23/01/2009 by Steve Tierney.

The Recession Is Here
Is there anybody who didn’t already know this? The official figures have finally forced the government to admit what everybody has been more than aware of for the last few months. We are officially in recession. People who have read my blog (and moreso if they’ve seen my comments on the FensCF bulletin board) will know I’ve been making economic predictions for several months now, only to see them come true one after another. I find it absolutely terrifying that the self-styled Economic Guru that is our Prime Minister actually seems to have no understanding of economics whatsoever. You cannot cure a debt-bubble by accumulating more debt. You cannot compete with unregulated countries in an international free market if you over-regulate and over-tax your own companies. You cannot (the words of ancient economist John Maynard-Keynes nothwithstanding) create wealth through government spending. Governments do not create wealth. They only redistribute it. You have to have some to redistribute in the first place!

Gordon Brown needs to stop wishing on a star and start taking urgent action. If he does not, Britain will be bankrupt. The IMF will be called in (and even they may not have enough money to bail us out this time). I just hope that the people of Britain will choose wisely next time and elect a Government that understands that money cannot be magicked into existence. If Gordon Brown decides to try and solve his woes by turning on the printing presses and churning out money then all bets are off! Hyper-Inflation here we come! Just In Case, I’d recommend stocking up on canned goods and candles. With this madman in charge it could still get much, much worse.

The Banks
I’m not going to get into the blame game right now. Anybody who thinks: “All this is the banks fault,” is dangerously oversimplifying. The banks have done some really stupid things, but the Banking Crisis is not the disease. It is just a symptom of the disease. The real ailment is a simple one: too much borrowing. You, me, the government, the banks, the world. Too much borrowing, too much debt, too much risk. We have all (by which I mean a large section of the Western World) chosen to live beyond our means and financed that with a decade of finance. Now, our government’s solution is to punish the few people who have done the sensible thing (avoided borrowing and saved) by crippling their savings and borrowing against their future.

The UK is like a teenager who leaves school and accepts three credit cards. For a while, the teenager looks wealthy and successful, buying anything that is required with a swipe. But when the cards hit their limits and the bills come due, the truth comes out. That’s where we are. The sad thing about the banks is that they are mostly structurally bankrupt. And they know it, which is why they can’t lend, and why they wont lend to each other. They must be allowed to rebuild, which cannot be achieved by forcing them to make even more risky loans. And certainly can’t be achieved by putting moronic government ministers in charge of their business plans.

Gorefield Conservative Branch
It was a pleasure last night to attend the Annual General Meeting of the North-East Cambs Conservative Association - Gorefield Branch. First and foremost, its quite unusual for a pleasant little village like Gorefield to even have its own association! But then when you see how hard they work and how much they achieve you have got to admire them! I watched the AGM and then the Committee Meeting thereafter with much appreciation. They put forwards fund-raising ideas and planned events. They all offered to pitch in and do the work required (not a single one of them was anything less then dedicated, as far as I could see). This is the sort of community- and activist-minded group that we need much, much more of. But best of all, they all seemed to be enjoying it and having a great time! A wonderfully positive attitude!
The current Chairman of the NE Cambs Conservative Association Pam Potts addressed the AGM eloquently with her own frank admiration for the work they have done and continue to do. Debbie Clark (Organising Secretary) was no less grateful.

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16/01/2009 by Steve Tierney.

Another Runway
“We have to have another runway at Heathrow,” We are told, over and over again, by those who support the expansion (including the Government and a whole lot of people on all sides of the political spectrum). They then go on to forebode in doom-filled phrases the ’serious economic consequences’ of ‘not providing a hub that meets business demand’. I’ve got a couple of things to say about that. First, we do not have to have another runway. We have to have air to breathe. We have to have food to survive. But outside of the bare essentials of life required by biological organisms like us, we do not have to do anything else. So let’s give the ‘have’ a rest for a while. We may want to. We do not have to.

Now I’ve got that out of the way let’s look at this a bit more clearly. This is a divisive issue. People on both sides of the argument have got fair points and the consequences of doing the wrong thing at this point could be very serious. Some people want a new or expanded airport in the North to encourage prosperity somewhere other than London. Others swear that Heathrow is a ‘preferred’ option for international business, citing concerns that we’ll lose trade to other countries with better airports, and worry about our future prosperity. Boris Johnson wants a new airport in the Thames Estuary. The people who live around Heathrow don’t want their homes and communities crushed by the wheels of industry and commerce. These are all perfectly valid arguments. On a serious matter like this we have to listen to one another, debate and discuss all the options and come up with the best one.

What we need is a place where all parties involved, indeed all areas of the country, send a preferred representative to speak on their behalf. Then, all those representatives could discuss the matter, representing all the views involved clearly and honestly. At the end of the debate they could then have a free vote and make a decision which would at least have the authority and weight of democracy behind it. What could we call such a place and such a group of people? Parliament has a nice ring to it. Isn’t it time the government stopped crushing our historic democracy and let our MPs do their jobs in the traditional way? If we wanted dictatorship there are a whole bunch of wars we needn’t have fought and a whole lot of brave young men who didn’t need to sacrifice themselves in the prime of their lives.

