My year in review

What marks one year out from another? Years pass by but is there really anything that in your mind marks one year out from another?

For me 2005 will be remembered for the General Election (I have reviewed this in my blog) but there are many more things that have happened this year. It seems that politically the second half of 2005 was taken with the party leadership election. At the time that Howard announced his departure I, like many, was fearful of an extended leadership election, even though I knew this would give us the chance to really understand what the candidates stood for. As it happened it was an invigorating time for the party that has done nothing but good  both internally and externally. David Cameron has made a fantastic start and panic has set in on the Labour benches and open warfare is now in the Lib Dems.

The Lib Dems appear to be slipping into the type of problems that the Conservatives had; starting to represent the country as it was and not as it is. They have no natural successor to lead their party. Their most likely candidate would be skipping a generation the reverse way from where the Conservatives have gone; just at the time that even the Labour party is thinking that maybe skipping over the Brown generation could be a good thing. Could David Miliband really be the next Labour leader?

It appears that the real battle is the confusion at the heart of the Lib Dems as to where they go; left or right. A key criticism of the Lib Dems is that they say different things to different people in different areas. But then this is not surprising considering there are two distinct factions in the Lib Dems. Still this is a problem for them and frankly not one that interests me. What DC has taught is that we need to think more about the future and worry less about what others stand for. Politically the year ends with the Conservatives stronger than in the past 13 years and Labour and the Lib Dems confused and divided about their futures.

On the business front I finally seem to have set up the new Not-for-Profit business that has taken months to happen; legal and financial issues take time to work through. We now have an objective and a very busy 2006 ahead as we try to make this new small business survive the vagaries of a business life.

The house did not make a lot of progress this year and doubtless early 2006 will be spent sorting the kitchen and rooms yet to be decorated.

So, here ends 2005 – a year to remember.

Tomorrow I will post my New Year resolutions.

Taking a holiday

Have a very Merry Christmas!

I am going to be taking a holiday from the blog for a few days. Will also comtemplate my New Year resolutions and report back. Probably be back 29/30th December.

They sang....they didn't get arrested

You will recall the post concerning the Carol Singing in Parliament Square.

Well it went ahead and Guido Fawkes reports on what happened.

Council performance falls from 4 stars to 3 stars

Councils Performance Shines But Drops A Star (from Surrey Comet)

Does any member of the public really care what the audit commission thinks about the Council's performance? I doubt it. As a resident you want the streets cleaned, the rubbish collected and all the other services that Councils provide. Rather than this star system I wish the Government would spend mopney educating the public on what the Council actually has responsibility for and what it does not do. There is a strong argument for Local Authorities taking on new responsibilities but whatever happens to Councils in the future they need to see a greater public awareness of their powers.

I did however think this was an interesting quote from the article:

"Disappointingly, given the Liberal Democrat manifesto putting the environment at the heart of all council business, it received just two stars out of four in the environment section but officers and councillors believe this is a result of outdated performance indicators being used."

Outdated performance indicators? Yeh, right! I presume that the recycling rate of 18%, less than it was five year's ago, is one of those "outdated performance indicators"?

One very interesting thing in passing. Whenever the Council has done something well I have noticed that Councillor's are the ones all over the press report with quotes etc. As soon as it is bad news it is the Council officer's who get wheeled out. Funny that!

1988: Jumbo jet crashes onto Lockerbie

Taken from the BBC "On this day" website

It is a stunning thought that the Lockerbie crash happened some 17 years ago. Was this part of the "war on terror" but nobody had told us it had started?

The Guardian points they way

The Guardian has this morning published an ICM poll which makes good reading for the Conservatives nationally, as well as in Kingston & Surbiton. ICM does not normally show Tory leads (last time was during the fuel crisis in 2000) but this one is a good lead that widens were Gordon Brown PM. The really bad news is for the Lib Dems. I quote an extract below:

“ICM finds that a majority (63%) of Lib Dem voters see Mr Cameron as a potential prime minister who could change the way they feel about the Tories - and almost half (46%) might consider voting for him.”

It also finds that:

“With Mr Brown in charge of Labour, the Tory lead widens to 41% to 36% with the Lib Dems on 18% as they lose votes back to Tory candidates.”

