They Blog For You

            I was sent an interesting email this week. It came from someone who knows how the changes at a particular  quango are going. It makes worrying reading.           The bottom line is that spending goes up in the short term in order to achieve a closure of a quango and [...]

What a wonderful morning! The exodus of Irish delegates from the six-monthly meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly allowed British MPs a free morning. It was a glorious morning of winter sunshine with the seagulls dancing across the waves at Douglas.   It luckily co-incided with a rare meeting of the House of [...]

What a wonderful morning! The exodus of Irish delegates from the six-monthly meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly allowed British MPs a free morning. It luckily co-incided with a rare meeting of the House of Keys. Reading the agenda, it struck me that they could have arranged it especially for me. There [...]

I've always admired Oliver Letwin. But I've judged him to be too intelligent to be a Government Minister. All those compromises would upset his delicately balanced intellect. In a terse statement today, he explained that a bright new world will be created by changing the bad Labour 'targets' for good Tory [...]

The letter below gives details about a Government Task Force that has been setup to cut the red tape that affects charities, social enterprises and voluntary organisations. The Task Force will be chaired by Lord Hodgson, who is currently President of The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). I want to encourage local groups [...]

It’s like Google, innit?  Let’s crowd source, and like, you know, do a wiki.  And like mashable, too. I suspect that pretty much sums up some of the thinking in Whitehall that went into the proposal for an on-line consultation [...]

A third of the NHS is to be privatised.  Handing over £80 billion to independent contractors  will create new waste and bureaucracy. Dumping new tasks on GPs for which they have never been trained will be an expensive mistake. This is the ideological madness that afflicts  politicians of all parties. Dogs bark. [...]

Armed police in Gloucestershire raid the home of a man who grows tomatoes - because they thought he might be growing cannabis.Meanwhile, our Human Rights judges refuse to extradite suspected terrorists to the United States - because the Americans might actually lock them up, something the British state increasingly dislikes [...]

I’M REALLY not impressed with this voting malarky in the House of Commons. Everyone welcomed the so-called Wright proposals for ending behind-the-scenes shenanigans, when whips of both main parties would appoint MPs onto select committees and the chairs of those committees would “emerge” through the usual channels. So now we have elected [...]

  I have been made the Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries. This is a long title, possibly one of the longest in Government. It also includes in effect two [...]

 This General Election will shape our future and we all have a choice to make.   Hull has been transformed since 1997. The number of pupils gaining 5 good GSCEs has gone from just 20% to over 65%; the number of patients waiting over 13 weeks for treatment has fallen by [...]

When you think you have heard everything a few new  titbits of news appear from the hopelessness of Afghanistan. Drug use among the Afghan Police show 68 per cent testing positive for cannabis. There is a similar percentage for the chaotic Army. Of course, Present Karzai has threatened that he might [...]

Delyn MP David Hanson has welcomed Labour’s moves to back a secure future for the Post...

Delyn MP David Hanson has welcomed Labour’s moves to back a secure future for the Post Office.  There will be more banking services for local people following an overwhelmingly positive response to the Government’s consultation on the future of the Post Office. The Labour Government is to provide £180 million of [...]

On the day that figures published by the Office of National Statistics show that the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance fell by 32,300 on the month, I wanted to draw your attention quickly to a website for organisations to sign up to help Britain's young people through offering work [...]

Delyn MP David Hanson today welcomed the Government’s agreement with the credit and store card...

Delyn MP David Hanson today welcomed the Government’s agreement with the credit and store card industry as good news for people in Delyn. The agreement means that, in the future, consumers’ most expensive debt – like withdrawing cash on a credit card – will be able to be paid off more [...]

Local MP Danny Alexander has criticised today's BIS Select Committee report on broadband which argues that the focus should be on providing basic broadband for all and allowing markets to deliver higher speed broadband – rather than putting a funding mechanism in place to support superfast broadband roll-out in rural [...]

CONSUMER Affairs Minister, Kevin Brennan, believes the Government's £4.5 million investment to tackle e-crime in the UK will help Welsh sport fans who buy tickets from unofficial online sources.Wales will benefit from the funding as the Office of Fair Trading will introduce new cyber enforcers that will be placed in [...]

MP Derek Wyatt was a panellist at the annual meeting of the UK IGF last Wednesday at the Dept. for BIS. He spoke about the 4th IGF at Sharm el-Sheik which was really a "Save its Future"... [...]

BUSINESS leaders have hailed the Government's flagship Train to Gain programme, saying it has helped them provide vital training to their staff during the downturn.Both large and small businesses have reaped the benefits of Government funded training support, which is backed up by figures released today by the Learning and [...]

CONSUMER Affairs Minister, Kevin Brennan MP, has today announced that he has accepted the Competition Commission's recommendation for a body to enforce the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP).The Code of Practice comes into force on February 4, 2010 and will be quickly followed by a consultation on how best [...]