The Parliamentary Mace
Yesterday a Labour MP, John McDonnell, picked up the Parliamentary Mace and placed it in front of the Labour Front bench. The mace is a silver gilt ornamental club of about five feet in length, dating from the reign of Charles II. It symbolises the royal authority by which Parliament meets and also the authority of the Speaker. On each day that the House is sitting the mace is carried to the chamber at the head of the Speaker’s procession by the Serjeant at Arms. It is placed on the table of the House, except when the House is in committee, when it rests on two brackets underneath the table. Interfering with the mace constitutes gross disorderly conduct and is a contempt of the House.

It was a courageous thing to do. One which will probably blight his political career with his party. Whether or not you agree with him over the Heathrow debate, everybody surely has to admire his integrity. He is in parliament to represent his constituents. He could have blithely accepted the ‘party line’ and sat on his hands, but he did not. He did the job he was elected to do, despite the potential personal consequences. I have a lot of admiration for that.

School Footpath - Tydd St. Giles.
I attended the Tydd St. Giles Parish Council meeting this week. As usual it was a well-conducted and interesting meeting. In particular I was struck by one item on the agenda, the fact that a request for funds for important maintenance work on the footpath outside Kinderley Primary School was rejected by Joint Highways. This sort of thing winds me up and I’ll tell you why. I acknowledge that money isn’t available for everything that might need doing everywhere. Times are hard, the council has a budget which has to be carefully managed. People put in their proposals and only some can be chosen each year. But what worries me is that one of the things used to choose which work can be done is the record of reported accidents and fatalities. It may seem logical that an area of Highway that has had three accidents probably needs work more urgently than one which has none. But this is a school! The consequences of waiting to do work on the dilapidated footpath outside the school until it has a record of accidents or fatalities is that when the work is finally done it may be because a small child has been a victim of some potentially-serious mishap. That is not an acceptable way to make a decision. We should be doing work to protect people from injury as necessary, not as a knee-jerk response to blood already spilt! I am taking this one up on behalf of the people of Tydd St. I’ll ask some questions and let you know how I get along. Wish me luck!

Newton Parish Council
A Parish Council meeeting in the village of Newton this week was a hotbed of debate about the possiblity of funding from Fenland District Council to assist in the building of new housing. In general, the councillors were in favour of the plans and agreed to move forwards with it for further consultation. Some concerns were voiced about how the new housing might be used. The preference was for it to be offered first to existing residents. The Councillors wanted to avoid the new houses being used as a convenient deposit for people who had been moved on from other areas due to problems. The two District Council Housing Officers who had come along to discuss the plans confirmed that this was indeed the route they wished to take too and that residents would be given first refusal on the properties. So it all sounds good for Newton! Great news.

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06/01/2009 by Steve Tierney.

It’s The Economy! (Stupid)
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this is going to be a horrible year. The economy is taking a swan dive into the abyss. Retailers are closing faster than Gordon Brown can borrow money to mindlessly waste on pointless gimmicks and an ever-expanding bloated public sector. Unemployment is rising sharply. The banks are asking for another bailout (and it wont be the last). But if other governments or international bodies decide they no longer want to loan us money or buy our bonds, what then? I can hear those printing presses warming up as we speak, ready to print pounds until they no longer have any worth at all. Hold on to your hats. It’s going to get scary.

But look on the bright side. We’ve got our families and friends. We live in a (mostly) free country. I suspect, despite Labour’s criminal mismanagement, we’ll get through it. Older and wiser. Perhaps poorer, but maybe with a better understanding of what’s really important. And hopefully with a different party governing us…Birthday parties are a threat. Apparently.
My son had his four-year-old birthday two days ago. He goes to pre-school in Wisbech. I had decided to throw him a party at play2day (a kids adventure-play type place) in Guyhirn. We wanted to invite ten or so other children he knows to the party. Since he is so young we don’t really know who his friends are yet. He mentions names of other children at school, but we thought it would be a good idea to ask his teachers the first names of the children he commonly plays with at school so we could then give them invites to pass to the parents of those same children. Does this seem unreasonable? We didn’t want pictures of them, or to meet them, or to be allowed to give them sharp objects to play with. We just wanted their first names, so we could write on the invites “to the Parents of…. whoever” and then ask the teachers to pass those invites on to the relevant parents. Apparently, this is not allowed. Child Protection forbids it. My son’s schoolmate’s first names need to be ‘protected’ in case their classmates parents… god forbid… invite them to a birthday party.
Help! Help! There might be cake! There might be games!
I wonder if the teachers would reprimand my little son for telling us his friend’s names? “How did you find out this boy was called Jack? Your son told you? Police! Police! Arrest that child!”

Anyhow… Happy new year to anybody who stumbles across this page. I don’t know if I actually have any readers, but if I do, Best Wishes for 2009! It might still all end in roses!

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