Monday, April 30, 2007

"Ten years that ruined Britain"

Max Hastings has written an overview of Tony Blair's ten years in office for today's Daily Mail. Five extracts are published below:

Education, education, education?"For all the deceits peddled by examination authorities, our children are costing more to learn less. A third of secondary school pupils have some record of truancy. Most school-leavers are tossed exam certificates without achieving real skills in literacy and numeracy, never mind knowledge. Our great universities have fallen victim to class-war football, with Gordon Brown the foremost government striker. More and more unqualified teenagers from state schools are pushed towards Oxbridge, while private school pupils are deliberately excluded. Excellence drains away. Under-funded British universities, subject to relentless government meddling, slip ever further behind their American counterparts."


Fatter and fatter government"In the workplace, the Government has promoted employee rights at the expense of a crippling impact on productivity, in which Britain slips ever further down on the global scale. Public sector workers have prospered. Indeed, thanks to nice Mr Alan Johnson (when he was Pensions Minister), they are almost the only ones left who can look forward to a decent pension. The economy is now frighteningly dependent on public sector jobs - non-productive ones, funded by the rest of us - to sustain employment."

Whiter than white? "The Blair years have been a boom time for: Ann Summers sex shops (up from 13 to 134 since 1997); free Viagra; CCTV cameras; wind farms; John Prescott; Peter Mandelson; Cherie Blair's lecture income; the prison population; Alastair Campbell; private security guards; sales of illegal drugs; binge-drinking; City salaries; Ken Livingstone; childhood obesity; and grossly incompetent management of the rail system."


Nanny state Britain"The past decade has been a woeful time for personal freedoms. Forget, for a moment, the excesses of government anti-terrorist legislation. There is something mad about any government which persecutes smokers to the point where they will shortly be banned even from private clubs, yet regards marijuana with far less hostility than cigarettes. Labour whipped many more MPs into the House of Commons to ban fox-hunting than ever turn out to debate child cruelty. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has become an enforcement arm of Blairism, intruding its meddling fingers into every corner of our lives."


Uncontrolled immigration"Some might forgive Tony Blair for the catastrophe of Iraq, but will never forgive his abject failure to control immigration. According to official figures - and these, of course, ignore the countless numbers of illegal immigrants - the population of Britain grew by 185,000 in 2005 because of immigration, a trend which means well over a million a decade. Many of the new arrivals not only do not speak our language, but actively reject our values and way of life. They want to come because Britain is famously the softest touch in the world for access, public money and housing. Nobody need agree to anything, least of all loyalty to Queen and country, before being waved through the door. Few Labour ministers care sixpence about the disastrous impact of this influx on social services, housing, race relations and the sense of British nationality."

Read the full article here.

Friday, April 27, 2007


Goldie backs Cameron


James Bond baddie as well as a jungle and drum and bass DJ has backed the Conservatives.

"I've listened to a lot of politicians and you are the only one who makes any sense."

Monday, April 23, 2007

Tough on Crime

Blair has defended the attorney general's role in deciding whether there should be any prosecutions as a result of the cash-for-honours investigation. Thus the man that Tony appointed will judge whether our beloved leader sold peerages for cash. Now that is what I call justice.

A Labour appointed political hack will be totally independent on this matter!

Will he delay his departure until he has made a decision or will he trust his good mate Gordon not to prosecute him?

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Doorstep Green

This morning was the grand opening of Doorstep Green by the Rt Hon John Denham; he arrived on a train, announced by the town crier. It was an interesting introduction mentioning the pension’s crisis. He was followed by the Mayor, John Slade.

I attended the event with local Conservative Councillor Jeremy Moulton and Shirley Conservative candidate Matthew Dean.

The local action committee has done a wonderful job and spent many hours some of which has been in unpleasant weather to make today such a success and done a fantastic job improving the park. New benches have been installed and a brick path laid.

The event was supported by many of the local residents which shows that community spirit is alive and well is Sholing.

Friday, April 20, 2007

1984

From the devils kitchen (slightly edited)

Laws that make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences will be introduced across the European Union, according to a proposal expecting to win backing from ministers Thursday.Offenders will face up to three years in jail under the proposed legislation, which will also apply to inciting violence against ethnic, religious or national groups.

Well, if we are going to have this illiberal law, then I really do think that trivialising the crimes of the USSR and its hideous leaders would be a really good idea. However, I do not think that this law is a good thing at all.It's not just Holocaust denial that is covered by this either.

The latest draft, seen by the Financial Times, will make it mandatory for all Union member states to punish public incitement “to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin”.They will also have to criminalise “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes” when such statements incite hatred or violence against minorities.

Friday, April 13, 2007

More Spin from Labour

"In respect of knife and gun gangs, the laws need to be significantly toughened. There needs to be an intensive police focus on these groups. The ringleaders need to be identified and taken out of circulation; if very young, as some are, put in secure accommodation. The black community - the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening - need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids. But we won't stop this by pretending it isn't young black kids doing it."

These comments are made by Tony Blair, he has been ten year’s in power and soon to leave office, yet he has failed to deal with the crime except to see an increase in the ammount.


He is in effect admitting he has failed to deal with crime, we all remember his catchphrase tough on crime tough on the causes of crime. Can we expect any better from Gordon probably not as he has tried to micro manage everything, and failed.