Clearly we should not get carried away as some of this is the inevitable bounce of a new leader. However, the temperature has changed. People of all parties are very much more disposed to the Conservatives than I can remember.

Were the results above to happen at a General Election the result in Kingston & Surbiton would be very interesting. Using Antony Little’s election prediction website, based on a universal swing, the results nationally and for Kingston & Surbiton are detailed above. The only seats in the South, home counties and the South West that the Lib Dems would hold are Southwark and Cambridge. It really does show just a small % of very soft Lib Dem votes moving to us would change the landscape. No wonder their MP’s are panicking! The amazing thing, of course, is that even with this result we are still not the largest party. However, as I said, this result is based on a universal swing across the country and we should not get carried away.

Christmas Fun!

.....no one say I do not give you some fun on this blog.

Click here for a Christmas tale

It happens to us all

Everyone who speaks in public does it. You mix your words and say something embarassing. This excellent clip from a Christian website called Ship of Fools is how even a priest can get caught out in the pulpit. Click here for the video

The site also has some excellent Christmas kitsch.

Star gazing for the Lib Dems

Almost the entire time I have spent working for the Conservative party we have had misfortune after misfortune. Members of the party have been patient with the pace of change and now it is happening fast. Other parties have branded us all sorts of names and yet still a third of the voting electorate have supported us through thick and thin – a core vote the Lib Dems would die for.

It is therefore rather interesting to see the Lib Dems self implosion over their leadership. Unlike the Conservatives you get the feeling that they do not have the courage to knife their Leader and consequently their warfare will drag on. It has of course been dragging on for some time anyway. Even at the party conference in the Autumn there were rumblings. As always happens with a minor party they had dropped off the radar since the election and much of their dissent and warfare has gone on without anyone noticing. We have missed the resignation of the Lib Dem Deputy President citing her worry that the party was shifting right to capture Conservative votes. This resignation is important because like the past woes of the Conservatives the kernel was always the future direction of the party; Left V Right. The Lib Dems now have the same problem.

So who comes after? The Cameron calculation must be for Hughes to win. He would take the party left and alienate Conservative votes on loan to the Lib Dems. The so called centre right “orange bookers” feel they must move to the Conservatives, but will the hard core Liberals really stomach that? One of the issues the Lib Dems face is that they are of course an alliance of very different factions. Primarily this goes back to the Liberal/ SDP merger. What we might be seeing for once is the final coming together of the old Liberals and the former SDP members fighting against the new modernisers. The modernisers might make up the majority in Parliament but they sure do not control the grass roots.

I was too young to know too much about the turmoil of Labour in the late 70’s and have been on the receiving end of the Conservative turmoil of the last ten years. The Lib Dems laughed at us; having been there I can tell them it is not amusing

The picture here is Kennedy’s star chart. Below is one very interesting quote:

“Charles Kennedy's Moon and Pluto straddle either side of the Liberal Democrats' Midheaven. This speaks of an intense bond with the party's goals and mission. The downside of this is a difficulty in letting go in this area, and a problem with stepping back to take an objective view. The party's achievements and failures will be taken very personally by him.”

......alcohol adds to the problem

There has always been plenty of rumours about Kennedy and his drinking. A friend of mine had first hand experience at a health centre visit Kennedy did at 9.30 in the morning. Even a former Lib Dem MP, Paul Marsden has now come out in the Observer today to say how bad the situation was.

Only he and his colleagues will know how bad it is but it sure is not helping his current difficulties. I wish him no ill and I hope for his own health he now sorts the problem out. Like DC and the drugs issue it is a private matter and despite what people have known they have been remarkable at keeping quiet about it - even the press, who must have known something but said nothing!!

Dale is Back

Iain Dale (Politico's and Conservative candidate in North Norfolk) stopped blogging when he went off to run DD's election campaign. He is back on the net and has started blogging again.

I suggest you go visit

Lib Dems for Cameron

This is tactically very clever. We know the Lib Dems have been "borrowing" Consevative votes and a move to bring back their soft support could not have been timed better.

