Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Apparently Iraq has got a lot better, so we need 1,600 less troops there. On a completely unrelated issue, Afghanistan has got a lot worse so we need an extra 1,400 troops there.

Apparently these are not, I repeat NOT linked. Even the numbers involved are different, 200 troops different, so they can't be linked, can they?

If you are finding the above statement a little hard to swallow you are not alone. It is clearly rubbish!

There are two ways of looking at this. Either Margret Becket is an appalling liar, or she actually believes this. I hope it is the former because the latter would indicate a level of stupidity that is scary in a Minister of State.

Or in two Ministers of State, if you count Des Browne as stupid (which I do).

Labour deputy leadership

Anyone would think that this is a job worth having.

The line up is far more interesting that the options being presented for leadership yet Prescott has show over the last ten years that it is a complete non-job. I still can't work out why so many of Labour's leading light didn't have the guts to take on Brown.

I don't think that Brown will take over the Labour party with anything like a compelling mandate, I'm not even sure that he is guaranteed to beat Reid, despite Reid being damaged goods.

If Johnson, Miliband, Blears etc respected each other or the country they would challenge Brown for the leadership and if Brown had any class he wouldn't penalise them for doing so.

It worked for us.

It's up to you

Protection and security. You can either have:

10,000 of these

or

1 of these.

Not a tough choice really.

Taking it seriously

I have been to two events recently which have filled me with confidence about the future of the Conservative party.

One was the Conservative Future drinks reception and the other was an event hosted by Bluelist.org. The CF event had plenty of people, which is not much of a surprise, but the conversation was very much focused around which seats to support, which candidates were doing interesting things, how best to link personalities to tasks. The youth wing of our party clearly have a professional edge to them.

That view was very much reinforced by the Bluelist.org event. Listening to a professional campaign manager from the USA showed just how much we have to learn about election communications. It was a real eye opener.

There are many people in the party, and in the wider conservative movement, who have marketing, analytic and communications skills and Bluelist has been formed to bring them together. Both Andy and Sam have worked in the USA on elections and used their experience to ensure Teressa May beat the Lib Dem "decapitation strategy" in the last election.

If you get an invite to events organised by either CF or Bluelist I strongly advise you to go. Unless you are from a different party, in which case stay at home and sort out that sock draw.

Well done Harry!

Drinking, shagging, embarasing yourself, getting into fights, leading soldiers, going to war, putting yourself into danger, serving your Queen and country.

Prince Harry is following a very long tradition of British Army officers.

Some of the behaviour in his youth might not have been quite what was expected or hoped for but just like his Tudor namesake I predict great things for this young man.

Is it just me?

Equal pay for equal work, I support that completely.

However best of three sets is not equal to best of five. I am amazed that the female players had the gall to demand more pay, they were getting 95% of the pay for 60 - 70% of the work.

I am going to ask my boss if I can take Mondays and Fridays off but keep the same pay. I'll let you know how I get on.

Troops home by Christmas?

The British armed forces are deeply overstretched as I have written on numerous occasions. Clearly is isn't possible to increase the number of soldiers and the amount of equipment they have quickly so the only viable remedy to overstretch is a reduction in commitments.

So why am I not jumping for joy at the news that Blair is going to bring some of our troops home? Is this pull out happening because Basra is now ready for self government or is it just about changing the flags on the coffins?

If the security situation worsens after the first tranche of troops come home will Labour reinforce the British contingent that remain, will they pull them out quickly or will they just leave them to their fate?

If the job in Iraq is done then let's bring the troops home quickly, if it is not done then can we morally justify the carnage that will follow our withdrawal?

Not happy with the NHS

Everyone in politics has to be nice about the NHS! Well I'm about to have a right go at it, not all of it just the bit that was meant to look after my father.

My dad has had high blood pressure for some time. About a year ago he went to see his GP because he had developed a small blind spot in his right eye, the GP said that it was probably a mini stroke and sent dad off to have stroke related treatment. This involved a strict change of diet and a course of blood thinning drugs.

Over time the blind spot got worse, dad went to the doctor about it again, this time he was sent to an eye specialist who said that he had a detached retina. "Why didn't you get this looked at when the blind spot first occurred?" asked the eye specialist. "I did but I was told it was a stroke" answered my father.

To then find out that he needed major eye surgery which could have been treated, using non invasive laser treatment, had it been caught earlier was very upsetting for my father. As was the painful operation and recovery period that followed.

Still worse was the discovery that his lens had become opaque because of the gas that is pumped into the eyeball to push the retina back in place. The subsequent cataract operation reveled the retina hadn't repaired itself properly.

