They Blog For You

                      I wish to examine the curious case of the possible resignation of Mr Norman  Lamb. Many people will not have known until the last couple of days the importance of Mr Lamb. He is a trusted adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister. He is a Lib Dem NHS expert, [...]

Our former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has apparently admitted that the unaccountable quangos he put in place to regulate the banks failed. He's right. His Financial Service Authority spent a decade subjecting every financial institution to a complex web of compliance - so much so that firms had to create entire compliance departments.  [...]

  It’s 18 months since David Taylor died.  The grief and shock at his wholly unexpected heart attack was accompanied by the regret at the sadness of his final months. David, the retiring MP for North West Leiscestershire, was unfairly dragged into the maelstrom of the Commons Expenses scandal in spite of his [...]

Andrew France's Story has been told in the Sunday Telegraph. There is a also a comment piece by Alasdair Palmer in support of the campaign to sustain article 5, 9 and 13 (and particularly I suppose 5) of the Bill of Rights. [...]

               On Monday 11th April we will hear or read the preliminary conclusions of the Vickers Report into banking. A lot is riding on a successful outcome to this important Inquiry.               Politically John Vickers has to say enough to persuade people he understands the anger many feel about the conduct [...]

Total of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan = 363    The calamity deepens but hope is on the way. It's nearly a month since the carefully varnished flow of half-truths were emitted from Fukushima. The Japanese nuclear company TEPCO fell into the auto-pilot of 'reassure at all times' mode. All bad news was announced [...]

Douglas Hurd once said to me when he was Foreign Secretary that one of the  strongest reasons to support the British system of having one MP for each constituency (a lot of democracies use proportional systems with multi-member constituencies) is that it kept your feet on the ground. For him, [...]

For the third time in a row – Greece, Ireland and now Portugal – the continuing Eurozone crisis is being handled badly.   A Portuguese bail-out will shortly be arranged among the EU countries, but in practice dominated by the conditions laid down by the most powerful country, Germany.   This [...]

  What’s the point?  One Millionaire David Cameron is married to a millionaire. He earns a good salary. What point is he making by ‘celebrating’ with a Ryanair no frills trip? The only things that make flying bearable are the frills. Why the self-flagellation? Who is he trying to impress? Most people would regard [...]

Have you noticed your pint going up in price recently? Firstly there was the VAT rise in January, which saw an extra 6p added to the price of a pint and then at the end of March, the 7.2% increase in alcohol duty added on another 4p. I know beer [...]

KEVIN Brennan, MP for Cardiff West, has hit out at the terrible condition of Pendine Road in Ely after Cardiff County Council failed to keep their promise to repair the road surface by the end of the financial year.The road, which is a popular route to avoid traffic on Cowbridge [...]

There have been discussions about whether there is a domestic precedent whereby the right to talk to MPs about issues of public interest is protected by parliament. This already happens in Australia.The following case from the parliamentary journals in 1699 is exactly that. John Kelly provided information about [...]

If unpaid internships are to be discouraged, I presume that the government will now put unpaid Parliamentary Private Secretaries onto the government payroll? Over the past year, an unprecedentedly number of MPs have been made PPSs under the Coalition.  Even quite junior ministers now make use of these unpaid ministerial aides. A internship, or work experience scheme, MPs [...]

The government wants to do more to promote social mobility. It wants more children to enter higher paid employment from home backgrounds that brought them up on benefits or low incomes. There are many ways for young people to aspire to much higher incomes than their parents. They all entail lots [...]

As the first pilot schemes for getting claimants off Incapacity Benefit and into work have judged that 70% were fit for work, the real attitudes of the Tories towards unemployment is becoming painfully clear.   Their Work First model of active labour market policy is defined by increasingly punitive approaches to conditionality [...]

  Paul Maynard the new Tory MP for Blackpool was on the next table to mine in the Terrace Cafeteria at lunchtime today. I noticed that he was shuffling some papers with intriguing pictures of power stations. He told me that he was speaking in today's final adjournment debate in which [...]

KEVIN Brennan MP, is urging businessmen and women in Cardiff West to come forward and demonstrate their entrepeneurial ideas in a bid to scoop a £50,000 prize.The competition is open to existing businesses as well as those who simply have a fantastic new idea and the winner will not [...]

A number of local people have contacted me about Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s ‘Fish Fight Campaign’, and so I thought it would be a good idea to set out my thoughts on the matter here. Throwing dead fish back into the sea is a terrible waste.  It is disruptive to marine ecosystems [...]

In all the discussions about the NHS it does appear that one thing is clear. We need to avoid the NHS being subject to EU Competition Law. This is the argument I have been putting. The danger is that commissioners are forced to accept tenders that they [...]

                    I visited a public library recently. It was not in my constituency. It was housed in a great new building, in a large and well appointed room. I was told it was not about to close. It was run by friendly Council staff. Money had been found to set [...]