The two great fashionable campaigns of our age are to help people out of poverty,and to make the world a greener place.

Our Prime Minister is signed up to both. He now has to make one of those hard choices.

The best way of helping the poor of the world out of poverty is to promote freer and fairer trade. That requires more ships and planes to take their produce to the rich markets of North Amrica and Europe.

One man’s food miles is another man’s lifeline of hope to Africa.

Maybe the best way out of the dilemma is to encourage people to buy far less food from the mainland of Europe, requiring long and dirty lorry journeys to get it to us. We could combine more local produce with more fair trade and free trade produce from Africa dn Asia, coming most of the way by ship.

I look forward to hearing the Prime Minsiter’s answer to the dilemma - for he was so keen on both causes at the G8.

Many of the government’s departments are chaotic under this government. There is a lack of intelligent strategic leadership by senior Ministers, and a complete failure by many junior Ministers to follow up the detail to ensure they

We are told by the government that their huge economic “success” has come through making the Bank of England independent.

Yet over the last decade the UK has had considerably higher interest rates than Japan, the USA or Euroland, and now has considerably higher inflation.

Over the last 10 years Japanese base rates have hovered around zero, Euroland rates around 2%

Never believe what BT tells you. I was told the fault was in the exchange and they had remedied it. When I tried to use my broadband again I discovered it was still not working.

It’s back to the drawing board, waiting in for an engineer to call, in the hope that the next one will be better able to find the faulk.

It is good to see the press at last exposing the government’s incompetence. They have

In my recent book I Want to Make a Difference But I Don’t Like Politics I set out to explain how focus group driven big money politics by all the main parties is putting people off. Still the government does not seem to understand the deep disillusion that has set in.

This week we have seen the government promise legislation to toughen border controls, when they already have the powers on the Statute book - the issue is enforcing them. Once again they seem to be using legislaiton as part of the spin machine, trying to look as if they are going to be tough because the focus groups doubtless are telling them that’s what the public wants.

We have seen them continue to deny that the Conservatives are right to demand a proper border police, only to say they will give border officials a new uniform and new powers.

We have seen them rush out a story on splitting the Home Office in two when it looked as if allegations about cash for peerages was going to lead the news again.

We have seen them rush to cover their embarrassment about asking judges to take into account overcrowding in prisons by saying they will initiate a new prison place programme after all, many months after we suggested they do just that.

The first party to promise a self imposed restriction on donations, and a smaller budget on itself will respond to the public mood. If parties continue to think the public will pay more out of taxes for what they are getting thanks to big donors at the moment, they will be very disappointed by the reaciton.

What we want is a government which uses the very considerable powers it has to run the country well. If you concentrate on running the country, securing a favourable press will be easier than if you concentrate on trying to secure a good press whilst letting the country go to pieces. People are tired of spin, based on asking the audience what they want and then pretending that’s what you are giving them.

Many of my constiuents think as an MP I can ask whatever I like in Parliament. If only it were that easy.

If you want to ask an oral quesiton, it has to be about something a government department does, and you have to wait for the one day in the month when that department is available to answer.

If you want to ask a written one, you can only do so when Parliament is in session (another reason this government gives us long holidays) and if the Table office officials think it is a question which a government Minister is likely to answer.

In recent weeks I am pleased to report a welcome mellowing in the Table Office, who now let me table more of the questions I want to.

The problem is at last resolved . It did turn out to be a fault in the exchange, and at last someone was able to mend it.

Roll on more competition in the local loop - it’s the only answer.

For once when I asked the government a written question I received an answer.

I asked

Yesterday the Opposition held a debate in the Commons on the worrying presence of the killer bugs, MRSA and CD, in some of our hospitals. We did so because we are concerned by the number of deaths and serious illnesses contracted whilst in hospital. We did so in the spirit of wanting the government to cure the problem, not in

Gordon Brown has dined out on his success in making the Bank of England independent. Many give him credit for this and assume it has led to a uniquely favourable out-turn for interest rates and inflation.

In practise the UK has continued to pay a price. Our interest rates have been continuously higher than US, Japanese and Euro rates throughout the period. Japan’s rates have typically been under 1%, ECB rates around 2% and US rates around 3% compared with 4% plus for the UK since “independence”.

