Tale of two videos

Miliband does not look convincing

Political leadership these days demands great presentation skills and a feel for the camera knowing that you are putting your face into millions of living rooms, Tony Blair had a natural ability to communicate, Gordon Brown has a natural ability to switch me off, but what of David Miliband and David Cameron?

It’s possible that the two could be facing each other after the end of Brown’s ill fated government.

Take a look at these two videos, first we see South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband campaigning in Crewe and Nantwich, then we see Conservative Leader David Cameron talking to the Institute of Directors.

Who looks the more natural to you? (I have to be open and admit that I think our own MP always appears to be comfortable within himself when I watch him on the television, but that does not necessarily mean I am comfortable with his communicative ability - a bit wooden at times, or has he just convinced himself of the futility of this particular exercise?)

David Miliband in Crewe

David Cameron at the Royal Albert Hall

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Knockout result

Remind you of anyone in particular?

Err……..YES!

South Tyneside Conservative Cllr. David Potts probably didn’t think much of the “knockout results” on Thursday night, let’s hope he found a decent party after the weekend to make up for things!

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Tories control North Tyneside

Three gains bring control

So if the Conservatives can win seats in Sunderland (where they now have 22), win enough seats to take control of North Tyneside, and win ten seats in County Durham and 17 in Northumberland, how come they are so lacklustre in South Tyneside?

The problems and the demographics in the areas surrounding us are not so different to what we have here, so why is it not happening with the local Conservative Associations?

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I pray for this pension

“Altar” Post Office Plans

Peter Atkinson the Conservative MP for Hexham is calling for Post Offices to be allowed to operate from selected churches in rural areas, and it’s not that bad of an idea. In smaller villages and hamlets the Post Office is more than a business, it is in effect a community asset where local people regularly meet to exchange more than savings and pensions.

This summer the Post Office will begin to announce it’s plans for closures within Tyne and Wear and it is feared that many more sub-Post Offices will disappear, yet I’ve thought for some time now that the Post Offcice counter business ought to be franchised and marketed more effectively to allow other businesses to participate.

Come to think of it, since the closure of the Boldon Lane sub-Post Office in South Shields, what a good idea it would be to have a Post Office unit operating within the financially threatened West Harton Churches Action Station, where an anonymous donation of £10,000 has provided them with the equivalent of another month’s lifeline. Such a franchise could see the operator sharing a small part of the Post Office profits.

Perhaps we should offer a few prayers?

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Tories open massive poll lead

YouGov Telegraph poll puts Tories 18 points ahead

This is the biggest poll margin enjoyed by the Conservatives over the past 21 years, it must surely undermine Brown’s authority even further.

No wonder the Labour Party is banging on every door in South Shields!

It would serve the Conservative Party well to try and replicate the Labour effort around here.

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Prescription to kill polyclinics

Cameron could be right you know.

South Shields is blessed with a number of very good health centres where groups of GPs offer a number of services including nurse practitioners, specialist clinics, physiotherapy, and counselling sessions etc. We also have a mix of general (single) GP surgeries that see, perhaps, fewer patients. However, it is accepted that these facilities are few and far between in the outlying estates necessitating a journey towards the busier parts of town for many people.

I fear that the government’s plan to introduce giant “polyclinics” could see many of the smaller GP surgeries disappearing altogether, and for people in villages or smaller townships this could be a great inconvenience. I do not see it likely that places like East and West Boldon, Cleadon Village, Whitburn or Marsden, and Biddick Hall would get one of these “polyclinics” built within their midst, and they would all find themselves having to make longer journeys to see the doctor.

Therefore I think that David Cameron, the Conservative leader is right to oppose the plan as it could have terrible effects upon smaller communities who have already seen the loss of their local post office, local pub, local shops, and local police station. It’s another statist corporatist plan to provide bigger and better because they know what is best for us - and choice isn’t what is best!

Dr. John Crippen writes further in Centre Right illustrating the difficulties in staffing the proposed “polyclinics” and outlining his fears that it will lead to a two tier health system with the poorest suffering most, once again.

” If that is what the people of this country want, then so be it. As long as you know what you are going to lose.”

It makes you wonder if Labour has almost given up fighting for the hard pressed in society!

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Tories boosted in North

Labour could lose over 200 council seats

For the first time in many years the Conservative Party in the north of England is feeling very buoyant and bullish about the local government elections on 1st. May, however don’t expect any major surprises in South Tyneside.

The good news for the party (which currently controls 206 councils in England and Wales compared to Labour’s 69 - the Lib-Dems control 30 and 120 have no overall control) is that they have candidates in every seat in Yorkshire, and more than 40% of the seats in Wales, as well as every seat in South Tyneside. For a number of years since the demise of the last Conservative government it has proved difficult to find people willing to stand under the Conservative banner in these areas at all.

North Tyneside could end up under Tory control, they only need to gain three seats (probably in Killingworth where they did so well last year), they also expect to win control of Bury, and Vale of Glamorgan where they need an extra four seats in this former stronghold. Rossendale and Sheffield will prove to be two key battlegrounds, Labour could lose Sheffield and and the Tories could strengthen their position in Rossendale or lose it with the change of one seat!

Make no bones about it, there will be trench warfare on May 1st, and the results will have a profound affect on the mood in Downing Street, possibly even defining the future of Gordon Brown’s premiership.

