Break out the thermals, Ice Age on the way!

The party conference season has come and gone, the normal stage managed theatricals dispensed with for another year, and what did we learn?

Well "cat gate" highlighted the lunacy of the Human Rights Act for all to see, Ken Clarke highlighted his liberal credentials, (nothing new there), Ed Balls proved that he should not be allowed within a light year of the economy ever again, and Ed Milliband demonstrated what a completely useless leader he actually is. Apart from that it was all too predictable and pretty dull if I'm honest.

Perhaps the most interesting speech of the month was made by George Osborne, or as I call him my mate George. He made what I thought was a very measured speech about the state of the World, and especially Europe's economy, there is no doubt we are living through a potential catastrophe, I just hope our leaders understand the problems and can take the measures to guide us all through.

In his speech, he made what was perhaps a most fundamental point, which has gone largely un-reported in the press so far. He said that from now on the UK would row back on the commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050, and by 20% by 2020 and would from now on only reduce emissions in line with the European average.

Since the Kyoto protocol and the subsequent Climate Change Act was passed by parliament in 2008, the climate change zealots have driven the agenda and forced the government to introduce measures such as charging companies for every tonne of carbon they produce. This carbon floor scheme added to other measures, has the effect of putting £404 billion on the cost of producing power, which is over £750 on the annual energy bill of every household in the country for the next 40 years.

It has led to the proliferation of wind turbines that blight our landscape and achieve nothing in the reduction of CO2. It takes over 20 years of operation at 25% efficiency to pay back the CO2 generated in the manufacture and servicing of these monsters, and though we are told the lifespan will be 25 years, I am hearing that most will be worn out long before then, and all that to produce power at three times the cost of a conventional power station. Guess who pays the bill for these acts of folly, WE ALL DO!

We are told that all new coal and gas power stations must be fitted with carbon capture technology so that the nasty CO2 can be trapped and then buried in the ground for thousands of years, the only problem is that carbon capture hasn't been proven yet, and it's predicted that it will never achieve the targets set for it!

As is usually the case, when new rules are made, this country jumps through hoops to make sure they are obeyed, no matter the consequences, while all the huge polluters of the world have done nothing. The USA, China, India etc haven't even signed up to the protocol, leave alone done anything to reduce emissions, and why, because they know it is economic suicide to do so.

In Europe they are still discussing the way forward towards a 2050 target, again no agreement so far, very little implementation of penalties for carbon producers, so all we have achieved so far is to put all of our major industries, such as pharmaceuticals and chemicals at a huge disadvantage with the rest of the world, no wonder so many are looking at re-locating in a more business friendly environment.

Then today, I read in the Sunday Times, that the Met office is now predicting that far from us all frying under increasingly hot conditions as global warming takes us on the road to Armageddon, we are in fact heading towards a mini ice age!

No doubt the climate change zealots will say that the ice age will be all our fault too, but as we have had many mini and maxi ice ages during the earth's history, and will no doubt have many more in the future, I think finally we may be finally moving into a world where we will not be dominated by the doom and gloom merchants.

This planet will eventually run out of oil and gas, so it makes sense to make the very best use of what we have, I'm also sure that technology will come up with novel solutions to the power supply issues as we go forward. Whether it is Hydrogen powered cars, or Cold Fusion power stations, science and technology will find the solution.

A geologist from Shell told me about 6 years ago that if you add up all the oil that we have used from the beginning of the industrial revolution to the present time, it will make up less than 10% of the total oil that is left in the ground, so far we have only extracted the easy stuff, from now on it will get harder and more expensive, and at 30 dollars a barrel it would never happen, however at 100 dollars plus per barrel it certainly will.

In the meantime perhaps we can stop driving up energy bills un-necessarily and perhaps we can stop driving high energy consuming companies such as the North Wales aluminium smelter that has just re-located to South Africa taking hundreds of jobs with them, because of the cost of the carbon floor scheme

You never know, producing a bit more CO2 might even stave off the worst effects of the ice age that is coming?

Greek Lunacy

It appears the Greeks have been taking economic lessons from Ed Balls, he of "the only way to cut the deficit is to borrow more" school of economics.

I read today that the Greek government, in debt up to their eyebrows and beyond, with a supposed austerity drive being fought at every step by the disgruntled public, have ordered no less than 400 battle tanks from the USA to supplement their armed forces!

Now these tanks aren't any old cheap rubbish, they are M1 Abrams , top of the range jobs at a cool £1.3 billion for the job lot. In addition they have also ordered various armoured personnel carriers and artillery pieces taking the total to just over £2 billion.

