Jack Straw is one of the few Labour government members who believes in Parliament, and tries to play by the rules by bringing things to the House that ought to be debated there. I can believe that he does value the British virtues of freedom, fairness and tolerance himelf.

The problem is the government he serves clearly does not.

This government has done more than any other peace time government to damage and remove our freedoms – giving unprecedented powers to functionaries to come into our homes, spy on us at home and on the streets, lock people up without trial,??extort money from our pension funds and??through the Council Tax, and make so many more people dependent on benefits.

It has been far from fair, making the south pay so much more whilst visiting upon the south of England many things we do not want, starting with regional government and going through congestion to endless extra development without the infrastructure to make it work.

It has been far from tolerant, forcing a narrow and unpleasant political correctness on everyone, and making the law enforcement authorities take thought crimes more seriously than many anti social crimes like burglary, shop lifting and?? casual vandalism.

??So one cheer for Jack’s speech today. Could he now please get the Cabinet to adopt these British values, and start using them to sort out their policies and the way they run their overmighty rip off government? The way they run the government??for sure is not the British way.

Judged by their own standards the people assembling in Thailand to "save the planet" have just helped wreck it. Their combined carbon footprint must be large when you add the energy in their luxury hotels to the jet travel and the food miles they are enjoying together.

I would feel better about it if I thought some good would come out of it, but Kyoto shows us that this "war" is not won??by setting ever tougher targets, as many countries simply fail to hit them once set.

Which is worse? China and the USA arguing it cannot be done yet, or the EU countries claiming the end of the world is nigh without tougher targets, busily failing to hit them once imposed?

The result of this meeting will just be a lot more carbon dioxide in circulation. It reinforces??my main message to the UK government – adapt to drier summers and?? tidal surges now, don’t expect the international community to solve the problem of climate change anytime soon.

The questions to ask these international jet setters include:

Will as a result of this meeting China stop her big programme of coal fired power stations?

Will you the international leaders in future lead by example by cutting their overseas travel?

How will you translate targets into action that we will all take to make hitting the targets possible this time?

??

A call from a journalist three thousand miles away asked me to sum up the end of the Blair era. He told me he was thinking of saying "Economy OK, a pity about Iraq".

I suggested he thought again about the first part of that testimonial. We have lived through 10 years of good growth, low inflation, low interest rates, rising house prices and cheap Indian and Chinese goods in all the main world economies.

??

As?? a result of the Blair/Brown interventions the Uk now has higher inflation than our major competitors, has lost one million manufacturing jobs, still has 5.3 million people of working age without a job on benefit, and has higher interest rates on average than the USA, Japan and Euroland.

??

Blair/Brown inherited a strong economy and have only gradually damaged it by higher taxes and unproductive public spending (ID cards/Dome/NHS IT/etc). They inherited a great pension system which they helped wreck with their pensions stealth tax and regulatory system. They argued themselves to a standstill over education and health reform, first destroying the Conservative changes in favour of more choice, and then at the end Blair tried to restore some of those ideas against the wishes of most in his party.

I think Labour will?? miss Tony ??Blair. Whilst he has disappointed many by his war and his failure to deliver proper public service reform at home, he is a much better public performer than Gordon ??Brown and has been able to fool some of the people some of the time that did not traditionally vote Labour. Three election victories in a row are in part down to him – not to Gordon. Gordon Brown’s electoral tests begin on May 3rd, when judging by the polls he will take Labour to new lows.

As Labour’s policy of fortnightly refuse collections backfires we are getting the usual spin response and disinformation.

We are first told??fortnightly collecitons will be?? good for us – it will lead to more recycling.

Then we are told it is not connected to government policy, nor to EU policy, it’s just the choices of Councils.

Next??we hear a counterattack on industry – it’s all the fault of the packaging industry for selling the food industry too many wrappers, or the fault of the food industry for protecting the food they sell us

And we hear a counterattack upon ourselves – it’s all our fault for not recycling enough, so we will be spied on bin by bin and fined into submission.

It’s a curious way to make people want to vote for you!

We are the customers of this very patchy and in places very poor service.

We pay through the nose for it with sky high Council taxes.

