But even though the current Labour government has just this last week closed the Hemel Hempstead A&E department, that forlorn sign to Hemel still remains.

So when can we expect to see the sign replaced with one pointing to Watford?  Or will patients be expected to make their way to the Hemel site where another sign will then point them on to Vicarage Road in Watford in a patient pass-the parcel?    Where will it all end?

It is a sorry tale and provides graphic illustration of the way that St Albans residents feel that a once local NHS has left them and become ever more remote.

I will confess to some satisfaction that my audience of well over 100 young people was more than twice the number that listened to the UKIP leader – beat that, Esther!

St Albans School pupils have never been shy at voicing opinions – this is the third time in recent years that I have spoken there, and I also used to have fairly regular sessions there in the 1980s when I was a governor.

Questions were thrown at me about the economy, the merits of hung or balanced parliaments, our membership of the European Union of course, tuition fees.

What was most interesting to me was the debate round creating a fairer tax system, and in particular the equalisation of tax relief for pensions.  They could not see why their parents (at least most of them I presume) should “pay more”, I said it’s not about paying more, it’s about making it fair between  high income earners and the person cleaning the room (or equivalent) after school finishes.

Higher rate tax payers were given 65% of the £28bn granted in pension tax relief in 2008-09, though they make up just 19% of pension savers.

And the very highest earners, the 1% of adults whose income is over £150,000 a year, gained 25% of all pension tax relief, worth an average of £20,000 a year to each of them.

If no tax relief was given to anyone, that would put £28 billion back into public coffers – so we are talking big money here.  Of course no-one is suggesting that tax relief should be ended in that way, it’s too important that we encourage people to save for their retirement.

But it seems fair and even-handed to me that Sir Richard Branson and his ilk should get no larger a percentage relief on each pound that he saves for retirement than the person cleaning the school lecture theatre .  The same for the rich as for those on modest incomes – just like our proposal to raise both Sir Richard’s and the school cleaner’s basic tax allowance to £10,000.  What could be fairer than that?

Anyway I hope I left the St Albans students with something to think about.

I’ve delayed writing about it so that I can now provide links to the podcast and also to edited video highlights.

I was slightly disappointed that my fellow panellists chose to interpret the topic as providing forecasts about how well they would do (no politician ever forecasts they will do badly) in the upcoming election.  I thought it was far more interesting to talk about life after the election – which really will mark the end of an era of the politics of plenty and the ushering in of  a new age of austerity.

In particular I asked how we can make sure we hold the country together, keep our social cohesion.  I observed that  Government and the political class must lead on sharing the pain before they dish it out – so fewer MPs, fewer ministers, cuts in allowances, abolition of whole departments of state.

I commented too on the great history of other parties adopting LibDem policies when in office – the classic example is of course Gordon Brown’s giving independence to Bank of England in 1997 after no word of it appearing in the Labour manifesto – it was in the LibDem manifesto for that year and 1992’s as well.

So speaking last of the panellists, I expressed my surprise that there had been no mention of climate change, an era-changer if ever there is one and observed that  Geoffrey Howe famously took tough decisions in his first 1979 budget with the doubling of VAT.  I suggested that far less unpalatable is the LibDem proposition for a green tax switch, raising tax allowances to £10,000 for all and funding it not just through closing loopholes and inequitable allowances at the top but also by taxing carbon.  This would put money in the pockets of the poorest and help reduce activities which are exposing our planet to most risk.

If a hung or balanced parliament allowed multi-party support for this approach, that really would mark the opening of a new era.

At the time of writing I have not seen his individual “report card” for Hertfordshire because it has not yet been posted on the HMIC website.  But I am constantly told of people’s frustration with the way that a small minority of young people make life miserable for others.

Last night I went with Catherine Barron, our dynamic candidate for Verulam ward, to a meeting at the British Legion in Verulam Road organised by residents of New England Street.  It had been called to discuss constant problems of vandalism, low level abuse and sometimes quite threatening behaviour by young people who congregate at “The Brickie”, the apparently pleasant sunken bowl of green space which lies between Mount Pleasant and Verulam Road.

Children and parents are sometimes put off from using the playspace, the language used by some of the offending young people is apparently appalling, and there is occasional disgusting graffiti.

It’s a story which is repeated across the UK on the basis of this morning’s Report.  Certainly I can vouch for similar problems in my own village.

There is a role here for parents and for schools.  But chiefly we need more police on the ground.  The local beat bobby and PCSO were both present last night – but they have a huge area to cover and they cannot work 24/7.

The Liberal Democrats are the only party to have costed plans for more police back on the beat – sadly the current public expenditure crisis means we have had to scale back our ambitions, but we still want to put a flag in the ground, that the public pays for the right to occupy their homes and streets and play areas without feeling vulnerable and threatened.

The mechanism exists for rail franchises to be handed back if franchisees fail to deliver the promised service.  FCC seems to have had a charmed life in hanging on to its lucrative monopoly, it is time that passengers had their say.

So we are calling a public meeting for next Tuesday 16 March to discuss whether FCC should now lose their franchise.  The main speaker will be my friend Norman Baker MP, Liberal Democrat Transport Spokesman in the House of Commons.  The meeting will take place at Marlborough Road Methodist Church in the centre of the city (see directions here) and starts at 7.00 pm with doors opening at 6.30 pm – so do put the date in your diary!

When I successfully proposed my motion on rail franchises at last autumn’s Liberal Democrat conference, Norman summed up the debate.  The Daily Mail has described him as having ‘consistently been a thorn in the Government’s side’. In 2001 he was named “Inquisitor of the Year” in the Zurich/Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards and, in February 2002, he won the Channel 4 Opposition MP of the Year Award.