I came home from work today to find my father clearly upset. He had seen a specialist who had informed him that he was now unlikely to ever get the sight back in his right eye. My father's passion is playing golf and losing the sight in one eye has made this pastime much harder for him.

I might be over reacting! Losing the sight in one eye isn't the worst thing that can happen to someone and having your golf handicap go up isn't on a par with some of the suffering in the world, but two things about this whole episode really infuriate me.

Firstly it was all so unnecessary. Had the GP initially sent my dad to en eye specialist immediately he probably would still have the sight in his eye. The fact that he came to the doctor with a sight problem but wasn't referred to an eye specialist is quite beyond me.

The second issue was that my father was talked to and treated like a halfwit at so many stages. Medical professionals are busy people but it cannot take too much more time to explain things properly so that the patient can make an informed choice.

I am not going to use this to play the party political blame game but it is clear to me that the time pressures that the medial profession is under is forcing them to make snap judgements and rush. That is always a recipe for mistakes.

Gay sex splits bishops

I know, I know!

This is a serious issue but the childish part of me couldn't resist that headline.

Now stop laughing at the back and get on with your work.

Moving deckchairs?

Is this really the most imaginative policy that Blair can come up with to tackle gun crime? Slightly longer sentences for slightly younger criminals!

If he thinks that the threat of jail is going to deter the kids involved in violent street gangs he has even less of a grip on reality that I thought. There are no quick and easy answers to the rise in youth gun crime and Blair has once again shown an inability to think further than the next day's headlines.

The sooner this man leaves for his lecture tour and book signing future the better.

Bromley and Bowling

Family weekend this one. The boys have had a prolonged period of good behaviour so, as promised, Susie and I bought them a new train each for their Thomas the Tank engine set, Splatter and Dodge to be precise.

As the nearest place to buy these is the Glades in Bromley, off we went on Saturday morning. There was a dance "event" going on in the middle of the shopping centre, if I can give some advice to my dear readers it would be this; don't join in! There is nothing quite so sad as bad (but keen) dancers trying to compete with people who clearly know what they are doing. You will look silly and may even do yourself a mischief.

Talking of which, we went bowling in the afternoon, ten pin not crown green.

Susie beat me, I can live with that. What I am less pleased with was the fact that the joint team of Rupert (2 1/2 years old) and Oli (just turned 2) also beat me!!!!!! In my own defence they did have bump bars up and they used that frame thing, but even so.........

Easier to get into space than to Crystal Palace

This made me chuckle, creating the ability to travel into space seem easier to sort out than trips to south London.

Family policy

I do not have a problem with unmarried couples, I do not have a problem with single mothers either.

There, I've said it. Now hopefully the usual "you hate the world" and "Tories only want Victorian values" etc. can be put to bed.

Because I am a Conservative I believe in choice, that includes the choice to marry or not marry. I also believe in responsibility and if you chose to have children it is essential that the parents take responsibility for their children and that means BOTH parents. For a long time single mothers were the focus of media and political attention but it does (usually) take two to tango and absent fathers should not be let off the hook.

Children need protection, structure, role models and direction, these are important functions of parents, if parents can't or don't provide these children will gravitate towards groups of people that do.

Once the Scouts, Boys Brigade, Girl Guides, church groups, cadets etc provided much of this structure for busy parents. The decline in these organisations has left a vacuum which has been filled in may areas by street gangs.

So there is the problem, what about a solution? Here are my ideas:

1. Do not accept the status quo! This is not the same as harking back to the past, this is not about hating the "modern world", it is about not just shrugging your shoulders and saying "there's nothing anyone can do".

2. Support families because families work!

4. Support groups which support children and their families.

3. Ignore the vested interests that will scream in protest because it doesn't fit with the world view.

How about that, a 4 point plan, not complicated or profound just simple and straightforward. To be fair it may need some fleshing out.

Some kind of justice

A year ago I wrote about how the government was being unduly keen on dragging British soldiers through the courts. The case of Col Jorge Mendonca has now been dropped, good job too, but so many cases have now been thrown out that questions must be asked about the motives behind them.

Are our soldiers being used to offset the corporate guilt of Blair, Brown, Reid, Browne etc. I rather think so.

Sending troops to war is serious business, they need to feel that they are being supported by their government. I don't imagine that there are many soldiers who feel that their government cares about them much at all.

Soldiers need to know that they cannot act outside the rules without being brought to justice but they must also feel that they can act as they need to in difficult and dangerous circumstances. Soldiers cannot conduct military operations with one arm tied behind their backs.

Who am I?

I'm quite happy with this result.

