A recent poll showed that a large majority of British voters think City bonuses are too big. The poll then asked what should be done. There was no general agreement on that. Some people felt the bonuses should be shared with others either through taxation or through gifts to charity. Others favoured a cap on them.

??If you impose a cap on bonuses in a profitable business, then the business will earn more profit. You transfer the extra money from the person doing the work to earn it, to the person who owns the business. He is usually richer than the people earning the money, so it is difficult to see how this helps.

If you impose a supertax on people earning over a certain amount, you will encourage many of these businesses to go somewhere else where the tax rates are lower. They are all international and footloose. They do not have to stay in the UK. Then the UK will be worse off, as the tax they pay will go elsewhere. The private equity bidders can still bid for UK businesses from abroad.

Giving more to charity is a good idea. I expect some??of the bonus earners will do just that. There is a very strong tradition of charitable giving in the US where mega bonuses have been common for many years. You can see it in the much better endowments enjoyed by American Universities.

What is curious is the fascination with the injustice of these newly arrived private equity bonuses. Why isn’t there the same fascination with the injustices of footballers remuneration? Or with the huge sums paid to people on the BBC whose fame rests?? on the fact that they have appeared on the BBC? Or with the mega bucks paid to stars of the large screen or the recording studios?

In a global market business people, singers, actors and sports stars can attract large paying audiences who will reward them generously. I would rather have some of these talented people here in the UK, paying some tax, than see them all operating abroad and paying us no tax.

There is a case to be made to limit how much a state monopoly like the BBC pays to artists appearing on its channels, as we are paying a tax for the pleasure and these artists can appear for big money on channels where we have choosen?? to contribute to their remuneration by paying for the TV we watch. You could also make a case for limiting the numbers of mega rich overseas footballers any English club can play in its team, to give local talent more of a chance to develop and give the English soccer team a better talent pool to draw from. That is a matter for the FA to decide how best to draw up the rules of its game. There is no case to be made to impose a supertax on venture capitalists, anymore than we should impose a supertax on footballers.Nor should we impose a supertax on????BBC performers, although it is sorely tempting given the amount of airtime they give to people who want higher taxes and more public spending and the little time they give to those of us who want less.

The shootings in South London have shocked many because the people involved are so young. There is an undercurrent of casual violence and and crime?? in many places in modern Britain which upsets the law abiding and worries the many who want to lead pleasant and decent lives.

On Saturday I was invited to one of the??formerly quiet and attractive villages in my constituency to be taken on a vandalism and burglary tour.

The backs of garages had been sprayed with large amounts of graffitti, where the artists were struggling to master the abstract style.

A homeowner with a large corner plot showed me his modern strong brick wall, which is being systematically demolished along its whole length. He assumes it is a gang of youths doing it, and that it started when someone drove into it, made a small hole, and drove off without reporting it.

A shop owner told me how her house had been ransacked and burgled whilst she was at work. She has now discovered that several of her customers?? have suffered something similar in recent months. Jewellery which she had just inherited from her mother was taken, which made it even more upsetting as??it cannot be replaced.

I was told of christmas decorations placed outside homes in December either vandalised or stolen.

A Parish Councillor who organises the clean up and maintenance of the local stream told me how vandals were constantly throwing things back into the free flowing water.

We found a fire extinguisher from some flats thrown onto the grass verge.

All this speaks of a community where a few youths and maybe some older burglars can force the rest of the inhabitants to live in fear of what will happen next.

The locals tell me all this began when the police removed the two local police who had been offering a community policing service to the village. One of the policemen has been transferred to motorway traffic duties I was told.

The government tells?? us we have record amounts of money going into the police service and record numbers of police. Will the government now ensure that we restore community policing, so people feel there will be follow up, and that it is more likely loutish youths will be caught?

It is also tells us that there are problems in the families of Britain which need a response from all people of good will.??Each youth??is someone’s son, nephew, grandson. They are pupils at a local school. The adults in the community have to find ways of channeling the energies of young people into activities that are worthwhile for the young and less damaging to the rest of society.

