Family, Responsibility and Opportunity

If there were ever any doubt, I think it is now clear that the Brown "bubble" has burst. The papers today are full of the news of our financial woes - something for which Gordon can blame no-one else. If you have a mortgage, as I do, the financial burden is getting more and more painful. Even though there seems to be a move to reduce our forces in Iraq and an outside chance that Gordon may consider a referendum on the EU, that is unlikely to be enough to give Mr Brown the certainty I think he needs to go to the country.

And I am pleased to see David Cameron stick to his guns - he is a Conservative and always has been. I quote from the Telegraph yesterday: "So let me spell it out. I am a Conservative because of the values that I have believed in all my life:family, responsibility and opportunity. I am a Conservative because I believe that those values lead inexorably to a political agenda whose central mission is to give people more power and control over their lives... because we want people to rely on their family, not the state; because you can't take responsibility for something unless you have control over it; and because true opportunity means having the freedom to achieve all you can in life."

Compassionate Conservatism doesn't mean abandoning a belief that lower taxation increases economic growth, or a belief that Europe should be about free trade not political union, or a determination to fight crime and give power back to citizens and take it away from criminals. But unless we address the fundamental causes of the breakdown in our society we won't be able to deliver. We need a health service run to deliver quality health care - not to meet artificial targets; we need an education system that gives our children real choice and a real prospect of employment, led by teachers, not children; we need families to feel supported not undermined by the state and a raft of legislation - without them we have no society.

In Newton Abbot and across Teignbridge we face daily attack on our public services, be it our paramedics and nurses or our fire fighters. Gordon Brown seems quite uninterested in the personal consequences to individuals of his cuts and has no interest in listening to the case put by local people who know first hand what the consequences will be. Post offices are set to suffer the same fate. Gordon does not know how to listen - and in time he will pay the price. In Newton Abbot, I will listen, I will do my homework and check the facts, and I will fight for those who look to me for help if that will deliver a better future for all of us living in Newton Abbot and its surrounding villages.

I have received much correspondence about the bypass - keep it coming! The more I know the better able I will be to champion the cause. And for the avoidance of doubt that cause is the reduction of traffic congestion and provision of much needed housing - BUT in the right place, at the right time, at the right price and after full and frank disclosure and consultation. Lets get it right...and not say after the event, why did we let Asda happen? "Anonymous" whoever he or she may be, asked me if I had evidence of the planned development which is a large part of the justification for the current bypass proposal. I would refer "anonymous" to an article in the Herald Express on page 22 dated April 26th 2006 and to the Kingskerswell Bypass Economic Impact Study of 2002.

Another week in politics!