I listened to Kennedy spluttering through a long radio interview in which his only defence was that no real Lib Dem would do this. Well Charles, there are not many "real" Lib Dems in your party! What there is are some very sane, rational people in the Lib Dem party who clearly belong with us. As time goes on they will come to realise this and move back to supporting us.

Nick Assinder at the BBC has done a good analysis of this and the Lib Dem Leadership crisis.

Sing Carols and get arrested

You are cordially invited to a public carol service in Parliament Square at 6pm on Wednesday the 21st of December 2005.

This inclusive service will contain both Christian and secular verse, and is expected to last no more than an hour.

Candles and song sheets will be made available, with donations going to Medical Aid for Iraqi Children.

Please note that if you attend this carol service, it will classify as a spontaneous demonstration (of faith, hope, joy and/or religious tolerance) and there is a possibility that you will be cautioned or arrested under Section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crimes and Police Act 2005.

Click here for more information.

Runners And Riders

Runners And Riders

Must be serious as there is now also a Lib Dem Leadership blog!!

New Tory Leader: Kingston Labour Leader resigns: Lib Dems are man overboard?

Stephen Pollard - What is the point of Chatshow Charlie? (Daily Mail)

This has been quite a ten days. Hard to believe that Cameron was only appointed last week and here we are moving to a LibDem crisis. From a Conservative perspective it is good to see that it is no longer us having the leadership crisis and the splits.

I was going to blog on the Kennedy leadership crisis but why bother when others do a better job. I think Stephen Pollard has written a good piece on this and it is worth the read.

The TV news last night seemed to infer that our own Kingston & Surbiton MP (Ed Davey) was at the forefront of pushing for Kennedy's departure. I must admit to being a bit shocked by this because if true it seems a little out of character - but then I don't know him so who can tell!

Labour Leader To Leave

Labour Leader To Leave Council (from Surrey Comet)

This is quite sad news!

Throughout my time as Conservative Leader on Kingston Council the Leader of the Labour group and myself have had a good working relationship. There are times when I felt he could be accused of being too close to the Lib Dems but then what can I expect when the Lib Dems nationally are now quite close to Labour. Ed has always been honest and open about where he stands on an issue and I have largely respected and admired his stances.

I think he is right that that the decline of Labour in Kingston is a mirror of the ebb and flow of Blair. However there have been times when Ed's predecessors, especially when there was no overall control in Kingston, acted too much to support the Lib Dem opposition rather than support their own line.

I wish him well but despite everything I think he will miss it!

The future is macaroon

Congratulations to David Cameron.

This is a good result for the party. Not only has there been a period where the party has dominated the news with an open and thoughtful election campaign, but there is a renewed sense of optimism permeating the party. Even the public seem to have sat up and paid attention to what the party is doing - probably the first time since 1992.

What does this mean for politics?

Clearly a revitalised Tory party, just when the Government is going through a period of significant and sustained instability, is going to begin to give people a real vision of an alternative. Labour will have an interesting future and the landscape of the relationship between Blair and Brown will come under renewed pressure. For the Lib Dems this will also be an interesting challenge. David Cameron’s arrival will put very large tanks on Lib Dem lawns in the South. The Lib Dems have done a good job of looking like the Conservative left in places such as Kingston but David Cameron’s approach will appeal to the London urbanites that saw the Lib Dem approach to Social issues as more relevant in a Labour dominated politics. At the last election the Lib Dems saw Northern labour votes come to them. However, as many of these were Conservatives who had gone to Labour it is possible that most of those people would come back to a Conservative party that was more concerned about the issues that drove them to Labour in the first case.

Cameron has started to lay out what he sees as his policy objectives:

• Making our economy more competitive
• Improving our quality of life
• Reforming our public services
• Protecting our security
• Social Action
• Addressing global poverty
  
  

I have been involved for the past six months in preparing our manifesto for the local elections next May. Getting people to move on from thinking about specific polices first and seeing how they fit broad objectives later is different from defining what the problem is and then finding the solutions. When our local manifesto is published that is what we hope will be its defining feature – it addresses the issues we face rather than just a wish list of things we think are popular.

One of the interesting aspects of the cleaner hospitals…etc approach at the General Election was that we gave the list of issues we identified were the problem but we did not talk enough about the solutions. We had the answers but we campaigned on the questions!