Many of us in summer would like our rubbish collected more than once a week, but that is not an option.

We are told where and when we have to place our bins at the convenience of the Council.

If they want to move to pay as you throw, I hope they will let us choose whose service we pay our money to, so there would be some competition. That would sharpen up service levels and cut prices.

If they want to spy on us for not recycling enough, they should at least make recycling easier by supplying proper containers that are clearly labelled with what goes in them – preferably ones that fit into a normal kitchen and are not an eyesore.

If Labour do badly in this election, a newspaper could lead its story with suitable headlines – any suggestions?

Some possibles:

Labour binned by rubbish policy

or Labour Councillors thrown out??for lack of recycling

??

??

Making personal data about young Doctors available on the web does not encourage people to trust the government with their personal identity data or even with their medical records. A Minister did some public breast beating??this morning, but who believes they will get to the bottom of it and stop it happening again?

The Home Office has been the source of endless embarrassing information in recent months, and they are meant to be the fortress of our national security! Even if we accept their denials that no-one senior at the HO was responsible for the bad security breach in this week’s papers, we can still hold the Home Secretary accountable for the fact this bad leak occurred from someone.

The conclusion I come to is we should have to supply less informaiton to the government not more. That means cancelling the ID computer scheme for starters, and revieiwng all the other data bases they keep to see if they are necessary, and if necessary whether they can be cut down in size and scope.

Why should we trust the government with our data, when they have made such a mess of it?

"Disgruntled" has not written back. It looks as if "Disgruntled" is a friend of NHS South Central, not a local constituent.

Yesterday in the Commons an Opposition debate on paying for local services gave the parties a chance to set out their stalls for May 3rd.

The battle is over money more than anything else. People are fed up with paying so much for government as a whole and receiving so little. The Lib Dems offer local Income Tax, without always explaining that can only be introduced if Parliament voted for it, and both main parties are against it. Suggesting it is around the corner, and it will lower people’s bills, is just plain wrong.

Labour has looked at further stealthy increases in the Council Tax, been rumbled and has had to rule out revaluations and other obvious tricks this Parliament, to add to the 92% rise on Council Tax since 1997.

There is then the battle of the bins. Many people feel rubbish collection is the only major service they receive for all their tax, so they are understandably??miffed to be told in some districts there will only be collection once a fortnight instead of weekly. Given the imminence of an election, suddenly Council candidates of various parties are rushing to declare they are weekly garbage candidates themselves.

??

Let’s hope the pressure of the election makes Councillors across the country wake up to the importance of getting taxes under control, and to grasp the importance of the weekly rubbish round.

Yesterday in the House we had an all day debate on the Finance Bill and the state of the economy.

As usual Labour was both complacent and living in?? the past. To every criticism the Labour answer was the same – it was worse a long time ago when they were not in office. The Labour MPs have been so spun into submission by the Treasury that I think many of them now believe all is for the best in the best possible of worlds. Dr Pangloss is alive and well and is a Gordon Brown cheer leader.

??We put to them that you need to compare modern Uk with the rest of the successful economies around the world. Judged by these standards over the last ten years the UK has

grown less fast than the Anglosphere countries led by the USA

had higher interest rates on average than the US, Japan and Euroland

lost one million manufacturing jobs

still has 5.3 million people of workign age living on benefits without a job

has a huge balance of payments deficit

has a low savings ratio and poorer imnvestment record than our leading competitor nations

has seen too much money taken in taxes and spent unproductively in the public sector – not on extra nurses or teachers but on big computer schemes and failed projects

Complacency is dangerous at the best of times, but is especially so when you are as unpopular as the government

??

??

The lack of any response makes me think this disgruntled is less likely to be from Wokingham and more likely to be from the Health Authority – why are you remaining anonymous?

On St David’s day we have a debate in the Commons about Welsh affairs. There will be no debate today on English matters.

The EU wants to carry on with its dreadful plans to curse us with more regional government, with a view to splitting England. They never seek to divide Wales or Scotland in a similar way.

Meanwhile the UK government goes along with some of this regional agenda, ignoring clear votes in referenda and opinion poll figures which show that we the English do not want our country split into meaningless regions with high cost governments in each region bossing us about.

