Margaret Thatcher's Funeral

There has been so much written, so many TV interviews, comment & counter-comment in the last ten days.

I found Baroness Thatcher's funeral service, which I watched on TV with my kids today, deeply moving. The Bishop of London's sermon was quite awesome in its wisdom, our troops were 100% in every way, St Paul's Cathedral provided a truly British backdrop.

But if I am to capture one message which strikes the best chord for me about Maggie's legacy to us, it is this letter which will appear in tomorrow's Times newspaper.

Sir, On my way to watch Lady Thatcher’s funeral I overheard a man asking a police officer: “Where should I go from here do you reckon?”. To which the officer replied, without batting an eyelid: “That depends on where you wish to go, sir. Did you want St Paul’s, the procession, or the protest?”.
That, surely, is what it means to live in a free country.

Freedom of movement, of choice, of speech, of religion, of sexual choices. My kids take all of these completely for granted. What a wonderful thing that is. We must protect it always.

Issue of the Day - local election campaign trail

The weather continues to be bitterly cold with an Arctic wind driving straight at the North East from Siberia - are there no mountains to slow its pace?!

The Coquet Valley has been bracing up on the hillside, but at least we had gloves & hats. The pregnant ewes & newborn lambs are really struggling to survive this cold blast. One farmer told me today that he has space in sheds for the first 180 lambs, but after that he was going to struggle : so the weather has about 10 days to revert to spring before our lambs have to take the full force of the weather.

And it turns out that not only the livestock struggle with adequate power - the far end of the Valley has no mains electricity. Several farmers and residents have approached me about trying to start discussions with the electricity board and the National Parks about how we might help them enter the 21st century with reliable and cost-effective power generation rather than having to rely on petrol-dependent generators. With the cost of fuel up at 159.9p per litre at one of the local petrol stations,that reliance is unsustainable. We are planning a meeting in the weeks ahead. If you have concerns, please do contact me on anne-marie@dualthea1.com .

Conservative Campaign HQ

I have just arrived for a meeting with my campaign team mentor in London, and in the entrance is the campaign countdown clock....!

Its Election Time!

There is something very exciting about the cranking up of election campaigns, and I have been out with our excellent council candidate Brian Hesler in the Rothbury area.

My favourite part of an election campaign is that I have an excuse to go and chat to all those who live in far flung corners of the constituency, to hear how they all are, and to find out what is or isn't working for them.

The Coquet Valley is a particularly special corner of Northumberland - spectacular untouched territory, where even electricity pylons are banned as the National Park protects the rugged landscape from industrial intrusion.

What has been a noticeable difference since I was last canvassing here is the crumbling road network. I can just hear the Lib Dems at County Hall saying that its not worth doing the roads for just a few houses. But this winding road up the Valley is much more than that- its the access and welcome (or not!) to the thousands of visitors to our National Park each year.

I will be challenging the LibDems on this, but I fear that I already know their answer. The only solution is a change of political leadership at County Hall, by getting Brian Hesler elected as the Conservative Councillor for Rothbury Division.

Dual the A1 Campaign for 2013

The Christmas post has brought me an unexpected present, in the form of confirmation of a meeting with the new Secretary of State for Transport in the New Year. Following the Chancellor's positive messages in his Autumn Statement about the importance of Dualling the A1 to the Scottish Border, I wrote again to the DfT asking for a meeting to discuss the first tranche of evidence which our Campaign Team has collated since the summer on economic impacts to local and regional businesses.

I am very pleased that our continued efforts and those of all political parties raising this critical NE issue at Westminster alongside the campaign is making an impact. The reality is that talking about it isn't enough - businesses from Scotland down to Teesside have to help us build the economic evidence to prove to Whitehall just how vital this investment is for the future of the North East.

We have a few more weeks before this meeting, so I would encourage all your readers who have any business involvement, to take a few minutes to complete our business survey at www.surveymonkey.com/a1businessview.