Until the government acknowledge that they have let down the police, the criminal justice system, the people of Sholing, Southampton and this country. The needs to have the power to sentence and not give i-pods etc to people who commit crimes then promise not to do it again the better society will be.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Motorbikes go free

The Conservative group would not charge motorbikes to go across the Itchen Bridge. This matter came to scrutiny yesterday when Labour performed to the audience by doing a U Turn. 5 years ago the Conservative group proposed this for the Bridge and the Labour administration turned it down. Now in coalition with the Liberal’s and looking for votes they say and promise everything. It was only a couple of months ago that they were proposing the closure of Libraries and swimming pools across the city. Now in the image of Blair and Brown they are looking for headlines.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

What an amazing u turn

The government are now saying that armed forces can not do media deals. Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, said: “Their misjudgements have created a situation where we have division inside the Armed Forces, a loss of public sympathy and an undignified public auction going on for the stories of serving personnel.” The whole handling of this situation is appalling.

This is government by tabloid headlines again.

Monday, April 09, 2007


Schwarzenegger in Blackpool

Do you think he will have any problems with security getting into the confrence????

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Labour call in the big guns

Echo journalism at its best. Just for reference he defected from the Conservatives and joined Labour, the red rosette is a little clue.


http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/video/video/index.var.3825.0.0.php
Planning part II

Planning passed more flats again in Southampton. We are still not getting family housing brought to the panel just more and more flats. You would have thought that the developers might have picked up the thoughts of the panel and the city. This year over 400 flats and less than 20 houses have now been passed.

We also had a few interesting situations, Tesco putting in retrospective planning permission which is quite common by all accounts around the country.

A 71 bed care home plus day centre with 14 car parking spaces turned down. This shows how the policy that limits car parking spaces can wrong. The number of staff, service vehicles etc not being given adequate parking can have a major impact in the surrounding area, also with a day care centre for elderly people how are they expected to get to the centre, bike??? The care home in my opinion is a great idea and BUPA followed the council guidelines but these are at best woeful. The council should address this problem.

We also had the disgusting sight of council bureaucracy trying to force the panel to act as soulless drones rather than as councillors, resulting in people being disadvantaged. Without a proper explanation of the case in detail, we had to make a decision which would disadvantage a neighbour if we passed it, or disadvantage a person who is disabled if we refused it. Yes we have to make difficult decisions, but what was disgusting in this case was there was a solution which the council had not put forward which could help both people. Thankfully we ignored the council advice and asked for it to be deferred so the parties could work out a solution.
Another Initiative

David Davis spoke yesterday in reply to the governments latest attempt to deal with extremism,

"It took seven years to deal with Abu Hamza. Seven years in which the Government constantly offered excuse after excuse about not having sufficient laws to deal with him. Eventually he was convicted under eleven counts using legislation almost 150 years old. After initially dithering, the authorities were eventually embarrassed into taking action against those who incited hatred during the Muslim cartoon protests - again using existing legislation. It is long past time the Government stopped talking and started to show some resolution. They should use the laws we already have – including the offences of incitement to commit murder and racial hatred – to actually deal with those who preach hate. The laws we already have to combat extremists could be effective - if only the Government had the guts to use them.”

Wednesday, April 04, 2007


Boris speaks up for Southampton!!!!!

Gadabout Boris Johnson has labelled Portsmouth as a city full of drugs and obesity. Obviously being a Conservative from Southampton I find my self in a difficult position!!!

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Peace breaks out in Northern Ireland

After the weekend's joint letter to Peter Hain by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness telling him to leave Stomont. Then yesterday under the d’Hondt system they carved up the portfolios seemingly without any complications.

Where is my Pension Gordon?

Gordon Brown's £5bn tax on pension funds in 1997 and subsequent years has meant that many people have lost pensions. This has taken ten years to become an issue, (if you are of a conspiracy mind you will say the papers have been saving this one).

Ed Balls has been forced to retract claims that the CBI had fully supported the chancellor's pensions policy this has been one of the worst spin jobs in recent years with the CBI fighting there corner and proving that Ed was lying. The accountants Grant Thornton say that the tax rise has so far has cost Britons with private pensions £60 billion, or £3,000 each. The analysis predicts that it will have cost pensioners £200 billion by 2017, or £10,000 per person. Yet Gordon’s silence is deafening.
Local Democracy

The Conservative group in Southampton have made an election commitment that we will allow the people to decide on whether Southampton should have one of the regional casino’s.

The issue over regeneration, and that this is the only option is what many people find unacceptable. There must be other ways for regeneration. Southampton already has three casinos, to build another which has larger jackpots etc would create an unfair market place. Thus many questions still remain unanswered including what provision for those with gambling addictions.

With such an important matter facing people a proper debate is needed very much like the one Cllr Peter Baillie called for and the people of Southampton should be given a choice.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Planning tomorrow

So far this year planning has approved over 300 flats and 16 houses. On the agenda tomorrow we have 179 more flats plus a 71 bed unit and 50 sheltered flats. We also have 15 houses to decide upon.

This follows the housing debate last week when a senior officer indicated that of the 16,200 homes Southampton has to provide over the next fifteen years, they have identified the sites for 12,000 but will not tell elected members what the percentage is for flats.