Grove campaigning and a good lunch

Been a busy weekend. Saturday morning was spent catching up with domestic issues having been away for the past week and no food in the house with four children. Saturday afternoon was spent canvassing in Grove ward for the by election. Things going very well. 3 leaflets and pledge letters so far and the same to come again. This by election has been superb in settling down the campaign team and getting us all to understand what there is still to do.

Sunday was at church in the morning and in the afternoon attended a Conservative lunch (50 guests) with Sir Paul Beresford coming to speak to us.

Have to say the weather has been great this weekend. So mild for the time of year.

Had a fair amount of trick and treaters this year. I cannot remember halloween being this popular when I was younger. I suppose it is part of the American cultural globalisation at work again!

Yet more cathcing up with the mail bag and phone messages in the evening.

He's back to 400 emails and an early recycling problem

Fantastic week, very relaxing. Refreshed for the Autumn of campaigning and the closing stages of the Grove by election. Cannot believe the amount of work that has gone on since being away and I am very pleased that my last posting on smoking prompted such a debate. Have 400 emails to wade through (very few junk) but came across this early comment on the new recycling leafet that the Council has published in Kingston. Looks like another mess. Will check it out and let you know what happens!

The information provided by the council says that we should not include
perfectly easily recyclable plastic (bags, trays, etc.) in the box we leave out
every fortnight. Why not? If the LibDems were serious about recycling they
would encourage us to leave ALL plastic. The irony is that we USED to!! So now,
we are actually putting MORE plastic in or dustbin to be added to the rubbish
going off to landfill!

Cigarettes and Prince Harry

Cannot believe this article about European requirements for cigarettes. I really doubt that this is going to turn the dedicated smoker, or even the young new smoker, off smoking. Still, Europe is Europe and it is amazing the strange ideas they can come up with. Not related, I except, but given the row over MP's expenses if you really want to see extravagance then have a look at what they allow MEP's to spend.

As for this article where Prince Harry left a photographer with a "split lip". Can you blame him? I do not necessarily condone this incident but I can understand the circumstances where the press would put themselves in a situation where they were threatening and menacing. Look what happened to his mother!

I am now away for the next week as it is half term. I am off to Cardigan and expect a wet and wild week.

If I get internet access I will keep you up to date with thoughts etc. If not then see you in a week! Double deliveries for me in Grove next weekend as penance!

St. Marks campaigners meeting

Had a house party in St. Mark's this evening. Went exceptionally well. About a dozen people. New faces as well as old friends but a significant number of new and under 40 members. All keen to get involved and help shape the campaign and me. Set up a date for a subsequent meeting to discuss how they get involved and how they help me write my personal manifesto. Very encouraging and exciting that at last we might be getting somewhere in a ward we held until 2002.

Found this on the internet, surprises me that there are so many minority parties claiming, like the Lib Dems, that they are the only alternative Government.

Another Grove evening

Spent another evening canvassing in Grove followed by a campaign meeting to update us on where we are and what e are doing in the future. For those Lib Dem who love browsing this site sorry I will not divulge details. More fun to keep you guessing.

Had a good meeting this afternoon on the future of social franchising.

Turning into a busy week

Had a busy Monday evening with a meeting with environmental and horticultural groups and trying to understand how they might be able to help a future Conservative Council improve services. Very good meeting with some really positive ideas around social enterprise and the provision of public services. I cannot believe the lack of entrepreneurial spirit of this Council. Not only does nothing happen but they do nothing to encourage others to provide services for them.

Tuesday evening was spent canvassing. Difficult job on dark evenings in October as the elderly are clearly less keen to even open the doors. Good reception when we did speak to people.

During the day had a fascinating charities round table at the Centre or Social Justice, the new think tank started by Ian Duncan Smith. Discussing the new Charities Bill.

MPs set for expenses storm

This is going to be something to watch.

Peter Hain (Labour Leader of the House) was yesterday urging all MP's and candidates to tread carefully about using the information from this review. Our own Chief Whip was also urging caution during the Summer, as reported in The Times. I have not heard what the fringe parties think but I suppose they probably feel the same.

For myself there is clearly a fine balance between genuine expenses, expenses that could be construed and twisted into appearing controversial and those that are just outrageous. The first two should not be used under any circumstances but there are real issues when it comes to the third category.

