Well “the mission” is complete, troops out by next May. What an appalling disaster the whole Iraq fiasco of Mr Blair and Mr Brown has been- and lets not forget that the Conservatives were right up there as cheerleaders.
Far too little credit has been given to Charles Kennedy and Ming Campbell for standing up against [...]
Entries from December 17th, 2008
Good-bye Basra
December 17th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
Time to paint the town red?
December 16th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
“Pillar Box Red” used to be something everyone understood. The pillar boxes of my youth gleamed in their scarlet livery, just like the telephone boxes and the buses. This year’s CPRE Christmas Book “Icons of England” with special foreword by Bill Bryson even has a pillar box as its front cover illustration.
But in St [...]
Tags:CPRE·Iain Dale·Post Office
Colney Heath Christmas
December 12th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
Fabulous Christmas lunch in Colney Heath – turkey and all the trimmings followed by Christmas pud. All put on for local pensioners and subsidised by the parish council. And then singing from Year 4 of Colney Heath JMI School as the icing on the cake.
Colney Heath has always struck me as community-spirited in the best [...]
The true fork in the road
December 11th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
Much has been written about David Cameron’s attack on government borrowing plans.
It is described as “a fork in the road”. There is supposed to be a great divergence in policy between Labour and Conservative parties.
So the media described the Pre-Budget Report and its messy aftermath as a defining moment. It was indeed a defining moment, [...]
Recovering from a birthday night on the tiles
December 7th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
It was on the (very wet) grass actually – outside St Albans Abbey.
It was my 12 year old daughter Dora who persuaded me that my birthday was no excuse for not joining her at the annual Sleep-Out in aid of local homeless charities. It is the third year I have done this and it was [...]
Queen’s Speech is a So What?
December 4th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
In the current economic climate, the set of bills announced in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech come across as an irrelevance.
The Government wasted the opportunity to help people in last week’s Pre-Budget Report and now with the Queen’s Speech they’ve wasted it again.
Tags:Nick Clegg·Queen's Speech
Thoughts on Speaker Martin
December 4th, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
It is increasingly clear that Michael Martin is one of the least impressive speakers of modern times. His abject feebleness in the Damian Green affair and then his disgraceful attempt to pin all the blame on his subordinates are only the latest manifestations of his unsuitability for the role.
He should never have been chosen by [...]
Tags:House of Commons
An unwelcome insight into fuel poverty
December 2nd, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
Our boiler came to a grinding halt last Friday. We still had hot water with the immersion but heating the house became a major challenge. I was brought up before central heating and can remember the frost not melting off the inside of my bedroom window in the winter of 1963. But the kitchen was [...]
Tags:Fuel bills
Green and “grooming”
December 1st, 2008 · No Comments · Sandy's blog
I don’t know Damian Green well but we used to have occasional very civilised lunches together and I always think of him as being one of the human faces of the Conservative Party.
So his arrest and the ransacking of his Commons and constituency offices by the police came as a great shock. Of course his [...]
Tags:House of Commons