In times of plenty it is wise for government's to update and expand their defence capability, however when you are likely to default on your debts to the tune of £2.4 billion, why on earth would you be spending another £2 billion on arms when there is not a war on?

Perhaps they intend manning the barricades when the worlds banks come knocking on the door for the money that they owe!!

I think this one has to go in the "you couldn't make it up pile".

Quitting the Euro - By Daniel Hannan - The Corner - National Review Online

Everyone should read this. Dan Hannan nearly always makes sense, this time he hits the nail firmly on the head.

Quitting the Euro - By Daniel Hannan - The Corner - National Review Online

Boundary Review: Massive changes for Somerset

The long awaited report from the Boundary Commission has been published today, I should be fishing in the Channel Islands and unable to comment, but Hurricane Katya has forced us to postpone for 24 hrs and so there is no escape!!!!

However, the afore mentioned report has thrown up quite a few changes to the local Parliamentary Constituencies, so I thought I would just comment on the proposals so far. As part of the coalition agreement to hold a referendum on the voting process earlier this year, leading to the resounding No vote against the Lib Dem Alternative Vote proposal, the government pledged to reduce the number of MP's in Parliament to 600 from the current 650 and at the same time even up the sizes of each constituency in terms of voter numbers.

The last Labour government had successfully gerrymandered the constituencies to the point where they had a 6% benefit in their favour, in other words, the Conservatives would have to get at least 6% more of the popular vote, just to remain level with Labour in terms of seats!!!
The new proposals eliminate this inbuilt bias in favour of Labour, and means that all seats, except those on the Isle of Wight, have an electorate in the 73,000 to 77,000 range. Previously some Labour strongholds only had 40,000 voters and some Conservative seats had over 100,000, hardly fair I think you would agree.

So what does this mean locally? Well overall, the number of seats in this immediate region remains the same at 10, the South West as a whole loses 2 seats. However the boundaries of the seats have changed radically.

The new "North East Somerset" seat includes Shepton Mallet, Frome, Midsomer Norton, Radstock and Paulton, which is in effect part of the old Wells seat, part of the Somerton and Frome seat, both in Mendip, and part of Jacob Rees Mogg's seat in Bath and North East Somerset (BANES).

The rest of the old Somerton and Frome seat is now in a new "Wincanton and Glastonbury" seat, which includes Somerton and Ilminster. Finally the old Wells seat has changed radically, losing both Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury/Street and gaining parts of North Somerset to compensate.

Further afield Taunton Deane loses many of its surrounding villages and is proposed to be renamed Taunton, Bridgwater will be amalgamated with parts of West Somerset, leaving very little as it was.

These proposals are now subject to a 12 week consultation process, however, with the amount of work that has gone into this review, I would suspect and changes to boundaries will be fairly minor, though changes to Constituency names more likely. It will be interesting to see how our local MP's act over the coming months, if the complexion of the new seat doesn't look favourable, you will see a number trying to jump ship elsewhere.

Right that’s my lot until next week, The sign on the door says “Gone Fishin’ “and this time I mean it.

More woes for Labour.

Things have been far from well with Her Majesty’s Opposition for many years, lack of leadership, wrong leaders elected, thieving MP’s sent to prison, a new scandal gets added to the increasing list almost daily. Then there is the political positioning, having taken a gigantic lurch to the left with the appointment of Brown, followed by the hapless Milliband, they find themselves on the wrong side of just about every argument from the Economy, to Human Rights, to Education and this week Policing and Sentencing. The shadow Foreign Secretary managed to jump onto the wrong side of the Libiyan bandwagon and Milliband has the less than enviable ability to jump in with both feet on the wrong side on just about every occasion.

Then just when the Labour party thought it couldn’t get much worse, the former Chancellor and traitor, Alistair Darling, comes up with the obligatory book charting his time as puppet to Brown. The explosive revelations that Gordon Brown was a psychopathic bully and control freak won’t come as any surprise, but the internecine warfare going on within the party is now exposed for the rest of the world to see.

All the way through the financial crash, that was made much worse by the already profligate spending put in place by Brown when he was Chancellor under Blair, the Labour government were more interested in fighting each other than they were in trying to sort out the problems of the country.

There was absolutely no trust between PM and chancellor, to the extent that Brown’s chief bully boy’s wife was sent to the treasury to keep an eye on Darling, what a state of affairs. Smug thug Ed Balls, chief deficit denier, and his pernicious wife Yvette Cooper, spent most of their time scheming and plotting to oust Darling as chancellor, only to find that levering Balls into the position would have been so unpopular within the Labour ranks, it would have toppled the already mortally wounded Brown.