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Today is a good morning for this technology. Not only do I have a working BT line again, but the server for this site is back after a long weekend break when it was impossible to post anything. It’s as if the technology is signed up to the Working Time Directive.

The BBC went into ectasies today because the world’s legislators – that’s the people without government jobs! – have met and said the world must now have a target to hit on carbon emissions.

What kind of planet do these people live on? Let us assume the governments also go in for this kind of gesture, it may well be just like Kyoto. Some of the EU countries who have been keenest on the target have been the ones likely to miss it by the most. It’s not what you say or what targets you set that will take the trick. It’s what you do and how you do it.

Our government is especially profligate with energy – just look at all the street lights left on long after most people are in bed, electric signs, lights burning in?? unused offices, heating systems left on, and the advance of air conditioning in government buildings. Try living the brand first before posturing to the rest of us.

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We will only reduce emissions of Co2 if everyone makes an effort to change tjhe way they live, or to re-equip themselves with lower carbon producing heating, cooling,production and transport systems. Setting a target does?? nothing to achieve that. What matters is what happens next.

If a Labour MP or two????are going to claim for travelling the equivalent of more than twice round the world in a year, why should we believe other Labour MPs saying now we can see a way to save the planet?

The government says it wants to know the public’s views. It spends enough of our money on consultations and opinion research to have a very clear idea. Yet all too often it is a case of trying to find out if we agree with them, rather than listening to our well based and strong disagreements.

Some of us MPs, paid to tell the government what the public thinks, told them English people did not want regional government.

Many millions of pounds later they secured a thumping No vote to North Eastern regional government. Instead of accepting the No they have carried on with an unelected version, and are looking for ways to slip more reigonal government in everywhere else.

Now some of us MPs are telling the government the public do not want to have pay more to drive around, as they knwo they are alraedy taxed at very high levels for a rotten roads service.????The government tells us the only answer to congestion is to tax the poor off the busy roads. 1.3 million people sign a petition against – a massive No. Anyone was free to set up an alternative petition on the No 10 website to show support for road pricing, but of course no-one has done so. The government does not dare, because??it guesses how few signatures it would receive. Pay as you drive could have some advantages, but not unless you scrapped other motoring taxes to make up, and started to improve the dreadful highways.

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So to all those who say well, it’s only 5% who have signed the petition, ??I say don’t you believe it. Most people would vote against paying more as motorists to a government that has been so bad for motorists – and all travellers – over the last 10 years.

And to the government, who say there is no other way to tackle congestion, I say "Nonsense". Try phasing traffic lights to help traffic flows for a change. Try removing some??of the bollards and barriers which have been put in to cut road capacity. Try putting some right hand turning lanes at?? busy junctions to help the flows. Try widening ??dangerous and jammed junctions. Try stopping so many Council and Highways Authority roadworks. Try completing the trunk road and motorway network, which still has pinch points and glaring holes in it. Try expanding rail capacity.

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There is no sense of shame amongst these squablling Cabinet Minsiters. Peter Hain, ten years into a Labour government, finds inequalities offensive and urges a campaign to tackle them.

Could it be that the government’s Tax Credit and benefit system has misfired? Has he at last noticed that 5.3 million are still on benefits without a job, yet are of working age? Has he at last realised that Labour’s educational reforms have left many children stranded in Inner City comprehensives with no hope of good A levels or a University place. Has he understood that huge sums of money have been poured into public services to deal with just these issues, but it has failed to make a positive difference?

Labour’s mantra throughout has been extra money and reform, but the reform has either not taken place or has been of the wrong kind. Shuffling the quangos and boosting the advice, guidance and controls from the centre was never going to transform poor performing schools or deliver good healthcare to all, however much money went in. Most hospitals and comprehensives retain their local monopolies and are punch drunk from the administrative changes and directions from above.We need reform which delivers power to people running schools and hospitals on the ground, and delivers choice to students, parents and patients so they will go to the institutions which are doing well.