I am no expert in MP's expenses (I am not that sad!) and whatever else I am not about to go looking for dodgy expenses in my opponents expenses (and I would think hard before using them against him). I just hope, for his sake, that there is nothing that other less scrupulous types might consider using against him.

Campaign weekend for Grove Ward by election

Actually the weekend has not been as bad as I feared it might. Yes it rained whilst delivering but still managed to get some family stuff done as well. Actually late Sunday afternoon was really rather pleasant on the streets. Have been suffering as well from this bug that never seems to go!

Some very interesting leaflets have gone out from both Labour and Lib Dems. Apparently they are both in the lead and one or the other is going to come third! All I know is that a lot of people are fed up with this Lib Dem Council and all the talk and no action. Even their own activists are fed up with them. One I spoke to would not vote for us but was sure as hell not going to vote Lib Dem. I would rather they vote than not vote because the greatest threat to democracy is the lack of interest. The same goes for the General Election when it comes. If nothing else I will be pushing every one I meet to exercise their right to vote; whether it be for me or anyone else.

I suppose this is the danger of running dodgy bar charts with erroneous figures; it can be a real turn off. One party shows the figures based on some distant past when they won it and the other starts saying what might be the result in ten years time were this and that to happen! All sad really. Still I suppose the Lib Dems are the past masters at the exaggeration game. There are numerous examples of the phoney bar chart department held on Lib Dem watch - here is one more recent story.

Still lots of work still to do and lots of delivery to make.

Left Labour and Short Brown

Apparently Michael Howard is announcing that Labour are going to "lurch to the left" once Blair stands down. It is honestly amazing that he has to say this because it is so obvious that this will be the case. Once Labour start running out of ideas, and as they become more unpopular, it is what all parties do. Even the fringe parties like the Lib Dems will revert to hammering the wealthy and spending like mad. Actually of course, the Lib Dems are already doing that so perhaps it will be Labour lurching to the left that will bump into the Lib Dems and force them off the political planet - fun and frolics on the left.

I am not actually certain that it is impossible we might get a leadership fight in Labour this side of the election. I see the mistress of subtlety, Clare Short, has popped her head above the parapet to argue that Brown should make his move for the leadership now.

Oh well, back to the streets of Grove for more delivery and a long weekend of street pounding. Nothing worse than a by election in bleak, dark November to test your dedication.

NHS madness on IT

This is an outrageous waste of public money. Why is the Government, of both parties, not able to implement IT programmes. This has happened through all parties and is ludicrous.

Couple this with my experience with A&E at the weekend and the announcement today that the NHS is almost hitting its target of treating all patients within four hours (which is still ridiculously long).

The farce of local Government

I supported the Local Government Act and the reform of council processes away from committees to the separation of powers between the executive councillors and backbenchers. I was very wrong!

The fact is that this Government has removed the power for all Councillors to have a say on the issues of major importance to the Borough. The new licencing act is just such a case. It will give the impression to the public that Councillors have real powers to determine when and where alcohol is consumed. It will not! Instead we will have the farce of having all the responsibility heaped on us by the public and yet none of the power to do anything about it.

I am pleased that the Conservatives have committed to allowing Councils to return to the committee system. The committee system needs changes but it should now be bought back and these ludicrous so called 'reforms' dropped.

I presented two petitions to Council this evening concerning the Post Office closures in Berrylands. The rest of Council passed without incident.

Grove candidate

Busy day today with business meetings but also a meeting to finalise the Grove campaign having got a candidate in place. Not able to tell you who it is at moment but suggest you keep an eye on the website for further infomation. Whatever else we will select a local person who lives in the ward. Anything else would be a slap in the face to Grove ward residents. Clearly the Lib Dems will choose a ward resident as to do anything else would betray all they say about being 'local' campaigners!

I also had a very good group meeting prior to Council on Tuesday evening. The group in good hearts as we start the Autumn and Winter campaigning.

Family pretty much over the flu virus floating around but now looking forward to a break at half term.

Accident and Emergency

I had to spend a substantial amount of my weekend in casualty with my youngest daughter (2). We feared she had done something stupid and needed an x-ray to confirm or otherwise. Having not been to a hospital for years I have now had to go twice in three months with different children. I find them the most frustrating service imaginable.