The sooner we move to a country where Westminster MPs are dual role, meeting as the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont and the English Parliament in Westminster as well as meeting together as the Parliament of the Union, the better.

Labour’s disastrous devolution experiment has gone wrong in Scotland, the very place it was designed to please, becuase it does not go far enough for nationalists. Now it is going wrong in England, because it so unfair on England. St George’s Day would be the right day for the government to admit that and offer us some positive change. Don’t stay in waiting for the announcement!

Mr Milliband’s nerve cracked before we reached the election results in Scotland, Wales and the local elections in a couple of weeks time. He has decided to dive for cover with Gordon Brown, leaving the Blairites without a front running candidate.

??Now the pressure will be placed on John Reid to run. Given the number of MPs Gordon Brown appears to have signed up already, it’s not much of an offer to make someone at this late stage.

The irony is that if we do witness a coronation of Gordon Brown, it will be against the background of the kingdom coming apart at Hadrian’s Wall. Labour’s tacky devolution settlement – some home rule in Scotland, some home talk in Wales – has not stilled the nationalist crusade, and has made Labour’s defenders of the Union lazy.

Labour are beginning to realise, rather late in the day, that the SNP are adept at stimulating English nationalism, the force that will dissolve the Union if Brown does not know how to woo and abate it. He will find it very difficult. Telling people in Scotland to put Union flags in their garden does not make him popular there, and seems to make people in England?? send a St George’s day card to their friends and plant the cross of St George in their turf.

??

People in France have turned out in large numbers to show they think it matters who their President is. They have also shown how split the country is, with the frontrunner not managing a third of the vote, and the two top candidates only just getting a little over one half of the vote between them.

There is scepticism about who can deliver, and what they want them to deliver. We know that a majority of the French people are fed up with the EU project, voting against its latest manifestation, the Constitution. We know that many of them hate the Euro, and think the high interest rates and high Euro valuation is doing damage to their economy. They also now know they are choosing between two candidates who both believe in European centralisation!

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">21.4.07</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Tony Blair refuses a referendum</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I have twice been delighted about EU policy in the UK. The first time was when I and others managed to force both Major and Blair into offering a referendum on the single currency. I knew then we had saved the pound. The second time was when Blair promised us in the Commons a referendum on the EU constitution, whatever the other countries decided in their referenda and Parliamentary processes. If he had kept his word we would by now be well advanced with negotiating a different relationship for the UK with the whole centralised mess of the EU.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Instead, Blair first prevaricated about honouring his pledge, and now seems to be walking away from it as a prelude no doubt to some dreadful deal where yet more of the UK’s powers are given away needlessly to the EU.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">If we can get a referendum on any aspect of the EU the British people will have a chance to give voice to their commonsense opposition to the transfer of our powers of self government and our liberties to this continental construction. Blair has shown repeatedly just how Euro-enthusiast he is, and is now backing off from letting the British people defend themselves from another EU power grab. </font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">22.04.07</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Bank of England independence</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">The latest inflation figures 4.8% on the RPI compared with the old 2.5% target for it are either an indictment of independent central banks, or proof that the UK’s is not independent. No-one can say it is a good performance. The UK’s inflation rate is higher than Japan’s, Euroland’s and the USA’s, and our interest rates are higher too.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">It is safest to blame the Chancellor rather than the Bank. It was probably Gordon Brown’s idea to switch the target from 2.5% on the RPI to 2%on the CPI which threw the Monetary Committee off course, at that crucial point before the 2005 election when Brown must have realised that they put up rates more if he stayed with the RPI target. Changing targets in mid cycle does not make it easy for the MPC, and shows how much the Chancellor can influence things if he wishes.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">The Chancellor also has strong influence over who sits on the Committee, choosing the outside members, and choosing the Governor of the Bank who promotes the internal Bank people onto the Committee.</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">??</font>

<font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Gordon Brown tells us the era of spin will?? be over if he becomes PM. Yet he has pulled off the most powerful spin of all the ideas that the Bank is independent, and that it has been so successful. Compared with our competitor economies we have had higher interest rates and now have higher inflation. Not a great success, but more the fault of the government than the Bank. Brow’s own policies of spending, wasting and borrowing too much, and allowing public sector productivity to perform so badly, lie behind the disappointing overall economic performance.</font>

It is interesting to hear pollsters and commentators hedging their bets with one third of the French electors still apparently undecided.