So they were left in a position where the Chancellor was too weak to introduce the measures that were desperately needed and a Prime Minister too weak to sack his chancellor, what a sorry state of affairs!!

The truth of the disastrous Labour years is beginning to emerge a piece at a time, Blair describing dealing with Brown as “like having a tooth extracted without anaesthetic”, the decision to make Brown PM was not taken because he was the best man for the job, but instead because he plotted and schemed against anyone that may have stood against him, with Balls foremost in the scheming stakes.

Then after choosing the wrong brother as leader, and an innumerate as Chancellor, we get Balls back at the helm once again, pulling the strings and getting his own way.

And what a tour de force he has been, in the few short months that he has been shadow Chancellor, Labour have reversed every policy that they had proposed to try to deal with the huge deficit that they left behind.  The last Darling plan was for the deficit to be halved over the lifetime of the parliament, the coalition plan is more ambitious than that; however the difference between the two plans is fairly marginal. For every £8 of savings promoted by the coalition, the former Labour plan would have saved £7, however now, Labour have no plan whatsoever to deal with the huge debt mountain that the country is struggling under, in the last week, the final proposed saving of 12% in the police has been dropped.

So Balls continues his “too far too fast “mantra about the coalition deficit reduction plan, without any sort of plan at all to deal with it. His course of no action would mean that this country would lose its credit rating, borrowing would be more expensive, and we would rapidly find ourselves in the same position as Greece and Portugal having to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout. The man has no shame and no ideas.

So where are we with the current Labour party, its donors have deserted it in droves, it is more or less bankrupt and only survives because the Unions pump money into it so that they can hold the strings of their puppet MP’s, they have no policies worth repeating, and the internecine warfare continues.  They now face a cap on donations, which if implemented by Parliament, will limit how much any Union can bribe their MP’s with. Each individual union member will have to donate separately, and we will easily see just how small their support is when that comes through.

Just to cap things off, we hear that former MP and Blair babe Jaqui Smith, possibly the worst Home Secretary in history, whose husband put porn films on her expenses, is not satisfied with fleecing the taxpayer to the tune of £116,000 by claiming that her sisters spare bedroom was her “main residence” so she could claim for all the expenses for her actual home in Redditch, has been found to have invited convicted felons into her home, whilst serving prison sentences, to carry out some light re-decoration, free of charge of course!

Perhaps they watched some of her husband's porn collection while they were there!

A Wake Up Call for Us All

 There can't have been many people who were not as shocked as I was when viewing the sheer lawlessness displayed on the streets of our major cities during the last week. We often hear about young tearaways up to no good, we even get some of it around here at times, but the scale of the violence and looting carried out by children and young adults was of a whole new order.

The inquests to what happened have already started, and I'm pretty sure they will be followed up with an enquiry or two from the select committees, or even a public enquiry, but despite all of that perhaps some good will come of all the destruction if the silent majority in this country finally wake up and take action against the soft liberal policies that have led to this situation developing.

The obvious problem with the whole situation is lack of discipline, starting in the home, continued at school, perpetuated by the police, far too many young people are reared with little or no discipline in their lives. They can act with impunity, no sanctions are imposed at home, teachers are completely toothless, and our justice system spends far too much time worrying about the poor little darlings who commit crime, and singularly forgets the victims of crime, it's high time we woke up and smelt the coffee!

One of the first significant steps that we must take is to repeal the odious Human Rights Act from our legislation, and replace it with a bill of rights that enshrines our liberty, without imposing ridiculous restrictions on our courts. It must be for our parliament to design laws that meet with public support, and it must be our judges that decide whether convicted terrorists or illegal immigrants can be deported back to their country of origin, it must not be unelected judges in Europe to decide on those matters.

The last Labour government spent 12 years ploughing millions of pounds into sink estates, single mothers, drug addicts and gang members. The benefits system became so illogical that many are better off to be out of work and claiming benefits than actually working, people claiming benefits, can often live a lifestyle that many working people can only dream of, this can't be right.

We rapidly need to get back to a situation where young people respect their elders and authority. The ridiculous situation where teachers have to operate a "no touch" policy through fear of prosecution has to be scrapped, parents must be able to discipline their children without immediate investigation by "Childline" and Social Services. I'm not talking about a return to corporal punishment or beating children, but young people must learn where the boundaries are, and those boundaries have to be policed.

More importantly, parents need to learn to set an example for their children to follow, to have a strong work ethic and to reinforce what is right and what is wrong. In addition the police need to be freed from the political correctness that hamstrings their actions, they must be able to robustly police our streets without cries of police brutality every time some rioter or looter gets his skull cracked with a truncheon. We all need to support our police, and to back them to the hilt when they are protecting us and our property.