We can build an really strong case if every business in the region shares their views. We must able to justify the investment commitment to the Treasury.

The A1 sees investment...

The chancellors Autumn Statement today was cautious and tried to share the continuing burden of reducing public spending to clear the huge deficit left by Labour.

Whilst there was continued increase in the personal tax allowance (trying to get to £10,000 before 2015), the reductions in the deficit are small and slow. The cancellation of Labour's fuel escalator so that our fuel costs DON'T go up by 3p a litre from January is hugely welcome from all drivers, but especially from rural dwellers for whom a car is a necessity, not a luxury.

But perhaps one of the key parts of the statement was the £64m of capital investment into the A1 at the Lobley Hill road interchange at Gateshead. This proves to me that our cross-party campaigning efforts alongside business to get through to the Treasury the importance of freeing up the traffic movements of north east business is being heard. Much of the work for this announcement was put in place through the efforts of the previous Secretary of State for Transport, Justine Greening.

So now we must ramp up our campaign effort and data collection for dualling the A1 north of Newcastle to the Scottish Border. The Department has asked us as a region to make the economic case for this dualling, and we need EVERY business in the north east, in Scotland, and more widely across the UK, to tell us how their businesses are affected by this appalling farm track through Northumberland.

Is your business:
-Spending more on fuel costs by having to send goods around the west coast?
-struggling with accessing wider markets due to poor transport route?
-finding employee travel times are negatively impacted by unpredictable drive times?
-struggling to get inward investment due to lack of belief in value of the region as a good place to invest?

This and a few other questions are to be found on our website at www.dualthea1.com

So far we have been able to speak to 150 regional businesses, but we need to gather the views of 1,000s of businesses if we are to prove to government that this vital stretch of road must receive investment in the near future if we are to change the fortunes of the north east.

Please ask your friends and colleagues who run any size of business to spend a few minutes completing the survey at www.surveymonkey.co.uk/a1businessview.

We are under siege from EU regulations again...

It seems that the Government's Green Deal programme is under severe scrutiny and the threat of failure before it has even started, thanks to bureaucrats in Brussels who want the UK to start charging 20% VAT on energy-saving materials or face massive fines at the European Court of Justice.

Currently, the UK Treasury levies a reduced rate of 5% VAT for insulation materials for walls, ceilings, floors and water tanks. However, the full 20% rate of VAT still applies to energy-efficient windows and doors.  The European Commission has declared that our reduced 5% tax rate is unlawful.  I am pleased to hear that our Government is fiercely disputing the ruling but the EU's Tax Commissioner said today that it is unlikely our challenge will be successful.

If Europe sticks to its decision then the Green Deal would probably fail as it would no longer be financially viable.

Alongside this latest interference by the EU's unelected officialdom in our day-to-day affairs in the UK, David Cameron is battling against other EU country leaders who are happy to see the EU budget grow ever bigger, at UK and Germany's expense.  We now have a NET contribution to the EU of over £7 billion - so no wonder 17 countries who are net recipients of our money aren't keen to see any sensible freeze in costs. They would lose out, and have to make difficult spending cuts which would no doubt be politically unpopular.  UK funds help them limit their difficult finance decisions within their own countries. For the record, our LibDem MP Sir Alan Beith is advocating a small increase in the UK's contribution to EU funds. 

With all this financial interference continuing to impose restrictions and order on our ability to manage our budgets, the European Court of Human Rights is trying to force the UK to give prisoners the vote.  This is a policy which has been vigourously denounced by both Conservatives and Labour in recent years, with only the LibDems supporting the right to vote for prisoners.  I have always believed that voting is a civil right, certainly not an inalienable right, and that if you break the laws of the country you should lose that right until you have served your time.

I was horrified to hear our MP in the House yesterday calling for some sort of acceptance that prisoners  - perhaps those shortly to finish their sentences - should be given the vote, so that we can avoid compensation charges being forced upon us.  Is expediency acceptable on such an important moral position for a nation?