12-Mar-10
Sometimes people come to see me at my surgery with debt problems. They often have a large mortgage, and on top have borrowed too much on the Credit card and personal loans. The first advice I always give them is to go through all their spending and see how they can cut it. If each month you need to borrow more you end up on the road to personal bankruptcy. More and more of your income is swallowed paying interest on what you overspent in previous months, and in trying to meet the repayments of your debts. Most people cannot suddenly increase their incomes or win the lottery. If you start reining in your spending early enough, it is just the luxuries and the nice to have items that need to go from the budget. If you leave it too long, you can't afford some of the necessities either.
So it is with a government running a county. If you allow your spending to exceed your income each month, each month your debt increases. If you do this for short period when your tax income is temporarily depressed by a poor economy, that can make sense. When the economy recovers revenues bounce back and you can get your finances back into order. The trouble with the UK today is two fold. We went into the recession spending and borrowing too much, before we lost tax revenue. We also relied on massive tax revenues from banking and other City activities, and from buying and selling expensive properties. Some of this income has gone for ever, now the bubble has been punctured.
In Parliament we keep returning to this central problem. All parties now agree the deficit needs to be at least halved. That means an astonishing £90 billion a year less spending, if you do it all by cutting spending. No previous government has ever attempted anything like that. The remaining argument is over how soon you start. As my advice to an overborrowed constituent implies, I think the sooner the better. The sooner you start the less damage you do in the longer run. Every extra pound the public sector spends today is another pound we the taxpayers have to pay back soon. In the meantime it is another pound we have to pay interest on. If you tried to do it by increasing tax rates you could end up with less revenue, as people and businesses moved elsewhere.
There is no such thing as government money. There is just taxpayers' money. Every penny the government borrows, they expect you and me to repay. Their debt is our debt. The advice I have been giving to the odd constituent I now have give to Parliament as a whole. If they carry on like this we all end up in deep debt, debt we did not want and debt we cannot afford.
The good news is much of the extra spending being undertaken is money not well spent. I do not wish to see Wokingham losing teachers, nurses, police and doctors from the payroll, and there is no need for that to happen if we act now. What I do want to see is less bureaucracy, fewer high paid quango heads and quangos, the end to unwanted South east regional government, the end to ID cards, and expensive centralised computer schemes. It is quite easy to do more for less in the public sector, and that is what all of us working in it have to do. The private sector in a cruel recession has had to work share, keep pay down, remove bonuses, cancel prestige projects and favoured new schemes, and work smarter. Now it is our turn in the public sector to do the same.
Yesterday was another successful day for anti terrorism. I was especially grateful as I was travelling to and from Manchester by public transport in order to make a speech there. We should not tempt providence or take things for granted. The anti terrorist police and Intelligence services are to be congratulated for all the networks and plots they have intercepted to make us safer.
I wanted to get to Manchester and back as quickly as I could. For reasons I will describe tomorrow that meant I had to go by car and plane, rather than by car and train. It meant experiencing once again the security and customer handling at Heathrow. There are a few questions I would like to raise about physical security, as opposed to intelligence and policing work.
The main worry yesterday at airport security seemed to be women who might be concealing bombs in their scarves or boots. They all had to take these off and put them through a scanner. All of us had to remove our belts, any men wearing boots had to take those off but shoes were fine, and all had to remove coats and jackets. No-one was found with anything wrong whilst I was in the queue. Meanwhile at the station no-one was searched for anything, despite the fact that terrorists have attacked trains as well as planes in recent years. The first question I have is why do we treat air and train travel so differently?
Because it took each person time to take some of their clothes off, find enough trays to put it all in, and prepare for the scanners,there was a long queue. There were not enough scanners available and open. When you choose which queue to join it is not possible to see which queue is longest, owing to the way the queues were controlled, so some people had to wait longer than others depending on the lottery of the queues. Why can't they provide more channels? Why can't they have proper overall queue control so waiting times are fair?
Security also required three different checks on the boarding card of each pasenger. We had to queue to have the boarding pass checked before being allowed into the security check area, we had to queue again to have the boarding card re checked to get from the security check area to the gates, and then again to gain access to the plane from the gate. I see the obvious need to check everyone at the point where they board the plane, to make sure we know who is on the plane, to check they are on the right plane and have paid the fare. I assume they also want to have a check on every person first going airside, so they can make sure all who reach airside can be accounted for. Why do they also need a third check on the boarding card?
As someone who has urged splitting up the monopoly over London airports I hope that when these main airports are in different ownership we will see improvements in the way security checks are handled. It is, after all, taking time away from shopping at the airport, and putting passengers into a mood where they are less likely to be willing to spend.
11-Mar-10
You might not have expected it from me, but yesterday lunchtime I swapped my suit and tie for my shorts and trainers and jogged the Westminster Mile for Sport Relief.Here I am with former England rugby player Kyran Bracken after I'd crossed the finish line in my own personal best time of 9 minutes and 28 seconds.
So it's not going to get me a place in Team GB for the 2012 Olympics, but that's not what matters here. What matters is taking part and raising money for a great cause.
This is the part where I say, "If I can do it, then so can you," and this is the part where I urge you to sign up for one of the Sport Relief Miles taking place across London and across the whole country on Sunday 21st March; then get sponsored; and do your bit so that Comic Relief can spend all the money, no matter how small, on helping vulnerable people here in the UK and across the world's poorest countries.
All you have to do is go to www.sportrelief.com to find out all the information you need to know and to sign up. Sadly, for Edmonton residents, I think the nearest mile at Lee Valley Regional Park is already fully booked but there are plenty more miles to take part in so if you can, I'd encourage you to do one.
