The main parties would be quite wrong to breathe a collective sigh of relief about the absence of prosecutions, and then carry on raising large sums from individual donors as if nothing had happened. They would also be wrong to think the public would instead like to pay more tax to underwrite big budgets at party HQs.

Instead they should do the following:

1. Agree a limit of say ??50,000 on any single donor each year

2. Agree a limit of say ??5m to complement the strict limits of local campaigns already in place??million for a General Election campaign nationally

3. Rely much more on published ntaional polls, and on the views of the public sent to MPs, Councillors, public bodies and through the press.

4. Expect MPs to do more of their own policy and speech preparation work

We want a more honest politics, where the elected officials understand more of the content and activities of governemnt and are in a better pposition todirect the unelected officials. I am keen for David Cameron to change the Conservative party. The biggest change I want is to the way we undertake politics, moving away from the big budget top down model that has gripped all three main parties in recent years.

The two by-elections have probably saved Sir Menzies Campbell as leader of the Lib Dems.

For all those of us who want the Eurosceptic majority to be represented by a Eurosceptic government, this is very good news. The last thing we want is a plausible Lib Dem party capturing more Eurosceptic votes by playing down their root and branch enthusiasm for European integration, whilst keeping their underlying commitment to the EU project.

??It is difficult to see them doing well under Sir Menzies, so I am all in favour of a preservation order on him and his leadership.The electors of Sedgefield and Southall have probably done just enough for him to cling on.

I am surprised people are surprised by recent revelations from the BBC.

For years they have taken a pro big government and pro EU line in much of their news output. Interviewers queue up to ask Ministers why they don’t tax more, intervene more, do more. They hardly ever ask why they tax so much, intervene so much, legislate so much. For a long time they have sought to chase audience by trying to make things more exciting and controversial.

Between 2001 and 2005 BBC Radio Berkshire which serves my constituency hardly ever asked me on to discuss anything I had put out by way of press release. They took no interest in the many things I did for my local community. They specialised in ringing me up when they hoped I would make a comment out of line with official party policy on a subject I had not expressed a view on, or when they wanted me to give out "right wing" views which they could??set up??or invite others to condemn. As a result I turned down most such requests. My majority went up at the next election, demonstrating that you do not have to be a slave to the media to stay elected. They were never prepared to read what I had actually said, and ever ready to assume they knew my views from their own caricatures of Conservatives.

I look forward to the day when they lose their right to tax us, and stop harrying people who choose not to have a TV with their unpleasant poll tax demands. It is difficult to see what BBC TV offers that is not also available from commercial channels. The more they dumb down, and the more they distort to chase audience, the less it is possible to argue?? that they should be supported from taxation. A better case can be made for the World Service and one domestic radio channel.

I asked the Home Secretary what she would regard as a satisfactory clear up rate for crime.

She was unable or unwilling to answer.

She clearly knew that the current clear up rate is very poor – some say as low as 3 crimes in 100 – and does not think she can do much to improve it.

Amidst all the talk about the crime rate one obvious point is overlooked. Parliament is constantly pushing it up by creating more and more offences. If the government wished to get the crime rate down, one of the ways would be to review all the things currently treated as crimes, and reduce the numbers. Then the authorities could concentrate their efforts on detecting and prosecuting offenders.

Most people think there are two types of crime that matter and need proper police and court attention.

The first most serious are crimes of violence against people, ranging from murder through rape to assault. We all agree these are crimes,and expect the authorities to devote enough time and resource to finding offenders and prosecuting them.??

The second are crimes against property, where someone’s assets or belongings are stolen or damaged by whatever means. People do expect the authorities to prosecute offenders who may range from those who have broken into someone’s house to steal,??to those who have ??taken money out of??someone’s ??account?? by abusing a position of trust.

Many of the new??"crimes" are failures by people to follow the requirements of various regulatory regimes, where civil action and redress may be more appropriate.??

I have assumed Gordon Brown would be too cautious to go for an early election. The sabre rattling is to try to get the Conservatives to rush out policy too early, and to spend too much money on a phoney war this year.