Clearly many electors do not like the offering of either of the two main candidates, but some??of them understand the need to vote tactically because of??a dangerous system of PR France uses. If you think your candidate is bound to come first in the first round there is an argument for voting for someone he or she can beat easily in the second round who with your help can get into the second round.

Whilst part of the reason for??having seven candidates of the "left" and the five candidates of the "right" is disllusion with the main parties, part is what you expect from a PR system. Some with strong beliefs reason that if they back an "extreme" candidate, it will force the main candidate they will end up voting for to move further in their direction. This technique can so easily backfire, and you end up with the opposite of what you want! PR does encourage movement to the extremes.

French people know they need change, but they are not sure they will like it if they get it. All serious candidates are offering change, but are not spelling out any changes that might hurt their voters. It is a cat and mouse game between candidates and voters, which reveals what a weak system it is to try to get a sensible decision.The electorate still looks very split between those who reluctantly see they need to join the global ecomnomy, and those who think one more dose of socialism at home will sort it all out.

You know it is election time in France and the UK, because the Today programme??starts its fawning interviews and pieces for the Liberal democrats and tells us the so-called moderate French Presidential candidate Mr Bayrou is really very popular even though polls show him in third place in a field of many unpopular candidates. The French front runner has his character criticised by his opponents on air because the polls show him obstinately ahead. The Uk Conservatives are attacked for a peer who has failed to sort out his residence. The Labour government is hounded for several of their sins. I am not complaining about??any of those, as long as they do the same to??the third way.

Yet in a week when the Lib Dem leader asks a question about health and his party is emb roiled in rows about Council tax levels??in local elections??he pops up for one of those special BBC Campbell interviews where he is asked for his views in Iraq as if he were a military and diplomatic expert. He is not seriously challenged on his views, he is not harrassed in the normal way, he is not asked to defend himself against the government/US view of the position. He is not reminded that before the war he opined that it would be legal, and then apparently changed his mind. One has to assume they ask him on Iraq because they believe it will put him in the best possible light.

He is not asked about any embarrassment affecting his party and his senior colleagues. There was no challenge to him on his dire poll ratings since taking over as leader. There was no?? question on how he could try to establish some credibility in the Commons where he usually flounders. There was no question on how the sums of local income tax now add up, after the acute vote losing difficulty ??the party suffered over its local income tax proposals under the previous leader. There was no question on why so many Lib Dem Councils have put Council Tax up by so much more than Conservative Councils.

Come on Today – show you are fair minded and tough journalists. Campbell is just another politician. You treat most politicians roughly, so try some tough questions and some interruptions on Campbell as well.

??

Having more troops on the streets cannot prevent car bombs or suicide bombers. Terrorists do not put stickers on their cars to say this is a terrorist vehicle. Patient intelligence, interception of phone calls and emails, eavesdropping on their networks, picking up intelligence from the streets and local communities are the ways the authorities need to develop their policing, with a view to preventing a terrorist attack. If the US and UK really want to help the Iraqi authorities they should send more counter terrorist back room staff to guide and train a specialist Iraqi police force determined to infiltrate the networks and crack their communications systems. Having lots of troops around to shoot the terrorists after they have carried out their act of terror is a??bad idea – and shooting people on suspicion of terrorism is??an even worse one??because they may not be terrorists.

It is the job of the authorities to prevent terrorism by foiling plots, and to prosecute terrorists where they have committed an act of terror and have not killed themselves in the process. It is the job of Iraq’s politicians to heal wounds in their communities in a way which gradually squeezes popular support for the terrorists. The recent bomb is just more proof, if proof were needed, that increasing the number of foreign troops in Iraq’s capital is not going to solve the problem.

Yesterday in?? the Commons the Chancellor decided to argue that taxing pension funds was the right thing to do, and that the extra tax on dividends did not cause the problems of pension funds.