Then you can leave me a comment on here to boast if you manage to beat my time! Best of luck.
Yesterday the Conservative message for the next couple of months was unveiled to some of us.
It is: "We can't go on like this. Vote for change"
Change includes:
"Change the economy. Back aspiration and opportunity for all. Gordon Brown's debt, waste and taxes are holding us back and threatening the recovery with higher interest rates"
"Change society. Mend our broken society by encouraging responsibility and backing those who do the right thing."
"Change politics. Give people more power and control."
Any comments?
This week's poor balance of payments figures for last month revealed two worrying facts. Despite the sharp falls in the pound, there has been no surge in exports to show us gaining market share as we become more price competitive. At the same time, imports have increased sharply as destocking ends, with no sign that UK industry is about to replace imports with home produced goods. Trade volumes both ways are up as the world economy recovers a bit, but there is no encouraging sign that we are about to improve our relative position.
After a decline of almost one quarter in the currency, you would expect both a surge in exports and a lively increase in import substitution. The absence of both so far implies several problems.
First, a lot of capacity was clearly lost in the recession. Factories were closed, people were made redundant. The last twelve years have seen industry decline as a result of high taxes and high regulatory costs.
Second, manufacturers have been finding it difficult to get bank finance for their activities. In need of cash, they have favoured putting prices up in sterling terms, taking advantage of the lower pound to do so. They have been forced to raise their margins on lower volumes given the shortage of finance.
Third, the UK in recent years has lost great swathes of capacity. JCB recently told us how small a proportion of their vehicle components they can now source from the UK. If you go into most clothes shops there are racks and racks of Asian textile products because the UK industry has been cut to the bone. UK steel plant is closing as demand falls.
We need policies that will help industry recover and build new capacity. That requires changes to taxes, regulations, and bank regulation.
10-Mar-10
For the sixth year running, the Big Lottery Fund is opening up it's People's Millions competition to the public. From today you can put in a bid to receive up to £50,000 for a community project in the area. Five grants are on offer in total.
The shortlisted projects will be showcased on ITV London Tonight evening news and the public will be invited to vote for the groups to win the funding.
Online entry forms are available at www.peoplesmillions.org.uk. Entries need to be returned to the Big Lottery Fund by 12 noon on Friday 14th May. The final project shortlist will be announced in October.
Get bidding and get voting!
The Holocaust Educational Trust wrote to me to thank me for my efforts in helping to gain official posthumous recognition for heroes of the Holocaust, including Edmonton's own Sergeant Charles Coward.
His family - along with the relatives of 25 other British men and women who undertook exceptional acts of bravery in order to aid or rescue people persecuted during the Holocaust - were invited for lunch at the Foreign Office and then an awards ceremony at 10 Downing Street.
The award they were collecting was newly created, following campaigns by the Holocaust Educational Trust, MPs and members of the public, and is a solid silver disk bearing the inscription "in the service of humanity." It is long-overdue, but now it's here it sets a powerful example for future generations of what courage really is.
Some of you local readers may have seen the blue plaque honouring Coward on the outside wall of the house he lived in on Chichester Road from 1945 until his death in 1976. It is a little reminder of a man who used his position as the Red Cross liaison for British prisoners of war at Auschwitz to smuggle food and other items to Jewish inmates and to smuggle information about conditions at the concentration camp out. He also aided the escape of a significant number of Jewish slave labourers - this figure is thought to be around 400.
A small silver medal awarded yesterday, years after his death, seems small compensation for the extraordinary efforts of an individual such as Coward. But nevertheless the award is a big achievement, the first award of its kind, and should be held in high regard, just like the man to whom it rightfully belongs.
Loughborough MP Andy Reed completed the Westminster Mile for Sport Relief today. He is asking constituents to sponsor him and the Reed Family as they take part in the Sport Relief mile in Loughborough too.
"I was slower than last time I did the mile which was disappointing but at least I did it in freezing conditions for a good cause. I am looking forward to doing it again in Loughborough on the 21st March and I hope lots of local people will join in and raise money for Sports Relief."
http://www.mysportrelief.com/TeamPage.aspx?teamID=46137&LangPref=en-CA
Following the failure of Leicestershire County Council Building Schools for the Future Bid to secure £80m for Loughborough Andy Reed MP has welcomed news that Councillors are willing to talk to those who opposed the closure of Limehurst school.
The bid failed to get support from local people by an overwhelming majority in the consultation and it failed to impress the independent body - Partnership for Schools - to be recommended for funding.
"I am pleased noises are being made that Councillors are willing to talk to Limehurst. Some would say it is about time. I hope they mean it this time.
"I am also urging County to not reject coming back to Loughborough and working with local schools - not against them - to build a local vision and consensus and resubmit a BSF bid which has widespread support"
"I am also very disappointed that Cllr David Parsons has taken every opportunity to try to spin his way out of their failure by blaming everybody else without taking any responsibility themselves.
"He knows full well that their bid was not recommended by the independent body set up to look at bids - Partnership for Schools to Ministers. Ministers agree the recommendations made to them by P4Schools - they had no sight of the bids until they were given the list of 6 successful authorities deemed ready to deliver and a follow up list of a further 3 authorities nearly ready to deliver. So at best it is misleading to suggest Ministers and national politicians had any say over the final shortlist. They deliberately keep themselves out of the process until the very end. I call on him to withdraw these remarks so that local people can have trust in what they say about listening this time round"
"We still need consensus and partnership. Until he withdraws these misleading statement we cannot move forward"