We are made to spend more on public services through tax than we do on our home or any major item in our budgets. Isn’t it time we had some choice for all this money, as we do for the income they leave us after all the tax is paid?

What concrete proposals is Mr Hain going to come up with at this late stage for this government, to lift the performance of inner city schools? What can he do about mass unemployment for the 5.3 million? Has he yet grasped that directing and cotnrolling more from the centre impedes progress rather than stimulates it?

The Unicef Report is a damning indictment of??Labour’s approach to "child poverty". Whilst?? it would not be fair to blame just the government for some of the drugs, drink and relationship problems the Report identifies, the government is to blame for the poor education, lack of ambition, and perverse benefit and tax credit system that keeps the bottom 20%?? of the income scale in poverty.

Nor has the government’s wish to drive through longer drinking hours and more gambling sent out good signals about what the UK needs to have a more successful society, whilst flirtation with relaxing the rules on cannabis sent muddled messages about drugs.

??Today I am launching a pamphlet by the NTB Group of MPs which I chair, written by Michael Fallon, on Social Mobility. We make a number of recommendations on measures the government could take to give more people in the bottom fifth of the income scale the chance of a job, a university place and a home they own. Under Labour there is much less chance for young people to aspire to a life better than their parent or parents have enjoyed. There is a poverty of ambition, and a welter of social problems connected to the world of living on benefits in a social rented house with no expectation of a job.

Listening to the BBC and fashionable commentary you get the impression that the EU is doing a wonderful job tackling CO2 emissions whilst the US is deliberately wrecking progress.

Recent figures produced by the US government and EU governments shows that is far from the truth. Between 2000 and 2004 US emissions of CO2 grew by 1.3%, whilst the EU <a href="mailto:15@s">15’s</a> emissions grew by ??2.4%, almost twice as fast.

Far from hitting their Kyoto targets, many EU countries are??likely to miss.?? It should remind commentators that it’s not signing up to targets that counts, but hitting them.

??Over that time period the US economy grew much much more quickly than the EU economies, adding the equivalent of the economy of Italy to the size of the US output. 11.3 million went to live in the USA. Despite that, and despite the lower growth of the economy and population in the EU fifteen, the US kept its carbon output under much better control.

Instead of lecturing us all endlessly about the subject, the governments of Western Europe should worry about how they are going to hit the targets they so ostentatiously signed up to. The UK will hit its Kyoto target thanks to the favourable impact of electricity privatisation on carbon output, but will not meet the more demanding target Mr Blair set when he realised Kyoto was a shoe in thanks to Conservative actions in the 1990s. There is so much hypocrisy in the way the EU and its governments use the green argument.

Over the last three years Pension regualtors and actuaries have been pushing pension?? funds to buy more and more government securities, and to sell more and more property and equities. They say funds have to do this to "match" liabilities.

Strange that. The liabilities keep going up because people live longer and inflation pushes up pension payments.Normal government bonds??often?? stay flat, and their income always stays the same.

??As a result, all those funds that took this rotten advice are now much worse off. Over three years UK property has produced a return FOUR times that of government bonds, and UK equities more than THREE times that of bonds.

The three years to December 2006 showed UK equities giving returns of 53.7% and UK government bonds 15.2%.

??Who said Regulators keep your pension safe? Over the last three years a combination of regulation and bad advice has kept many pension funds poor, struggling with deficits which could have been removed if they had invested more sensibly.

One cheer for the government this morning. They say they want to make it easier for tenants in Council or Housing Association properties the chance to buy a share of their home.

The big divide in the UK today is between the majority of us, who own part or all of our home, and the minority who have to pay rent and have no assets. House ownership has been the main route for the many to own some assets and to see their wealth grow.

I want to live in a Britain where more people own assets and have the extra choices that can bring. I just hope the govrnment means this, and really does make it easier for people to buy a stake in their rented property.