The case for going early that some of his supporters are urging is based on the "Brown bounce" in the polls and his ability to go to the country on the back of a series of announcements designed to show changes from the Blair regime. If they were serious about this option there would need to be more moves to reassure middle England.

1. The EU constitution is the spectre at the feast. The IGC will meander across the summer. Putting the legislation through Parliament is likely to occupy time until the spring of next year, if they seek to accelerate, or later if not. Going to the country before that is put to bed would be very dangerous. The Conservatives could spend much of the election demanding a referendum and highlighting how the red lines have not been protected. They would be able to remind the public how the promise of the referendum stopped proper debate of the issue in the last election. The only way out for the PM would be to offer a referendum and to explain at the IGC how the present deal is likely to be voted down if they do not improve it. That would make him more popular at home.

2. People are feeling a bit squeezed by high taxes and high mortgage rates. A further increase or two in interest rates, and no relief on Council Tax, Inheritance Tax and the other unpopular taxes is not a good backdrop for a General Election for the governing party. The welcome cuts in Standard rate Income Tax and Corporation Tax do not come in in time for an early election,whilst the abolition of the 10p band will anyway leave some worse off. The government would need to find a way of indicating lower interest rates and /or lower taxes ahead to stimulate a better feeling about economic prospects.

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Mr Miliband’s decision to expel four Russian diplomats has taken us back to the bad old days of the 1960s and 1970s. I read today that Russian planes have been testing out the RAF response, just like old times. Why didn’t Mr Milliband spend more time thinking through possible solutions to the problem of how to bring a suspect to justice? What is he going to do once the Russians retaliate to the diplomat expulsion? These kinds of rows are easy to escalate but difficult to bring to the conclusion we want. The best thing this government could do to give us more leverage is to get on with an energy policy which avoided reliance on Russian gas.

I wonder what other features of the??past this governemnt will want to re create? They seem to like keep old trains on the tracks for as long as possible, and no doubt take their inspiration for regional givernment in England from Cromwell’s Major Generals of the 1650s. They seem to dislike so many successful features of the modern world. They hate flexible transport, condemning the car at every opportunity. They are the new puritans, looking to tax anythingt that people enjoy.

If I want to travel by air I need to arrive long before my flight to go through elaborate security checks. I am not allowed to carry with me various normal bottled fluids, and have to take my shoes off for inspection. I am told this is necessary to keep me safe.

When I travel by tube – equally vulnerable to terrorist attack as we have seen in recent years – I am can carry anything I like with me. There are no security checks of any kind and mercifully I can keep my shoes on. Apparently intrusive security checks would not keep me safe on the tube.

If I travel by air I am told I have to have a seat in case the aircraft hits turbulence. I am not allowed to stand on a plane when travelling.

If I travel by tube I often have to stand. This morning there were so many people standing I could not even use a hanging strap to keep me upright as the train lurched round bends, shook over points, and braked suddenly. The journey was considerably less smooth than most flights.

If I travel by plane I am told I have to fasten my seat belt for take off and landing, and sometimes for the rest of the journey. I have been fortunate in never once experiencing the need for such restraint to protect me.

If I travel by tube there is?? no seat belt should I be lucky enough to get a seat. On some occasions a belt would have been helpful to me in staying securely in the seat under strong braking pressures.

If I travel by public air transport I am in some people’s eyes an environmental criminal. If I travel by tube I am an environmental hero, yet both modes of transport use substantial quantities of hydrocarbon fuel – in the case of the tube in a coal or gas burning power station.

It is time governemnt examined these ridiculous double standards, and put some commonsense into both systems of travel. The tube is overcrowded and less safe because of that. We need more capacity on the tube, and that requires different technology to allow them to run more trains per hour, thus allowing a more frequent service with more seats. Airport security should be based more on intelligence and random checks.

What Gord takes away with one hand he gives back with another.