You Are Most Like Ronald Reagan

People tend to think you're a god - or that you almost ruined the country. But even if people do disagree with you, they still fall victim to your charms!

What Modern US President Are You Most Like?

How crap are we?

I know that we have a number of unresolved "issues", teenage pregnancy, children in poverty, youth crime, widening income gap, reducing social mobility etc.

But to hear that the UK is the worst place in the industrialised world to bring up children is a real slap in the face. Through the muddle of shaving, dressing the boys and trying to leave the house in time for work I caught some of the debate on the Today program. One of the panel said that the UNICEF report laid the blame at the door of single parents.

This was the same argument that was leveled at Iain Duncan-Smith's interim social justice report. Some much evidence points towards family breakdown as being the source of other social issues that to ignore the importance of the family is morally wrong.

Now I live in the real world, not all "standard families" are happy and not all single parent families have problems, but having one less income, one less carer, one less shoulder to cry on has to have an effect.

Support for the family may be horribly unfashionable but that shouldn't stop us from following this as a policy route. Let's not stigmatise single parents, gay and lesbian couples, etc. but lets not bury our heads in the sand any longer either.

The young people

I went through a number of years avoiding the youth wing of the Conservative party like the plague! Young people who should be having fun and trying to get their legs over were dressed in tweeds and trying to act like 60 year olds.

I have to say that in recent years the Conservative Future people that I have met have forced me to revise my opinion.

Firstly they are now much more . . . . . . normal. They are getting heavily involved in campaigning and are coming up with some very useful and innovative ways of reaching the "dissaffected youth".

Two new(ish) websites that deserve a mention are Bexley CF's site and BlueShark.tv

Both embrase new media properly and are genuinly interesting. The Friday Night Live(ish) on BlueShark runs the risk of becoming habitual listening for me.

If we're not careful the young blood in the party might actually help get us elected!!!!!!

Snared by the state

One in three households are dependent on some form of state handouts. I find that appalling!

There are many people in the country who have choices, I am one of them. I choose where I work, how I get to work, where my children go to school, how much I spend and on what. There are, however, millions of people who live without choices in a meaningful sense of the word. They do not choose where they live, they cannot choose where their children are schooled, what they eat etc. A life without choice is hardly a life at all.

The Labour party talks about choice but the simple truth is that their policies have deprived choice from a growing number of people. When you are living out of someone else's pockets you increasingly find you are dictated to. This is exactly what is happening to millions of people at the lower end of the income scale.

David Cameron has rightly focused on poverty and Conservatives have long known (if not articulated) that the rich don't really need our help. The role of government should be to help free the lives of the poor, this is not the same as trying to hamstring the wealthy and it cannot be done by driving people into the circle of state hand-out addiction.

Maternity waiting lists?

How long should the waiting list for a pregnant woman be ? I would suggest it is kept under 9 months!

Rubbish joke I know, it might not be such a laugh for the women turned away from maternity units because of a lack of midwives. After ten years of Labour crowing about how much money they have spent on health, stories like this just shouldn't exist, yet this is just one in a long string of closures, redundancies and cuts.



http://www.birthguide.co.uk/ has a list of the hospitals that had the most closures, my wife was particularly disappointed to see that four out of the top ten hospitals were in her home county of Sussex.

What the hell is Hain up to?

Peter Hain has never struck me as one of the more thoughtful Labour ministers but the two announcements that are floating around with his name on really deserve a mention.

First there is the idea to pick the scab off of a very old sectarian wound and then there is the headline grabbing city bonuses idea. Sometimes ideas sound good in principle but are rubbish in practice, these don't even sound that good in concept. One is completely counter productive and the other is just hot air.

Clearly he is positioning himself for the deputy leadership of the Labour party, but I would have thought that one good idea would be more help to him that a string of rubbish ones. Perhaps he is just trying to emulate Prescott!

We all do things we regret!

I am sure that there are photographs of me and the rest of my university rugby team doing things which I wouldn't do now. Nothing particularly obscene, just not very flattering!

I only hope that the other people in the photos have as much of an incentive to keep them private as I do.

We were all young once, yes even Sir Ming, and part of being young is making mistakes and learning from them. David Cameron has made his position clear on this subject and I think that it is a sensible one. The stories doing the rounds at the moment about him smoking dope at school are as unsurprising as they are unimportant.

At least the other political parties are being grown up about it.

Iain Richardson

A sad day. Ian Richardson stared in two of my favourite TV programs, House of Cards and An Ungentlemanly Act.

He had one of those great voices that was able to carry gravitas an humour in equal measure. British film and TV will be poorer today.

