Forgotten victims of the recession

I suspect this may end up as a bigger list than most people realise. On the doorsteps I hear often about people, often pensioners, who rely on interest on their savings which has reduced substantially as rates have fallen. Our proposal to abolish income tax on savings for basic rate taxpayers and raise the pensioners' personal allowance by £2,000 to £11,490 is good news for this group. However, this weekend, I spoke to a lady who had spent her entire working career with NatWest retiring some years ago. She had taken the reward for her service in the form of shares, converted to Royal Bank of Scotland shares when NatWest was aquired. A year ago the share price was £3.50 and today just 15p. The decline of our banking institutions is hitting many people who don't deserve to be hit.

Prostrate Cancer Awareness

Yesterday evening I joined a number of men of a certain age at Prostrate Awareness Evening held at St Cross Hospital. I had received a call earlier in the day from a resident telling about the event run by a voluntary organisation called Prostrate Cancer Support Association (Central England). I met the Chairman, Keith Hicks who told me about how he and others started the group a few years ago, having experience of this cancer themselves. The stats are that 10,000 men a year are killed by prostrate cancer and as with all cancers, the chances of successful treatment are much higher if identified early. Unfortunately some men don’t have symptoms until too late and men often don’t go to the doctor unless they are in pain or dragged there by a wife or partner. A blood test and an examination can give a good indication of a potential problem and hence a campaign to get the target group which is men over 50 to have this as a precaution. Previous campaigns have led to about 15% of those attending being advised to seek a referral for further examination. I was surprised to learn that the entire process was carried out by volunteers with Keith and his team organising and publicising the event and the tests by NHS staff giving freely of their time. There are clearly expenses incurred and the group do various types of fundraising and that also explains the collection buckets. With the current strong emphasis within the NHS of preventative care, I will be trying to find out why this activity is currently left to volunteers. In the meantime there are many men with reason to be grateful to them, even if it is only a matter of gaining peace of mind. Also, having done the test myself, I will be hoping for a clean bill of health and peace of mind personally!

Airport Expansion

The current debate about a third runway at Heathrow reminds me of the campaign we fought in Rugby in 2002 when we opposed a fanciful scheme for a new international airport. All of the environmental arguments are very familiar having been used by our team but with climate change having accelerated in recent years are now even more relevant. We argued against the rise in the number of short haul flights on the basis that a decent rail network would render air travel between cities in the UK unnecessary. The west coast main line is now much improved and the Conservatives have announced proposals for a new north-south rail link which have been well supported. The 2002 exercise was supposed to be a thorough appraisal of future air travel needs - what happened to it and where is there a reference to it in the Government's hastily announced decision this week? I am the first to accept that major planning infrastructure decisions in this country take too long, but if I lived anywhere near Heathrow (as I did when I worked in London 25 years ago) I would want to know that that any proposals would be properly considered.

Keeping Rugby Working

Following on from the Birmingham event I attended last week, we will be holding our own event in Rugby to consider how best to deal with the recesession. This will be to "share the latest thinking from the Conservatives to respond to the recession, to share good practice between businesses and an opportunity to put forward your ideas about measures that should be taken to deal with the problems we face today." It will be held at Rugby Conservatives, Albert Buildings, 2 Castle Mews, Rugby, CV21 2XL on Thursday 5 February 2009 at 6.00pm. If you or anyone you know would like to attend, please let me know by sending me an e-mail using the contact details on my website. I am sure we will have a lively & interesting discussion.

Get Britain Working

On Tuesday the Conservatives organised a series of regional seminars based on the party's approach to dealing with the recession. I attended the West Midlands event in Birmingham which was co-chaired by our candidate for Edgbaston, Deidre Alden, who puts me to shame by blogging daily.
Along with local business people, councillors and candidates we considered how the government's approch isn't working with the billions handed out to the banks failing to make their way to where they are most needed, namely to businesses who are struggling. Being the West Midlands much of the discussion revolved around manufacturing and Jaguar Land Rover in particular as being a candidate for our proposed loan guarantee scheme. As someone who ran a business, I see much more merit in this approach than the 70s style bail out that is being talked about although currently in this area it is the govenment who are the "do nothing" party. What must be protected is the R&D that this company is carrying out to make their products greener, which will give them a competitve edge in the market place and is often a first activity to be cut and so difficult to get started again. From senior business people we heard many postitve proposals and ideas many of which I intend to present in Rugby at a future event.