Shelter are wrong to say this will not help our society. They are wrong to say this will reduce the supply of rented accommodation for those on lower incomes. If someone buys a stake in the property they rent, they carry on living there. It makes no difference to the supply or demand for accommodation, but it does make a huge difference to the family concerned, who get their feet on the housing ladder.

It could increase the supply of accommodation, if the government/Housing Associations used the receipts they get for?? the sale or partial sale of the property to build more homes. These new homes should also be built with a view to tenants buying all or part of them.

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Why do??critics of home sales??want to keep so many people in poverty, by not letting them join in the upward movement of the housing market? And why do they want them to be bossed about by landlords, instead of them being able to enjoy the freedom to improve and maintain their own home in the way they see fit? Renting all your life is the best way devised to keep you poor. Rents keep going up, and will be at their highest when your income is at its lowest- in old age. If you have bought your home you are spared the rent in retirement. The only pity is some avaricious Councils come along and whack you for being prudent with their Council taxes!

I am not surprised??bloggers?? hate the idea of road pricing. After years of being ripped off by government, who wants another tax? That’s why I oppose this government’s idea, as it is simply more tax, to try to leave the roads freer for the ministerial limos by taxing the not so rich off the roads.

Vehicle Excise Duty raises ??5,000 million a year. If we abolished this tax on owning a vehicle, and substituted a similar amount of tax for driving a vehicle?? it would be fairer and greener. It’s the better off who drive more, and use the best roads more at the busiest times. The charges should be on the motorways and trunk roads at busy times, and should be linked to improving those roads. Today motorists are taxed a lot and most of the?? money is sent off to other parts of the government.

There are large numbers of foreign lorries on the roads that currently pay no Vehicle Excise duty and usually no fuel tax either, because they fill up at Calais. They would have to pay road charges, to spread the load more fairly.

The Today programme fell to a new low today, when it gave airtime to people who want to stop businesses offsetting interest charges against profits tax!

In the name of attacking private equity and venture capital, we heard a?? "debate" about removing the "tax breaks" private equity enjoys.

The presenter did not point out that in all advanced countries interest charges on business?? borrowings are an allowable cost before striking a profit.??Interest costs ??are like wages – you have to pay them, and most businesses need capital as well as labour to be able to do the job.

Jon Moulton did get on the show, and was allowed time to point out that if such a tax change were made here the private equity industry would simply decamp to more sensible countries.

No-one was allowed on to speak for the rest of UK business. Many companies would have to stop trading if they were required to pay profits tax on the interest they paid to banks! How many bankrupt businesses do these people want?

is their ideal world one in which everyone with a job left is employed by the state? Who then pays the wages?

I thought the Transport Secretary was one of the brighter Cabinet members, but he kept it well hidden this morning in his interview on road pricing.

Faced with the not very suprising strong opposition by motorists to having to pay more, he was left telling us that people also want congestion to be tackled so road pricing remains the only game in town.

He is underestimating the opposition to his plan, and misunderstanding its basis.

A large number of people object to the government knowing more and more about how they lead their lives. In spy city, London, Mayor Livingstone continues his progress to make us the most spied on citizenry since the communist USSR. He not only watches us on the streets through an ever bigger army of cameras, but he tracks our every movement on the tube through his discount Travelcard scheme. Now the national government wants to do the same elsewhere, in parallel with wanting a new ID card system which can be plugged into European systems of control. Livingstone got away with the Oyster card because it gives us cheaper travel. The government’s spy comes with extra cost!

Even more of us object to having to pay yet more money for using the totally inadequate road system in the UK. We have massive congestion now because this government has invited in hundreds of thousands of new people without making any additional road space available for all the additonal vehicles, or adding space for the extra vehicles families are buying in despair over the inadequacies of the public transport system.

Road pricing does not tackle the underlying problem of too few roads for all the traffic. All it can do is to drive the poor off the roads – a strange approach for Labour to adopt.