<em>It is good news that the government will abolish the much unloved Regional Assemblies in England. After the vote in the North East rejecting one there, they have been dead in the water.</em>

<em>It is bad news that instead the government proposes to strengthen the regional development agencies, and effectively give them planning powers to override elected Councils and decide on development.</em>

<em>It is interesting to remember that the regions of the UK that have had regional development agencies for longest,with the largest budgets relative to the size of their economies, have fallen further and further behind the other regions. It’s not much of an advert for stronger RDAs elsewhere. </em>

<em>Cromwell would be proud of this governemnt – it’s the rule of the Major Generals all over again through these regional quangos.</em>

First the good news – they wanted to see me,and are clearly trying to improve their service and customer relations. The current timetable left many people in my area frustrated, because there were too few trains, and too few seats on the trains that did run. It was a local illustration of a national problem – insufficient rail capacity. We are promised 6 trains a hour at peaks from Reading to London and back, and 4 trains an hour during peaks from Twyford to Paddington and back, 3 of them fast, for the new timetable late this year.

Now the bad news. They are still planning their railway on the assumption that they will only be able to get 20 trains an hour into Paddington, the eastern terminus of the Great Western railway. They are spending large sums on refurbishing old diesel train sets that are far too heavy, forcing large gaps between trains to allow for slow braking and poor acceleration. The new engines will be a bit more fuel efficient, but the whole package remains wasteful of fuel. The matter was so unimportant to the industry that my guests could neither tell me the horsepower nor the fuel efficiency of the engines they are fitting. The new trains and the refurbished trains still have no restraints to keep luggage safe if the train suddenly brakes or crashes. There will be no seat belts on the new or refurbished express trains.

??The railway needs to lift its game. It is feasible to halve the weight of our older trains with new equipment that would be so much more fuel efficient. This would enable many more trains an hour to use the tracks with suitable signal adjustments to allow for the improved safety performance of newer lighter trains.

The railway industry is falling further behind the motor industry in its approach to emissions and safety. No car maker is allowed to sell a vehicle without a secure boot for luggage and without seat belts. Cars have to meet increasingly tight emissions standards. No-one would think of taking 15 year or 20 year old cars and giving them a facelift so they could work for another 15 years. Modern cars are so much safer and cleaner than cars of a couple of decades ago, yet trains are stuck in a time warp.

<h4><strong><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana">The Politics Show – Redwood calls for greater transport capacity??

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<font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="3"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana">Sun, 15 July 07 | DeHavilland Report – Broadcast??

</span></font><strong><font face="Verdana" color="#000000" size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 12pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana">Summary</span></font></strong><font face="Verdana" color="#000000"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana">
The chair of David Cameron’s economic competitiveness policy group has called for greater capacity to be installed into Britain’s transport system.

John Redwood told BBC One’s ‘The Politics Show’ that his position did not stand in conflict with the party’s policy group on the environment.

"Britain does need more transport capacity of all kinds," he said.

"We don’t have enough train capacity in the mornings and evenings to take people to and from work, we don’t have enough road space to take goods to market, we don’t have enough port capacity to take things by ship rather than by road.

"So we are saying there needs to be an immediate concentration on expanding capacity and we think that is a very green policy, I don’t think it is conflict in any way with what the green groups in the Conservative Party are saying.

"If you have more capacity, you have fewer jams, you have less congestion and the biggest enemy of the planet is congestion."

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Mr Miliband was tongue tied again following his statement to the Commons on Russian extradition.

When asked what level of diplomats he was expelling, he showed he had understood the question but was quite unable to answer it.

In this he is typical of this government – the department advised evicting four diplomats and he said "Yes". He should first have asked, which ones, what might the Russians do in retaliation, how will it leave our embassy in Moscow etc.

I have?? no problem with sending a strong message to Russia that their refusal to extradite is unacceptable to us.I do expect the Foreign Secretary to have thought through who we would expel, and what that might mean if Russia retaliates against our Embassy on Moscow.

It is high time these Ministers devoted more time to the day job and less time to spinning in the media about the special relationship.

This government loves setting targets. There are targets for everything they control and many things they do not.

There are three big problems with targets. The first is, it is embarrasing when you do not hit them. Many Ministers set them up to gain a headline, do nothing to ensure hitting them, and move on?? knowing they leave the mess for another. Sometimes the targets catch up with the very people who set them.

