possibly two years as we wait for the next Election.
It will also involve me no longer having an involvement in an industry which I have been involved in almost my entire working life, and a business which has been my life for 25 years. In the short term I will be involved in ensuring an effective handover with the new owners and so maybe now isn’t yet the time for reminiscing.
In the meantime there are always the Borough Council elections to keep me busy!