I accept that hospital staff do a fantastic job but I will never understand why we had to wait 2 hours to be seen by a Doctor. We arrived, the triage nurse tells us that we need to see a doctor and he will tell us we need an x-ray. We waited an hour and fifteen minutes to see the Doctor who told us (guess what?) that we needed an x-ray. We had the x-ray done in fifteen minutes and the staff told us there was nothing wrong. We then had to wait another forty five minutes to see the Doctor again who told us there was nothing wrong. It seems the health service is divided into those who know what to say but do not have the power to tell you and those who have both the power and the knowledge. Why can't the triage nurse send my daughter for an x-ray?

However, only when you have sat in casualty do you begin to understand the problem. The sheer number of cases that came through the door that could have gone to a Doctor on the Monday morning was huge. There were grazed knees and stubbed toes where the nail had gone a funny colour. It is clear that the NHS has a long way to go on the reform path and there is also a big job to be done in changing the culture of the patients to understand what is and what is not a casualty case. That probably includes me as well because I discovered talking to someone in a pub last night that I could have taken my daughter to the minor injuries unit in Teddington and saved myself the wait!!!

The Past Week and atrocities in Iraq

The past week has been a slow blogging week for me and I hope that things can get back to normal in the week ahead. Apart from the party conference almost all the family have had varying degrees of catching this pretty ferocious bug that seems to be going around.

On the local political front we have also had a by election called in Grove. The good news is that we were intending to concentrate some fire at Grove over the next few weeks so our wider campaigning is not too disrupted. There are also a lot of issues around Grove that I am sure our opponents are not too pleased with at the moment.In any case the first job is to select a suitable candidate. I suppose the fact that out opponents were caught somewhat on the hop helps us a little.

I was saddened by the death of the hostage in Iraq. I am horrified by the cruel and barbaric way his life was ended I have become alarmed by the metaphor he has come to represent. There were times in the past few days when the method of his death became the focus rather than the sadness of his death. There have been many deaths over the war in Iraq but should The City of Liverpool and the England football team be holding two minute silences for him? I am not demeaning his death but it does worry me that they held these memorials when they never knew the man. What of those soldiers who died in Iraq and they never knew? What of the Iraqis who are dying? Who holds two minute silences for them?

Still on a happier note I spent an excellent Saturday morning delivering in St. Mark's ward along with 8 colleagues. We have an excellent organisation in St. Mark's that can deliver the entire ward in two days - pretty good going.

MORI have got it right?

It's not often that you come across an article that backs up some of what you had been saying.

In an earlier blog I had suggested that some of the fringe parties, like the Lib Dems, had been puffing up their expectations as to what they might achieve in a General Election. Now Bob Worcester of MORI, not my favourite pollster, has backed me up. In an article he has claimed that:

"(The Lib Dems) will put on about 20 seats, but I'm afraid the way the British electoral system works they are just a sideshow........When you ask people which party has the best policies on the issues they personally think are important to them the Lib Dems run a poor third on everything apart from the environment.

Questions: In your experience when a party gets bigger, as is the case with the Lib Dems, do policy contradictions and closer scrutiny inevitably lead to problems and a drop in support?

Bob Worcester: That's very possible and that would be consistent with the fact they are doing more poorly in areas where they have control of local councils."

As for the Conservatives he believes that:

"On virtually every issue the current Tory frontbench have eaten into the Labour lead. It is an important development because issues represent about 40 per cent of the determinant of which way floating voters vote. Image is about 60 per cent split between the image of the leader and the image of the party.

There's no easy answer to the Tory's problems but having said that the in-roads they are making into Labour's lead on policy is bound to have resonance.

I say that because those people on the margins, the floating voters, say those policies will attract them and that's where elections are won."

"When I can I will cut taxes"

Good speech by Michael Howard yesterday.

Finally we are getting to a core message that the public will understand. Getting the Government out of people's lives is a important thing to do. Cutting taxes is what we should also be about because it is clear that regardless of how committed you are to public services pumping more and more money into them is clearly not working. They need reforming and reshaping to serve the world of the 21st century and not the ideals of the post war consensus.

Was in Bournemenouth today for the Party Conference and was happily surprised by the upbeat mood and the belief. Particularly interested that pollling in our 130 top target seats has us winning 103 of them. It is clear that with a good national mood and hard work locally we can win Kingston & Surbiton.

Scary Kilroy-Silk

I listened to the highlights (if that is what they are) of Kilroy-Silks speech and I have to say that for an ordinary voter he must come across as a little scary. I am not sure that the electorate warms to politicians wanting to kill each other.

Redwood has made the point, and Kilroy Silk being a former Labour MP proves the point, that being anti Europe is not right wing.