??If road pricing were to replace Vehicle Excise Duty and were to be limited to the cost of Vehicle Excise Duty it would be easier to persuade people to look at it. If road pricing is linked to providing new and better roads, as with the M6 toll road, people will accept it, as they have a choice of whether to use the facility or not. There is a case to be made to charge people for the use they make of the roads, but if this is to be the policy there has to be no overall increase in motoring taxation.

Indeed, road charging would allow a government to cut the burden on UK motorists, for road pricing would be levied on foreign cars and lorries on our roads. These vehicles currently escape from most of our motoring taxes, as the lorries fill their tanks on the continent where diesel tax is lower, and no foreign vehicle pays VED.

<p>Peter Hain is recognising the realities of modern Labour politics. The arrival of Gordon Brown will signal a shift leftwards by Labour. Their??wish for large sums of money to fight the next election will doubtless lead them to closer links with the Trade Unions, who will probably want a Warwick 2 Agreement. Warwick 1??before the last election was??a deal over??policy. Subsequently the Unions paid?? substantial cash??to the ??party to fight the election.</p>
<p>??Peter Hain decided to pick on bonuses earned by people working in the City of London as an example of the growing disparities of income and wealth in our society. He has not learned the simple lesson that you cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poorer.</p>
<p>??</p>
<p>He picks on just one group of people who are rich. Why didn’t he pick on footballers, who are paid huge sums from Beckham downwards? Why didn’t he castigate Russian oligarchs, who come to the UK with vast fortunes to do business here and buy football clubs? Why didn’t he criticise the monarchy for its continued enjoyment of inherited wealth?</p>
<p>His words were carefully picked. He claimed he did not want to tax City success more heavily, nor did he want to regulate it. By raising these spectres, some in his audience will be left wondering if that is exactly what he would like to do, but others above him in the Labour ranks will not yet allow it. Instead he tells the hedge fund managers that they must give more of their bonuses away to charity, or else.</p>
<p>??I am all in favour of the super rich involving themselves in charitable giving, as many do. I do not mind politicians drawing attention to worthy causes they might like to help. I detest the politics of envy, and think it quite wrong to highlight one group of rich people – who are rich by their own efforts.</p>
<p>??Were Peter Hain’s attack to lead on to tougher regulation and /or higher taxes on the City we might discover there is one thing worse than having these highly paid successful people here – and that is not having them here. They do not have to do business here. They have?? quite enough money to buy a penthouse and set up an office in?? a land without Peter Hain.</p>
<p>??To many people struggling to pay the mortgage, the Council tax and all Labour’s other taxes on average incomes, Mr Hain looks well paid and privileged. Perhaps Mr Hain would like to tell us all how much of his income he puts into inner city regeneration, as he is so keen to recommend it to others.
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The left are clearly worried by David Cameron. Their attempt to smear him for alleged wrongdoings 25 years ago shows their desperation.

The media who are trying to turn this into an important political issue are showing no balance. I wonder how many Ministers in the present government smoked cannabis when they were young? Why isn’t that an issue? Where are the media sleuths ringing round student friends of the present Cabinet to see what they got up to?

??To try to make it a serious story we are being told we need to know this, as Mr Cameron may be making recommendations on drugs laws as an MP. Yes, of course he might – just as MPs who have been found guilty of speeding vote on road traffic laws, and Councillors who park in the wrong place tell the rest of where we can and can’t leave our vehicles. You cannot have a Parliament of Saints. The electorate decides how much past sinning is acceptable,??if people with criminal records stand for election.

As someone who did not take drugs – I stuck to alcohol at university – I have no worries about these claims and think David Cameron is right neither to??mislead nor to elaborate on what might have happened 25 years ago.