This argument required great sophistry and not a little glossing over the truth. I asked him if I took one fifth of his income away would he be worse off? Aware of what would come next he shouted out "No"! I went on to ask if?? taking one fifth of the dividend income away from pension funds would make them worse off. Proud of his decision to say he would not be worse off, he completed his logical argument that pension funds were not worse off either!

Sometimes a clever man can stretch a point too far into the realms of absurdity. Of course if someone takes one fifth of your income away you are worse off, and so too are the pension funds. There is a real argument about the relative roles of divdend tax changes, and greater longevity of pensioners in the extra financial strains on funds, but surely there cannot really be any disagreement that taking ??5billion a year away from funds was bad news for them and their members!

??

The Chancellor missed an opportunity yesterday to show some compassion for those who have lost out in the pensions crisis, and to show that he has a style that can sympathise with people, as well as a willingness to use silly arguments in a strong voice to try to beat off criticism.

??

I received another four glossy brochures just today from different parts of the NHS telling me how wonderful things are – or could be if only there was proper partnership working between local Trusts, PCTs and local authorities. Apparently it takes more glossy brochures to get these parts of the public sector to talk to each other and to decide who is responsible for what!

My day was made, however, by a letter entitled "Dear colleague" from the Chairman and Chief Executive of NHS South Central. The letter wisely explained to readers who do not recognise "South Central" as their home that it is a new SHA (cue budgets for PR, new letter heads, extra recruits and don’t forget the focus group research and letter writing) covering an area from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Wight.

The whole letter was about the generation of "surpluses" in 2006-7 and 2007-8. A most helpful table appended to the letter shows that they expect a surplus of?? ??33.5 million overall. Of this ??29.1 million or 87% of it comes from the surplus of the South Central SHA itself.?? You might think that’s impressive, until you pause to see that the SHA credits itself with an eye popping ??283.5 million or nearly 10% of the total going to the SHA and the hospitals combined. Why do they need so much? Is it really well done that they have created a surplus when they have held back ??29.1 million that the SHA bureaucracy did not need, that might have done some good in the hospitals?

We are told that "PCTs have performed remarkably well given the reorganisation that has taken place this year". Could that be the same reorganisation that was?? going to improve services and raise efficiency? Why is it now seen as a possible drag on performance? The largest deficit in 2006/7 is forecast as the Buckinghamshire PCT at ??17.7 million. We are merely told that "further challenges remain in Buckinghamshire"! What challenges? What is the SHA doing about it? Are they diverting cash from places that have balanced the books to pay for the overrun? Milton Keynes PCT has a forecast deficit of another ??6.9 million in 2006/7 – my geography tells me that’s in Bucks as well, but I am reassured to learn that they will?? break even next year!

??The advantage of all this hard work controlling deficits they had run up in previous years will be felt next year, we are told. In one of their more memorable split infinitives we learn "Our improved financial position will enable us to better plan for the national priorities that have been set out this year". Wow. What a promise. What are these priorities? Are they the same as the needs of??their patients? Will my constituents be dancing in the streets that at last there is money for the national priorities? Does it mean the backlog of operations and treatments will now clear? How easy will it be to reach a Doctor out of hours?

??The authors admit that the??"financial difficulties"??"have at times caused public alarm and anxiety, especially when the deficits??have been accompanied with clinical service re-configuration proposals." Please understand, all you who live in the jargon filled world of NHS senior management, that constituents are not staying awake at night worrying about the deficits of NHS trusts, but patients do worry a great deal about cuts in services and closures of facilities which are often the way NHS managers respond to deficits. They rarely undertake a glossy brochure cull, or cut the number of managers. It is usually some local facility that closes, which worries those who used it.

Today I visited an NHS facility. The GP unit was closed, with the NHS discussing if it should be sold off for housing development. The palliative care centre that was open was grateful to local charitable groups for raising money to buy some much needed new equipment.

I look forward to a letter from South Central NHS telling me that they are going to use the extra money to expand medical staff and facilities. I will fear I will grow old waiting, but at least I will have plenty of glossy brochures and letters to read instead!

??