The position of Mr Osborne must be that they he agrees with the socialists: that the state can spend money more wisely than individuals. This is the policy he has embraced. So what is the point of the Conservative party if they have no fundamental disagrement with new labour.
How would a Cameron Conservative government be different to a Brown Labour governement.
Both parties , by and large, embrace high taxation, public spending and mass immigration. But surely the Tories are strong on Europe ?. Aah i just remembered that it was John Major that signed the Maastricht treaty so how can we trust you on that ?.
It’s so depressing that anyone who want’s a real change at westminister has no real hope of change at the next election even if Mr Cameron wins.

Simply demand that car parking money raised in “X” town stays in that town, that sounds better than the usual council response of “car parking money keeps your council tax down”.

I was then appalled to hear a representative of the Local Government Association (Conservative controlled) on this morning’s Today programme to argue against the supposed Government prohibition on fining residents for incorrectly filling one’s dustbin. Some Tory Councillors have only been in for five days and are going native already. Such a policy smacks of being officer-led rather then elected member led. Even the East German Stasi didn’t fine one for having the wrong type of rubbish (they may have searched your bin but that’s it)

It is not the roll of Conservative Councillors to obey the dictats of the un-elected EU or to be proxy managers of Government policy.

If I was a conservative politician this would be my roadmap for genuine reform in local government - and after the general election, for central government too.

Reply: There will not be consistency - the national Conservative party does not dictate to every Conservative Council what it has to do. Those of us involved in designing national Conservative policies recommend but cannot command. It is national policy to cut out wasteful spending and offer value for money, and national advice to run weekly collections of rubbish.

The predicatble effect is that even the stupidest and most unworkable ‘initiatives’ often get implemented and quality of service suffers for it.

The way it seems to work is that Gordon Brown commissions someone to do a big policy review along with a team of faceless civil servants. He accepts the findings of the review and then delegates the implementation to a central government department. They then set up a new quango to take over the implementation of the review and more policy documents are written up directing local authorities how to work. Budget is then announced to hand out to local authorities and senior managers bid for the money, offering to implement the policy.

The money is then syphoned off at the top into education or social services and the service that the policy relates to is left with less resources as they have to plough time and effort into working on the latest dictat.

Reply: I posted them here so all can read them, and I have also put on as a download my presentation to Conservative Councils on how to manage.

Much of what you say is true.
Our Conservative council here in Wokingham does, on the whole, a good job despite the lowest cash settlement from central government in the country.

Pointless glossy brochures is one of my pet hates, along with crazy non jobs, mostly dictated by central government on behalf of the EU.
I hate the titles such as champion and czars being applied to our councellors. I recently had a letter from WBC from someone signed as Town Centre Champion….What on Earth is that all about?

Conservatives at all levels from the leader down, need to constantly highlight the unfairness in council tax settlements.
Why in Wokingham for every one pound needed, do we have only twenty pence from central government and eighty pence from us whereas, in many places that just happen to be Labour supporting areas, eighty pence comes from central government and twenty pence from the local people.

Why do most “new initiatives/gimmicks” dictated from Westminster, force councils to do something, thus adding to expenditure without the government providing extra funding to implement these diktats? The government then, on the rare occasion when a diktat works, takes credit for implementing it whilst not contributing financially to it? Why do we not ask this basic question about funding? The free bus travel scheme is a prime example of measures being forced onto councils and no extra funding being provided to implement it.

This is where we can make progress, we should be constantly highlighting all the anti southern bias this spiteful government has.
We need to constantly highlight the wastefulness this government has presided over.

We must ram home our message to the public namely, Labour is the party of tax and waste and ask the question, where has all the money gone Mr Brown?

Reply: Yes, I agree the government wastes too much money and gives an unfair settlement to Councils like Wokingham. The Opposition regularly highlights this in the Commons, and as you see from my website I am not shy about highlighting waste and silly initiatives. We also need to remember that many of the initiiatives are not mandatory, so Councillors can simply say “No”.
The Councillors’ decision to have “Champions” was based on the need to make sure that at member level there is someone driving through important priorities and standing up for important groups and projects. In the case of the Town centre for Wokingham the Champion has amongst other things the difficult task of trying to get the redevelopment project underway, or at least ensuring the Council is not preventing the developer getting on with the job.

Yes, they did. So why was the BBC suggesting that the London Mayor might include Ken Livingstone in his new administration?

Typical BBC, it just does not understand democracy.

JR: “So I say to all our Councillors be bold … ”

Wow, with talk like that one might want to become a paid up Tory party member.