<p>Labour is busily forcing us to build communities that disrupt the patterns of English settlement.</p>
<p>Planning guidelines require us to build to a much higher density than has been traditional outside the main city centres. They force us to build more housing for rent than people would like. They limit the number of parking and garage spaces that can be provided.</p>
<p>All this does not succeed in changing the way people live. The government thinks if you skimp the parking and garages, people will go by bus. Instead, we see housing estate after housing estate with cars parked on the roads and straddling the verges. We find families having to play musical cars on short narrow drives as they juggle two or three cars in front of a garage for one.</p>
<p>Limiting affordable housing for sale does not put peopple off buying their own home – it just means they have to bid the prices of the existing stock up to ever higher levels, forcing partition of houses into ever smaller flats.</p>
<p>Higher densities increases tensions in communities, bringing the noisy neighbour closer and the anti social youth in quick contact with more homes.</p>
<p>We need to tackle the demand for housing by having a sensible migration policy, and the supply of housing by having a more sensitive planning policy. There are places which will welcome new development, and would welcome development to a decent standard. Current national norms put people off, because the new settlements are out of character with most English villages and market towns.
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<p>My car does 45 mpg if I can travel at a steady 60mph. This drops to 30mpg if my travel patterns include too many congestion delays.</p>
<p>Congestion occurs primarily where</p>
<p>??a) junction capacities are not sufficient for the capacity of the relevant roads. Clearly, if two roads are operating at near full capacity, and their intersection is controlled by traffic lights offering half time for each way, there will be congestion on both roads. If you add in the new London technique of having all red phases for vehicles at some traffic light sets, then you increase congestion substantially.</p>
<p>b) several routes have to be brought together to cross a railway line. The railway is one of the main causes of traffic congestion in London, as the number of bridging points is insufficient for the volume of traffic on??the roads. The same is true in?? many other locations. In Wokingham District there are several level crossing gates. These are now shut to vehicles for longer periods of time??because the railway safety people want a bigger margin for the trains. More people are held up by the train gates than are sped on their way on the train, in many cases.??</p>
<p>??</p>
<p>What can be done?</p>
<p>Let’s have some common sense.</p>
<p>The first priority should be to reset traffic light phases so there are no all red sequences, and so that main routes get more of the green light time. Traffic sensors should be used for more lightly trafficked routes, so the main route can usually be green.</p>
<p>The second priority is to widen junctions whereever possible so right turning traffic has a segregated lane. This would make junctions safer as well as helping flows.</p>
<p>The third priority should be to replace as many level crossings with bridges or underpasses, and to add additional crossings in busy areas. Whilst this is fairly expensive, it does greatly increase safety as well as cutting congestion. it should be the priority for spending within current LA highways budgets, or out of the proceeds of Section 106 money.
</p>

The government has just come up with some interesting answers to my questions on CO2 emissions from different types of vehicle.

All their numbers are in metric units of course. They tell me that the average passenger on the average bus puts out 95 grams of CO2 for every kilometre travelled. This compares with 112 grams of CO2 for every kilometre travelled by a passenger on a long haul flight.

Listening to the debate in recent months you get the feeling that air travel is the main cause of our ruin, and that more bus travel would?? be our salvation. As these figures show, life is not as simple as that. The figures show that if two or more people are going to go somewhere together by road it is better they go by modern car than?? by bus if reducing carbon dioxide output is the main aim. They also show that?? bus travel is only 14% less damaging in terms of CO2 output than long distance air travel for each kilometre travelled, although people do of course by definition travel a lot of kilometres in one go on a plane. However, people on average??use buses much more frequently than planes, so the CO2 soon accumulates from frequent bus travel.

??Instead of people shouting at each other about different types of travel, trying to brand some as green and some as dangerous, we need a little balance and some facts. The true position is that??most motorised travel pushes out carbon dioxide. Buses and trains pollute as well as cars and planes.

Buses come out of the CO2 scoring badly in the UK because the average bus only has nine people on it. The average bus is quite old, so nine people are propelled forward by an old fashioned?? engine which is pushing out a lot of CO2.

We can make all types of travel greener by changing technology. We can also reduce carbon outputs per mile travelled by substituting more modern cars,buses or planes for older ones, and by more people using the vehicle when it is travelling.

If we want to make the bus green we need more new buses and more people on them. That means choosing more popular routes, running frequent services in heavily populated areas, and wooing people to the bus. If we carry on doing what we are doing now, the bus is far from green.