It’s going to be a lively meeting, I hope to see you there.

So today I was pleased to make a special visit to St Albans-based CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale) in Hatfield Road to sign the  Beer Drinkers’ and Pub Goers’ Charter.  The picture shows me with Emily Ryans and Jenni Hollis of CAMRA.

The CAMRA Charter champions well-run community pubs, the rebalancing of alcohol taxation to support beer and pubs, the reform of the beer tie to deliver a fair deal for consumers, and the role of well-run pubs as part of the solution to alcohol misuse.

Well-run pubs can be a bedrock of community life – they are part of the solution to the problem of alcohol misuse and not part of the problem.  They deserve our support.

We all know that whoever wins the election will have to put up taxes and cut expenditure in order to bring the UK economy back into balance.  The only questions are timing; how much comes from cuts and where they fall; and then how and on whom tax rises are levied.

A voter in Colney Heath asked me earlier this week what I was promising to her, and I said that in all honesty whoever wins will be asking for blood, sweat, toil and tears until we turn round the catastrophic state of the economy. We’ve just got to make sure that the pain is shared on the fairest possible basis.  People need to know that we are all in it together.  That especially means politicians, the people who helped create this mess.

The revelation by Lord Ashcroft, the largest Conservative donor, that he is a “non-dom” for tax purposes and so will largely not share the pain leaves a pretty sour taste in the mouth.  The subsequent admission by William Hague that he knew about this for some months is truly breath-taking, since he and other Conservative front-benchers continued to spin the line that Lord Ashcroft had met all his tax obligations.

As Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne has said, “Anyone who wants to pass laws in this country should pay this country’s full taxes and not hide behind the special offshore status of non-doms. Non-doms have to tell the taxman that their first allegiance is to another country. No-one should be a British lawmaker whose first allegiance is not to Britain.

It is hard to know how much tax Lord Ashcroft has managed to dodge.  But it clearly must be many millions of pounds over the ten year period given what we know about the extent of his wealth.

This is the man who has poured money into Britain’s most marginal seats in a blatant attempt to buy votes.  Banana republics and the Conservative Party seem to have a lot in common.

His great parliamentary speeches preceded televising of Commons proceedings and although I worked in the House in the late 1970s, I never heard him speak in the Chamber.

But many years later I was a guest at the Fabian Society 100th Anniversary Dinner where then opposition leader Tony Blair and Peter Hain were supporting acts to Foot and Barbara Castle.  Blair and Hain made the staccato, verbless, soundbite speeches demanded by modern media.

Foot and Castle were a revelation to me.  Their oratory swooped and soared, great cadences, building sentence upon sentence.  It was like listening to great poets or medieval storytellers.  It was inspiring.

The only person I have heard come close in current times is Barack Obama – and even now the oratory is being crushed out of him by the weight of office.

We are going to need good narrative to take us through the blood, sweat, toil and tears of the next decade.  Perhaps we could relearn a thing or two from Michael Foot and his generation.

Partners in the exercise are Ashridge Business School and the Tellus Mater Foundation.

The session opened with Professor Sir Brian Hoskins of Reading University and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) bringing us up to speed on the latest science.  Quite simply the fact of global warming and the contribution of man-made carbon emissions is incontrovertible, whatever the climate change deniers try to say.

And then a very stimulating session with Simon Hughes MP (the Lib Dem spokesman on these matters), Stephen Hale (Director of the Green Alliance), and Bryony Worthington (Director of Sandbag, a campaigning organisation focused on emissions trading).

Two nuggets really hit me.

First, that “decarbonisation” of power generation not only deals with the largest single source of carbon emissions but also helps tackle emissions from domestic transport (by substituting electric cars and electric trains) and from domestic heating too – respectively the second and fourth largest sources of carbon emissions in the UK.

Second, that China is beginning to get it and if it starts to invest in green technologies and threaten to get a lead in the new industrial revolution which is needed, this should galvanise both our own government and more importantly the USA.  A “space race” in pioneering and marketing renewable technologies could be just what we need.

We are going to need to see local, bottom-up initiatives such as St Albans Transition.  And top-down legislative action.

The new Parliament to be elected this year is being described as “The Last Parliament” in terms of taking the necessary measures to tackle carbon emissions.  That is if we are to see a peak in global carbon emissions in 2020 and then a decline, the path recommended by the IPCC.  I hope I will be able to play a role in promoting the necessary measures to deliver this.

I always enjoy visiting the magnificent new pavilion at Woollams for lunches or dinners.  Recently I was a guest of Geraint John at the annual lunch to celebrate the Mini and Junior rugby programme of the club, held before the OA’s dished out a 34-15 thumping of great Hertfordshire rivals Bishops Stortford.

The St Albans forwards are pretty fearsome – you only need to see the team photo to realise that!  My own snatched picture from the pavilion balcony captures one of the moments when the visitors’ backs seized the initiative and are on the verge of scoring their first try, before the OAs asserted their dominance over the rest of the game.

The statistics for the Juniors and Minis are truly impressive.  500 local families are involved, parents and children.  I am told by Brian Clark of the club that there are about 450 “minis” – ie under-12, and 300 juniors – ie under 17.  Between 80 and 90 percent of them turn out each week, supported by 150 volunteers.

It is truly local and of course captures enthusiastic children from all the local schools, even if the roots of the club are in St Albans School itself.  More information can be found on the www.oajrfc.com website here.

At a time when there is so much concern about growing obesity rates and diminution of sports opportunities in schools, it’s great to see this centre of excellence right here in our own community.