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, [...]

Today, the Labour Party has launched an interactive map showing local police job losses resulting from the Tory-led Government's 20% police cuts.As you can see, the Metropolitan Police - which covers Edmonton - has already announced 2,337 job cuts that will take place over a timescale of three years, taking [...]

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.  [...]

The Banking Commission says its key objective is to protect the UK taxpayer from another bailout. At the same time, they suggest a sort of two-tier system within banks, as opposed to institutional separation. Sounds to me like they're proposing the sort of changes I was aiming at [...]

             Listening to Mr Clegg this morning, I was struck by the central paradox. He said the most important thing the government was doing was a short term fix to cut the deficit. He rightly argued that getting on top of the deficit was essential for economic growth and stability [...]

                The week-end press had started to wake up to the private sector squeeze which we have been talking about on this website  for the last year, the squeeze which was even heralded by the Bank of England itself. The high rate of inflation coupled with a low rate of wage [...]

Chloe Smith, Member of Parliament for Norwich North, will today be visiting Business Revolution Enterprise Ltd's new work hub. The aim of the work hub is to provide a flexible workspace in a new generation of working where jobs often involve working from home and 'hot-desking'. Business Revolution also offers users access [...]

According to the Sunday Times, Republican front-runners for the next presidential election include Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.  If so, then perhaps that's Obama safely back in the White House for a second term.   Fortunately, in America they allow millions of ordinary folk, not just [...]

It is scarcely possible to overstate the gravity of the charges against Murdoch’s organisation over the criminal offence of phone hacking.   There is undoubtedly a great deal more to be exposed, but we already know that phone hacking was rife at News International (N.I.) on an almost epidemic scale, that [...]

  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 [...]

               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 [...]

This video was done on my mobile phone with it sellotaped to a stand. I found out that when someone phoned me 15 minutes in it stopped videoing. Hopefully the Freedom Association will have a better video available later. [...]

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, [...]

I set off last Sunday afternoon for a three day visit to Washington and New York. My main purpose in going to Washington was to talk to people in the Obama administration and in Congress about the Balkans (the USA maintains a strong interest in countries like Bosnia & Herzegovina, [...]

                 First we are told that providing a new loan to Greece, or Ireland, or Portugal, creates a line in the sand, prevents the contagion spreading. As each sucessive loan demand showed, that did not work. The incoming tide of debt erased the lines. The contagion spread. The mixed metaphors [...]

  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 [...]

I have been alerted to an incredible conspiracy theory which is appearing on some left wing blogs linking me to a presentation given by Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, which I have never seen, but is apparently free to view on... [...]

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 [...]

You may recall from my post of 30 March, entitled ‘Stoke Mandeville: discrepancy in official HS2 maps’, that I recently wrote to Philip Hammond about the route of HS2 near Stoke Mandeville.  This was after Stoke Mandeville parish council made me aware that maps 9 and 10 published by HS2 Ltd show different versions of the impact [...]

Yesterday I spent the majority of the day at the North Middlesex University Hospital, not as a patient (I wasn't ill, thankfully), but as an observer, work-shadowing in a number of different departments.It's been a year since the £130 million new facility opened so it was a great opportunity for [...]