Today people will die from the cold, and from accidents caused by ice and snow. It is a reminder that there is one thing worse than global warming – global cooling.

The more I listen to the long debates about global warming – and the BBC frenzy about it – the more I feel frustrated. All the debate is about trying to cut carbon emissions and none of the debate is about managing the consequences of warming.

I am very happy to join in sensible measures to curb fuel use, to improve the efficiencies of our cars, buses, trains, heating and lighting systems. That makes sense for a variety of reasons. But when the UK human outpourings of CO2 represent only 0.06% of total world output of CO2 I think we need to plan for the possibility that others will not be as determined and successful at curbing their emissions as we are.

If the world population continues to rise that will be a remorseless pressure to burn more hydrocarbons. There are no signs of the developing world overall reducing the birthrate.

If China and India continue to raise their living standards – as I hope they do – they are bound to push out more and more CO2. Both countries have an enthusiasm for coal fired power stations, and both have hundreds of millions of people wanting to own a car and domestic heating and cooling systems.

If EU governments continue to posture, saying they are going to cut emissions, but fail to hit their targets and international targets – as we have seen over the last decade – they too will contribute to the high levels of CO2.

??I am all in favour of the UK trying to get international agreement on cleaner and leaner processes for industry and domestic use worldwide. I am all in favour of British companies doing their best to develop and sell better technology.

But I am also in favour of taking action -starting today – to tackle the two worst features of global warming for the UK.
We need the go ahead for more water capacity in southern England. We need imaginative schemes for better coastal protection, especially in the Thames estuary.

??We should also work with the governments of the developing world countries that need help with water supply and flood defence through our overseas aid programmes. Many of these countries need a better water supply even without the threat of a drier times.

??Then we can also think of the good things about global warming, if it continues. Far fewer people will die of cold in Britain in winter.??Farmers will have a wider range of possible crops. More??of the world’s oceans will?? be navigable. And for some of us it will be good if we can get to work without snow and ice stopping many of the trains.

At a meeting with the "NHS Confederation" to discuss "Primary Care Trusts" I kept a note of some of the jargon which replaces clear thoughts expressed in straightforward English. Many in the NHS bureaucracy now speak in a complex language which cuts them off more from the patients and taxpayers who sustain the institution.

The meeting was about how good a service our constituents receive from their family doctors. We were told beforehand that "This briefing is an opportunity to air your concerns and hear about the often undervalued role that PCTs play. PCTs work on the public health agenda, tackle access to services, deliver out of hours services, and hold contracts with GPs and other health professionals to ensure effective primary care". Who could refuse such an invitation, to a love in with these paragons?

We were told of the advantages of "clustering practises", the importance of "Quality and Outcomes frameworks", we travelled through a "matrix" of possible health ??outcomes and were asked to admire "a new financial system" in "a very challenging year". I think that meant they felt they were short of money.

My constituents and I talk about going to the doctor. We would like to know that he or she is available if we need them, and would like reassurance that they have the training??and the facilities to look after us well.

Instead I was told by way of reassurance that it was wrong to assume "the major issue default position where the public think change is the result of cuts". Apparently all these changes to family doctors and Primary Care Trusts are necessary and should not be feared.

Was nothing wrong in a world where you might find it very difficult to arrange an appointment to see your doctor, and where services have been farmed out in the evenings and at week-ends? Of course everything is just fine, and the mergers of some PCTs will make it even better.

The briefers did admit to one problem. They confided in us that the complex system for sending the money around the NHS could create "perverse incentives and gaming" in some hospitals. That I think means a hospital could start to find more things to treat in any given group of patients if there is more money for doing so. Our hosts did not go on to name hospitals or treatments where this was happening.

We were relieved to hear that "PCTs bring systematisation and rigour to General Practise" and over the moon to learn that PCTs "create performance management systems in the public domain".

I just hope all my constituents who need a doctor’s appointment can get one when they ring the surgery.