Welcome to the 21st century Mr Blair

Reading this brought to mind the idea of middle aged politicians rapping to get in touch with "da yoof".

Now we are told that we need to use the media to engage with voters, well I never!!!!!!!

Perhaps I should invest in one of these new fangeled computers to ride on the interweb super broad speed band! I'm just off to Radio Rentals to get one, I wonder if they come in colour?

Ooooooops

Just as all Labour MPs are ditching Blair and brown nosing Brown, one beacon of loyalty shines out. David Miliband's assertion that once we have seen Brown we will want Blair back is probably stretching the point a little but I agree that Brown will not enjoy the honeymoon period that party leaders usually enjoy.

Now the next question is whether Brown will be big enough and self confident enough to bring Miliband into his cabinet? I don't think that he will.

Me having a pop at Polly having a pop at bloggers

I've written a piece for The Fisk on Polly Toynbee's recent speech about columnists and bloggers.

Read it here.

Safe, legal and rare!

Bill Clinton once said that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The latest figures from the Marie Stopes International (family planning body) shows that abortion rates through their clinics were up 13% on the 2005 figures.

This cannot be seen as good news whatever you view of abortion. With teenage pregnancy rates still the highest in Europe the UK needs to ask itself some serious questions about sex education, contraception and our whole attitude towards sex.

I now sit back and await the hail of abuse from the "Tories shouldn't dictate how people live their lives" brigade.

Margaret Hodge, useless, lazy or both?

My colleagues Dan and Charles, who are professional wordsmiths on RealBusiness.co.uk, were doing some research for an article. They started looking into the small business policy output of Margaret Hodge, they found none, this may not seem to be a big issue until you remember that she is the minister for Small Business at the DTI.

OK, policy isn't everything, lets look at her speeches on small business. ???????? Another blank. Even a quick look at her website (she has an e-politix, it seems she can't be bothered to host a real one) has no reference to her small business role. Perhaps she doesn't know she that she is the small business minister, I'll try to ask her.

There is no such thing as "friendly fire"

The story of L/CoH Matty Hull is a deeply sad one. If the transcript of the radio traffic between the A10 pilots and the Forward Air Controllers (FAC) is accurate it highlights some very significant failings on the part of the pilots and FACs.

Events like these are rarely the result of one error, there are always a number of safety measures in place to prevent accidents and yet the still happen. It is clear from the pilots' reactions that they immediately realised the gravity of their actions and a witch-hunt would serve little purpose. However that does not mean that the Pentagon of the MOD should walk away from this.

There was an unwillingness to let the video into the public domain which I understand but do not agree with on this occasion. The errors leading up to this killing need to be analysed properly to minimise the chances of similar accidents happening again and to let the family of Matty Hull know the truth.

The Conservative position on ID Cards

There have been a number of attempts to paint the Conservative position on ID cards as some kind of fudge.

The lefties seem to think that ID cards are a right wing idea and as such the Conservatives are in favour of them at heart. ID cards are mark of a large and intrusive government, which is a left wing attribute, and as such they have no place in either the hearts or pockets of Conservatives.

David Davis has made our party's position completely clear in a letter that he has sent to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell. You can read the content of the letter here.

Great game

My day at Twickers was fantastic!

Watching rugby live is always fun and an international doubly so. Watching an England team which finally looks like it knows what it should be doing was a real pleasure.

Some points from the match:

After years of sitting on the touchline injured Wilkinson threw himself into the game without any hint of concern about being injured again. His tackling was as gutsy and assured as ever.

Despite the scoreline Scotland didn't have a bad game at all, Patterson's positional kicking was almost faultless and he caught Robinson out of position a number of times. If England hadn't been able to turn pressure into points, via penalties, the score would have been much tighter.

Our back line was much too flat for much of the match. There were a number of occasions when Tindall took the ball almost at a standstill, he's a big lad but needs speed to break through the opposition line.

Ellis had a blinding game and had Wilkinson not dominated the points tally, would have won a deserving man of the match.

Enough from me, I'm recovering from a hang-over.

"My party is behind me"

Says Tony Blair.

I'm sure they are sir!

Like a hand grenade off a duck's back

Some badly informed anonymous commentators are having a go at our Iain and his WIFE!!!!!!!!

How low can you go? And how badly informed can you get?

Laugh? . . . . . I almost called my controller at the HQ of the "Giant Right Wing Conspiracy Organisation" to tell them about it, but why bother? They would already know.

Muslim soldiers

There is a very moving piece on the 18 Doughty Street site about the 300+ Muslim soldiers serving in the British Army.

I strongly recommend that you read it.