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.

Voters switching from Labour

Today's Times has an interesting story here about Labour's cash shortage & that they are concentrating their activity in the run up to the election on seats where their majority is more than 3,000. No mention of Rugby where the notional Labour majority is arounf 2,500 according to Rallings & Thresher, but the article does go on to identify the 4 groups that are most likely to switch from Labour as being:

• Thirtysomething homemakers who voted Labour in 1997 but are burdened with debt as they start a family — they may turn to the Conservatives;
• low-skilled, largely unemployed households who will either not vote or turn to far-right parties;
• those in former manufacturing communities who no longer have strong union and Labour Party ties — they are also vulnerable to extremist lobbying;
• people approaching retirement in some of the nicer council estates who exercised the right to buy — they may also turn to the Conservatives.

From the time I have spent on the doorsteps across the constituency over the past three years I would say that is pretty accurate and would add to it a small but significant group of young voters from Labour families who will take the trouble to vote, voting Conservative for the first time they vote.

Creating New Apprenticeships

I have just returned from a presentation in Birmingham where George Osborne and David Willets were talking to student and members of the local business community about the economy in general and our plans to increase the number of new apprenticeships for young people. David spoke about the difficulty that apprentices face if they loose their job before their training is complete, how this would be completely unacceptable in any other area of education. Well informed and questions were posed about tuition fees, climate change, support for manufacturing, overseas aid, the effect of uncertainty in the postal service on business, the extent of tax avoidance and Govenment cuts to the College building programme. What was interesting was that most questions were posed on the basis that we will be in power after May and it fell to George to remind people that our assumption remains an "if" rather than a "when".

Dunchurch Coffee Morning

My first elected position was Councillor for Dunchurch & Knightlow in 2002 and so I was delighted to meet up with old friends and helpers at Dunchuch Conservatives Coffee morning this week. I was reminded by one or two people of the first campaign I look part in as a Councillor when we opposed the Government's proposals for an International Airport at Chuch Lawford. It all seem laughable now but at the time was a real threat to the environment and way of like here.

11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month

I have just returned from the firing of the maroons (rockets) on Whitehall Rec at the beginning and end of the two minute silence to commemorate Armistice Day. While there I took the opportunity to look at the many wreaths which were fixed to the gates at the ceremony on Sunday.

Unemployment & Ericcson

The unemployment figures announced today are horrible but especially bad for our area with the news that Ericcson have announced that they will be pulling out of the Ansty Park employment area leading to 700 redundancies. This is within Rugby Consituency although most of the staff there live in Coventry. Details from the Coventry Telegraph here and it falls to Guido Fawkes on his blog here to draw attention to the consequence of the Prime Minister's visit to the site earlier in February this year.

Remembrance Day Service

I have attended the Remembrance Day Service at the Memorial Gates at Whitehall Recreation Ground every year since I was elected a Councillor in 2002. This year during the march past there was spontaneous applause for both those currently in active service and veterans, and I believe this was the first time that happened. Coverage of the war in Afghanistan through modern media brings to life the sacrifices that both present and past servicemen have to make and has led to a greater appreciation among the public. I was please to be there on Sunday to pay my respects.

Even more spending?

The story to catch my eye in today's papers is here in the Sunday Times concerning Browns plans to increase spending in the run up to the election. Apparently this is not an attempt to bribe the electorate with jam today, but an even bigger stimulus to try to pull the country out of recession. It is as if the massive current deficit is not signifiant, nor that the the debt and interest payments we will be passing on to future generations don't matter. People sometimes say on the doorsteps that there is little difference between the parties. On the economy there will be bigger differences than for many years with according to the article Treasury officials fearing that increased spending will upset financial markets making it harder to service the national debt. The game is up - people know we can't carry on as we are and living beyond our means.

On the doorsteps in Bilton

We had one of our biggest teams ever out with our survey yesterday when Chris Heaton-Harris, candidate in Daventry brought a few of his supporters out to join us. We were asking people their thoughts about the Government's treatment of our Armed Services and you can take part through my website. I have found a survey a great way of finding out what Rugby people think about a topic and this gives me a good understanding of what people will expect to hear about from us in the coming General Election and what our priorities should be if we form the next Government..