The second is, if you have too many targets it becomes impossible to hit them all. Indeed, some departments have taken delight in setting themselevs so many targets, they are bound to hit some whilst everyone realises they will not hit all. Ministers can then point to the ones they did hit and claim credit, even in the many cases where hitting the target had nothing to do with their intended actions.

The third is??targets can be in conflict with one another. The government is about to be taken to task – and even to court – for failing to meet its targets to cut "fuel poverty", and for failing to hit its target to cut carbon emissions. Unfortunately, getting more people out of "fuel poverty" means??supporting their incomes to allow??them burn more fuel, the opposite of what is needed to cut carbon emissions.

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We learn that the government is not content with doubling the length of time the authorities can hold someone in prison without charge or trial from 14 to 28 days, but hankers after the 90 days they originally wanted before Parliament told them to think again.

We should defend a free society by better intelligence, by refusing entry to suspicious people, by intercepting and eavesdropping on possible terrorists. Defending a free society also means preserving the rule of law, and that most important freedom – we are all innocent until proved guilty, and no-one should be detained without charge or trial for longer than a few days.

It is better to collect the evidence on potential terrorists before alerting them and their network to your work by arresting someone. It is also quite wrong to detain people who cannot be charged with a serious crime on the offchance that they might commit one. If we do that we have lost an important part of the freedom we are trying to protect.

I will continue to vote for 14 days maximum detention without charge or trial. Anything more can wreck the lives of the innocent. I thought the same about Northern Ireland and internment when I was myself on a an IRA death list.

Mr Miliband this morning told us that the US-UK relationship is still central to the UK’s foreign policy. He implied that junior Foreign Office Minister Brown was offside when he told us all the US and the UK are no longer joined at the hip.

It looks as if PM Brown and Foreign Secretary Milliband are out to have it both ways. They themselves tell us nothing has changed in the US/UK relationship, whilst more junior members of the government brief away that their speeches show things have changed. For the home audience the top pair want people to believe the relationship is now cooler, whilst for the foreign audience they want the Bush regime to believe they are great friends still.

It’s a dangerous game to play. The US has good analysts capable of reading the UK press and speeches. Mr Brown may discover there is one world spin machien more powerfful than his own, and that is the spin machine run from the Oval office.

I read today that 13 leading Asian economies including China and India have ammassed another $380 billion so far this year by exporting so many?? goods to the west.

That money has been invested in dollars and other leading currencies. The Asian Central banks have kept their currencies down by selling them across the exchanges, buying dollars, euro, sterling and other currencies. In turn they have probably bought dollar and Euro bonds with the money.

This buying has enabled the US and other western countries to carry on borrowing, building the credit house of cards which charaterises the modern western economy. At some point there needs to be currency reallignment – the Asian currencies are too cheap, and their goods too cheap, leading to these huge imbalances in global markets. Let’s hope we can reach adjustment without major convulsions and shocks. The cheap?? Asian currency policy underlies the precarious structure of world markets, as the imbalances are now so huge, and the resulting western indebtedness to pay for the Asian goods so large.

So it’s no more Mr Nice Guy from the Lib dems. They used to be the honest party that told people they wanted to spend more through the public sector, and therefore would put taxes up. These policies always came out as very popular in the focus groups, and always ensured the Lib dems came third.

Now the Lib Dems have woken up to the fact that most people in private think they themselves pay too much tax, and get rotten value for money for what they have to contribute: hence the new Lib dem headline – tax cuts for the many.

Unfortunately, the small print makes much grimmer reading. The Lib dems still want to give income tax receipts to local government so Councils can spend more with access to a much more buoyant source of revenue. That’s at least 4p in the ??1 on income tax. So now we are told they will cut the national rate, to deal with the first round effects of the imposition of local income tax: the net benefit on income tax is zero.