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10p beer mat

I seem to remember a few days ago that Iain Dale was looking for a design for a new beer mat to commemorate the passing of the 10p tax rate and the revolting Labour MPs, (not to mention Darling’s decision to increase the price of a pint). It took a while coming Iain but here are the obverse and the reverse

Remember, about 5.5 million low paid people, those earning below £18,000 pa., are now going to be hammered with higher taxes after the abolition of the 10p tax rate by Gordon Brown in his final Budget. He hailed it as a “tax cut” at the time to ridiculous cheers from Labour members. Well they’ve seen the light now, and realised that it was one of the biggest con tricks ever pulled by Brown. Even Socialist Worker is rounding on Brown today, ridiculing him for making the rich richer, and the poor even worse off!

Well, it won’t be long Mr. Brown before we have our shout, we get the first round in on May 1st. Brown “bottled” the chance of a general election last year, let’s see if there is any “body” left in his beer now, or is it all froth?

With apologies to the world famous “Brown Dog”

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Margaret Thatcher

Poll shows she would easily win an election today

An interesting poll by YouGov for The Telegraph today suggests that if Margaret Thatcher was at the peak of her powers today she would win an overwhelming majority at a general election. I find this quite interesting, it is no 18 years since she left Downing Street but apparently the memory of her tenure contains such an aura of respect. There is no doubt that her Premiership can be seen as divisive, she was swept to power in Downing Street at a time when political thinking was very polarised, Labour was in the grip of the Trades Unions and the hard left, and the Conservatives had elected a female leader with philosophies taken from the libertarian right, and economic solutions taken from Friedman and Hayek. There were no grey areas back then, the arguments were black or white, left or right, no middle ground to fight over, and as far as the leaders of the two main parties were concerned you either loved or loathed them.

So what was it that marked out Margaret Thatcher’s era as one of “greatness”? What defining quality did she carry that makes people believe that she was our greatest Prime Minister since Sir Winston Churchill?

Putting aside the “love or loathe” principles (and the two camps had plenty of followers in South Shields) the one over riding quality that I, and many others, saw in her was the championing of the individual over the state. In so many areas she made great strides in rolling back the frontiers of state and bureaucracy. Whether it was in housing, with the right to buy, or taxation by giving individuals more freedom to choose how to spend their own earnings, or the privatisations that reduced the role of the state in industry and allowed individuals to invest. Those under the of thirty or forty may find it difficult to understand that at one time you could only fly on a state owned airline, by steel from a state owned company, or that you could not own shares in the telecommunications industry.

She was a conviction politician driven on by a religious Methodist background which dictated that the individual and the family knew nest how to run their own lives, and make their own decisions. Since her demise we have not seen a similar politician at Westminster, not even Tony Blair could be described as a conviction politician despite his best attempts to pull the Labour Party away from it’s traditionalist roots, and the current leader of the Conservative Party has still not fully endeared himself to dyed in the wool old school Tories. The Thatcher era and policies were right for the time, and in many respects the time is approaching again when we need less of a congestion in the middle road of politics; the leading parties fighting over the middle ground will inevitably end up with a set of policies that the electorate will have a difficult time in deciphering and maintaining a clear choice. We need at least two clear sets of values before the next election in order to make a clear choice, and I suggest that David Cameron needs to move towards one of Thatcher’s values, making the individual feel important, empowered, and less threatened by the state and corporatism.

For all her achievements, as recognised in the poll, Lady Thatcher never really slayed the socialist dragon, even if she gave it a good kicking and forced it to withdraw and consider a new approach. Thirty years ago, during the no-confidence debate that led to the fall of the Callaghan government, she said:

“There has been a failure not only of policies but of the whole philosophy on which they are based - the philosophy which elevates the state, dwarfs the individual and enlarges the bureaucracy.”

We need someone who could make that speech today.

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Lord Lawson

Taking a cool look at Global Warming.

An interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph from the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson, probably the only UK politician prepared to speak out against the religion of anthropogenic global warming. I have to say, sitting here in South Shields that as the past few years have gone by, just about every politician, MP, and councillor that I have ever met has jumped onto this rolling bandwagon, accepting “the faith” and daring not to blaspheme by speaking ill of it. I too was caressed and cajoled by some of the dramatic moments of Al Gore’s film, but as more and more material creeps out from under the artillery barrage of the climate change evangelists, I start to harbour creeping doubts. It’s only natural, why not?

Lord Lawson has had his doubts for some time, there have even been doubters within the IPCC but someone seen to it that there thoughts would be either rewritten or discarded.

He says:

“Our politicians, need to be honest with the people. If they believe that we need to cut back drastically on carbon dioxide emissions today, at considerable cost and disruption to our way of life, because there is a remote risk of major disaster some time in the distant future, they should make the case explicitly in those terms. The fact is, that the science of what determines the earth’s temperature is far from settled or understood - and fortunately opinion surveys suggest that the majority of people, even in the UK where politicians of all parties sing from the same politically correct hymn sheet, instinctively sense that this is so.”

Nigel claims that the new environmentalist movements have filled the vacuum left by communism and that Green is the new Red.

He sees parallels with the apocalyptic visions held out by certain religious movements in the past. He is alarmed by the fanatical intolerance shown by many believers in global warming to any heretic who dares question their certainties.

He ends by describing “the new religion of global warming” as “the Da Vinci Code of environmentalism. It is a great story and a best-seller. It contains a grain of truth and a mountain of nonsense.

“We have entered,” he says, “a new age of unreason, which threatens to be as economically harmful as it is disquieting. It is from this, above all, that we really do need to save the planet.”

I wonder, what if, what if?

It is so easy to accept a majority view sometimes, that dissenting opinion is so easily rubbished and poo pooed. A libertarian should always allow some room to respect, accommodate, and tolerate views and opinions from a whole spectrum of sources, even if the majority don’t want to here them.

Or perhaps I just like backing the underdogs

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