Now our inflation rate, always well above Japan’s, is also above Euroland’s and the US, so the extra pain of higher rates is not giving us the gain of lower inflation.

In parctise there has been plenty of political intervention in the workings of the Bank. The msot notorious was the foolish decision to shift the target rate from the RPI to the CPI in 2003. This was a deliberate and misguided politcal decision to try to bring us more in line with the Euro. From this point onwards our path has diverged from Euroland as our inflation rate has accelerated, and our growth advantage has eroded. It seems to have encouraged easy money for a bit at the Bank, when they cut interest rates before inflation was under control. It is all part of the continuing price we pay for the Euro dream - just as the Bank of England and Gordon Brown were keen advocates of the ERM and have never said sorry for their mistake, shared with the Conservative government of the day.

In addition Gordon Brown appoints a majority of the members of the Bank of England, and Ed Balls clearly takes a close interest in what they do. The Chancellor has both delayed appointments unreasonably, and made some controversial choices.

The Bank has been thrown off course by the CPI switch and are now having to inflict higher rates on us to rein things back. The Bank and the system are not independent enough, and Gordon’s infallible knack for making the wrong call, as he did with the ERM, has not deserted him.

London’s economy is growing twice as quickly as North and west. The South-east is also a relative hot spot.

Labour began by wanting to even things up, but now they want to bulldoze the surplus houses in the North, whilst concreting over the south. Instead they should ask themselves what is making

Yesterday we debated the government’s proposals to reorganise local government and local health services. As so often with this government they spun a good yarn. They told us there needed to be more local decision taking, greater freedom for Councils, and more patient involvement in the work of the NHS.

If only. That is exactly what many of us have been seeking for a good few years. As we probed the detail, we discovered that once again the government’s idea of devolution was to let us do locally whatever they think we should do.

Let’s take the issue of whether a locality should have to answer to an unelected regional government. I am pressing for the abolition of the Government of the South-east. It’s a waste of money and often makes us do things we do not want. When the government held a referendum in the North East on whether they wanted regional government or not, the people said

Today in the House we will debate the government’s Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill.

Despite

Ten days on, and still no boardband or phone line. The engineer who came on Friday to fix it told me it was probably a fault in the exchange, and he was not qualified to deal with that! It almost as bad as it used to be when BT was a nationalised monopoly. We need more competition in the provision of the lines, to match the competition for phones and call services.

Either the

It is ominous that we have been unable to get clear assurances from the government that any proposed transfer of power to the EU that might arise from the Merkel plan will be put to the British people in a referendum. I will table written questions tomorrow to seek further clarification, but it looks as if they will go along with

It was not good this morning to hear the “Prime Minister in waiting” tell us the UK had to use hard as well as soft power, and going on to say that we need to threaten the use of force and use it when necessary.

It would be good to know who the enemies are in his view. Tony Blair has spent much of his time as PM supervising the use of UK force, including assisting the US with full scale invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Our armed forces have performed magnnificently, despite the lack of proper equipment and back-up. Is the PM in waiting suggesting he wants to invade more countries as part of the so-called war on terror? If so, which countries does he think harbour terrorists, and why does he think invading them will make us safer?

Mr Brown spoke more sense when he talked about winning hearts and minds

One week on and I still have neither a phone line nor a broadband connection. I am expecting a long saga trying to get it sorted out. I have to go elsewhere to carry on blogging.

Competition is the answer, and we need more of it.

Conservative Hammersmith and Fulham have got off to a great start, by cutting the Council tax and improving services. When you take over from Labour that is not difficult.

They are doing it by market testing many of the Council’s activities, and reducing the administrative overhead. They are using the large savings they are making to boost neighbourhood policing as well as reducing the tax bill. They are going to promote home ownership and help people on lower incomes to buy their own place.Their aim is to get their tax level down to Wandsworth levels. Judging by the intensity of Labour protest in the Commons, Labour MPs realise this is the way for a Conservative Council to be popular and to remain in

Most people in the UK strongly oppose a federal EU state. We are fed up with the continual power grab

When I asked the Home Secretary today to comment on why we will, according to the PM, be at war against terror for a generation, and why it would end after one generation,

The memory of some who now