They also tell us higher earners and polluters are going to have to pay more – but there are no details of how and by how much. With the Labour government using Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to pillage any successful business or family by endless reinterpretations and stretching of the rules I guess the Lib Dems think they can get away with vague threats against polluters. They need this money to replace the Council Tax.The questions they need to answer are:

1. How do they define polluters?

2. How much extra do they need to raise in?? tax from polluters?

3. How much income do you need to have before Lib dems think you are rich?

4. How much extra tax will the "rich" have to pay?

Mr Alexander, Overseas Development Secretary, was clearly authorised to speak in Washington about changes to the "special relationship" between the US and the UK. Whilst the language was suitably friendly towards his US hosts, the spin on the speech told us back home that foreign policy is changing post Blair.

The speech itself did not name and criticise the President, but domestic spin told us the??new UK government is critical of the President’s reliance of unilateralism and the use of force. The UK now prefers multilateralism, a wider range of alliances, and the use of diplomacy. The Prime Minister ??is positioning for a possible Democrat President in 2008, elected on an anti Iraq war ticket.

This is an interesting reinterpretation of the Blair/Brown years. I do not recall Mr Brown objecting to the use of force in Iraq or Afghanistan. I also recall Mr Blair spending huge energy on multilateral diplomacy, both trying to persuade the UN to concerted action, and to putting the coalition’s case to Arab states. I also recall France acting as a strong critic of US/UK action, rallying the UN against some of the coalition’s proposals.

I fear Mr Brown and Mr Alexander will disover the hard way that the EU partners so often have a different view of world problems from?? ours and will regularly be reluctant to see things the same way that we do. He should also remember that the EU was very keen on military intervention rather than diplomacy in the former Yugoslavia, but then needed US military assistance to complete what they had started.

??I am all for giving diplomacy every chance. It is better usually to jaw jaw rather than to war war. It also important to have a clear view of UK interests and the aims of all our allies. It would be wrong to be naive in thinking there is a ready identity of interest between French, German and UK foreign policy.

After Hilary Benn denied the Environment Agency had fallen down on the job by not keeping enough water courses, drains and ditches in good condition when I asked him about it, I now hear he is going to have a full enquiry into what went wrong before this summer’s floods.

The Enquiry should ask the Agency why more than half the flood defences were not in a satisfactory or good condition last year. It should ask what action is now being taken to clean, widen and improve ditches and surface water pipes and conduits. It should ask if there can be more agreements with farmers over flooding water meadows and other low lying land rather than flooding homes, with suitable compensation for farmers if there are crops on the fields. It should ask why this government over the last ten years has demanded so many homes be built on the flood plains of the south-east, and whether this will now change given?? the warning we have had this summer about the folly of such a course.

It is not good enough for the government to say the weather is to blame. The Dutch in the sixteenth century skillfully kept out the?? waves of the North Sea from their low lying land by good flood management. Surely the UK five hundred years later can manage to do the same when it rains heavily?

??The other government response is they will increase the amount of money they will spend on flood defences. The prior question to ask,?? is why do we get so little for the ??1000 million plus a year we spend through the Environment Agency already?

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<em>I had realised Gordon Brown was keen to do the job of PM, Deputy PM, Chancellor, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, but even I had thought he might let the Queen deliver the Queen’s speech, only to discover he decided to deliver it himself before the Parliamentary recess. Whilst the formal opening of Parliament will remain a great ceremonial event, it will lack the old excitement of not knowing what measures would be in?? the programme until we heard it in the speech from the throne.</em>

<em>The State opening was designed as a perfect blend of monarchy and democratic accountability. The Queen sets out what her government is planning to do, reading out the government’s own draft. The PM and the Leader of the Opposition then?? return to the Commons to have a full bloodied debate on the merits and defects of the programme. Ambassadors and other important representatives come to hear the government’s plans for the year ahead, to mingle and discuss after the Speech from the throne, and then to send back their reports. So much of this has now been removed by Gordon Brown’s decision to spill the beans months before the official State opening.</em>

<em>Of course there is?? merit in some Bills being put out for wider discussion before being put to Parliament for detailed debate. This can be accommodated within the Queen’s Speech format by putting out a wide range of measures for consultation in advance, and only deciding near the State Opening which of those will go alongside other?? measures to make up the legislative programme.</em>