I gather that David is going to set up a commission on Social Justice. I am fully supportive of this approach. As I have said many time s on this blog social justice was at the heart of the conservative party ever since the mid 18th century. I will play whatever part I can in feeding into that debate.

Get Jane!

This is an Excellent blog. It is written by the former Labour MP for Reading East who was deselected - Jane Griffiths. She pulls no punches and it will be interesting to see if any of her former colleagues makes any legal moves against her.

Council Tax to rise again

We are facing another high Council Tax rise. Yes we can blame Brown and his Government for stealth taxes but there is a point at which local Council's must take responsibility for their spending.

The graph opposite shows how staff numbers have grown in Kingston as Council tax has risen. There is a clear correlation between the two.

Staff have increased by 37% and in this year alone another 500 (12% increase) were added. Council Tax has risen by 59%.

More staff should mean more services - or at least better services. Yet when the Council recently undertook a survey of resident satisfaction they found that 37% of residents thought the council were doing a good job, as opposed to 50% in 2000. The report said: "Residents feel that the way the Council runs things has stayed the same over the past three years, rather than getting better or worse."

So when Council Tax next year goes up by a rate way above inflation it may be right to criticise the Government but also remember there are things the Council can do.

Pollsters and Blogsters

I have to say it is rare that the polls get the result right but Yougov did a brilliant job of predicting the Conservative leadership vote. Yougov are an internet pollster and yet considering there are some that argue that the internet is not yet a tool for politics they have been doing a good job in getting the polls right, both here and at the General Election.

The explosion of internet activity around this leadership election has been fascinating. Both Conservative Home and Guy Fawkes' Blog have received a million hits in the past six months. Boris received over 650 comments on his leadership piece alone. Blogs are becoming a powerful tool. As Guido Fawkes has discovered there are even members of the press who use the blogs as sources for stories (although of course they rarely credit them).

Kennedy took cash from tax exile

Kennedy took cash from tax exile - Sunday Times - Times Online

I have posted links to a series of issues about Lib Dem party funding and am always told they are exceptions.

Well lo and behold we find another emerging in the Sunday Times. This one appears to concern Charles Kennedy and his lack of frankness about donations to his private office and the origins of the giver.

The Times also gives a balanced comment in the same paper.

The Brown faultline

ePolitix.com - Turner findings welcomed despite Brown's doubts

There is more to this for Brown than just pensions.

Why is he content to be seen to be the party pooper on this report; as he has been on other reports before this one. Is this the ressurection of Prudence or is it that he wants to make no fiscally risky decision before he gets out of the treasury and takes the helm of the UK?

As for the report itself it is clear that the logic in the report is well thought out and understandable. However, it is going to be a hard sell convincing those now in their twenties and thirties that they will be paying more tax over their lifetimes to support those in their forties and fifties who will retire at 65, but they themselves will have their retirement age shifted.

Actually I wonder if what is needed here is a mind shift for us all. There is clearly no fixed age for retirement anymore and often peoples retirements are a gradual process as they wind down, change job or go part time in the twilgiht of their working life. If you are comfortable with that as a late-life lifestyle then actually the "state" pension cutting in at a later date is not so bad. In any case the working life today is a lot about changing jobs and retraining throughout your working life rather than a single job and occupational pension.

New Year - New Challenges

I have two resolutions and they come as political and non-political

The first one is to cycle more often. I cycle quite a bit but mainly as a fair weather cyclist. Given Kingston is quite small it really should be something we all do, if we can.

The second resolution is to do something about Council Tax. The level of Council Tax has become a sad joke as the Government has abused it and local councils have u8sed the excuse to rapidly expand their staff numbers. We always blame the Government for it but as a Council we have some power in our hands. The tax is really hitting single householders and the elderly hard but is also now cutting into the spending of families. I am aware that there are other methods of taxation available to raise tax locally and I for one would be keen to see Councils having more tax raising power rather than relying on Government grant for so much of their spending. However, for now the tax system is not going to change and we must do what we can to help the vulnerable and those being penalised by this tax.

For once in my political career it is good to be a Conservative and exciting times lie ahead for the party, Kingston and the Country.