I am not calling for us to return to a bygone age, but we must pull back from this cuddly fluffy politically correct nonsense that pervades our society, the weak liberal experiment of the past 12 years has spectacularly failed, Blair, Brown and Milliband need to be held to account for their abject neglect of the silent majority.

It was their policies that created 2.5 million jobs that immediately went to foreign nationals coming into this country. This influx of cheap labour not only forced many of our un-skilled and semi-skilled workers onto the dole queues, it exacerbated the shortage of affordable housing and increased social tensions in many communities.

The riots of last weekend may have happened now, but they were created by 12 years of Labour mismanagement and social experimentation.

The things they wish they hadn't said!!

 There are times in your life when things you have said in the past come back to haunt you. With the continuing turmoil in the markets across the globe, and the potential meltdown of the Euro, I thought it might be interesting to look at what some of our illustrious leaders have said in the past.

• "The reality of the euro has exposed the absurdity of many anti-European scares while increasing the public thirst for information. Public opinion is already changing as people can see the success of the new currency on the mainland." (Ken Clarke, 2002)

• "The euro, despite gloomy predictions from anti-Europeans, has proved to be a success. We cannot afford to be isolated from our biggest and closest trading partner any longer." (Charles Kennedy, 2002)

• "If we get rid of sterling and adopt the euro, we will also get rid of sterling crises and sterling overvaluations. This will give us a real control over our economic environment." (Chris Huhne, 2004)

• "The euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline in the rest of Europe than any number of exhortations from the IMF or the OECD." (Nick Clegg, 2002)

• "If we stay out, the price we will pay in lost investment and jobs would be incalculable." (Peter Mandelson, 2002)

Isn't it comforting that our leaders past and present have got their fingers firmly on the pulse?

My thanks once again to Dan Hannan for his inspiration this week.

Beware of bearing gifts to the Greek's

It been an interesting week one way or another, we've seen the Murdoch's up in front of the Commons Select Committee along with their former editor Rebeka Brooks to answer questions about phone hacking, why does this whole episode smack of chickens coming home to roost?

For the past three years or so the press have been constantly kicking the ball into an empty net regarding the MP's expenses, only now for most of them to be hoist on their own petard and finding themselves investigated by Knacker of the Yard, (mind you old Knacker himself is in the frame too). In my personal view, the press pretty much deserve everything that is about to be done to them, perhaps after it is all over we will have responsible politicians that make the right decisions on behalf of us all, and a press corp that reports on the things that matter instead of tittle tattle and what goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults?

Well I can hope I suppose!!

But while all this has been going on, and dear old auntie BBC has been getting her 40 deniers in a twist, there have been much more important issues raising their heads just across the channel.

I've been writing for months now about the catastrophe that is likely to befall the Eurozone. The BBC and its leftie cronies have more or less ignored what has been going on, after all its much more fun to kick the Murdoch press to death. But in the meantime, the Greek tragedy has continued, with the EU finally deciding to back yet another bail out for a country who has a debt the equivalent of just shy of twice everything it produces. The most recent estimate is that the figure is 180% of GDP, in terms that most of us can understand it means that if you add up the entire output of a country, manufacturing, service industry, banking, investments etc etc, you get a figure known as the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. In better times debt levels of perhaps 30-40% of GDP were thought to be manageable. At the end of the Conservative Government in 1997 our debt was falling rapidly heading for 25%. Gordon Brown through his profligate spending forced ours up to very nearly 50% of GDP and his legacy will mean that our debt will continue to rise to about 70% of GDP before falling back over the next 5 years or so.

Greece has a debt of 180% of GDP, basically it is bankrupt, kaput, finished, but the EU commissars who still dream of a united Federal Europe can't or won't see it collapse, instead it will continue to pump money into the stricken economy in a vain attempt to prevent the great Euro experiment from collapsing in a heap.

I listened intently to Daniel Hannan MEP and eurosceptic on radio five live this week, his analysis mirrors my own, the Europe experiment is over. The stricken countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and now Italy must be allowed to free themselves from a currency dominated by France and Germany, his solution, and quite a novel one at that, is that Germany and France should leave the Euro and revert back to the Deutchmark and the Franc (or to a separate common currency) while the other poorer countries are allowed to devalue the Euro, cut interest rates and kick start their economies.

The current situation is rather like having a ship with a massive hole below the waterline, no matter how fast you bail it out, you are fighting a losing battle. Another analogy I heard today was this "When King Phillip of Spain died his devoted and slightly mad wife refused to accept the situation and slept next to the decaying corpse for three whole years, take heed Greece!!!"

However, on the bright side, it appears that my mate George has managed to keep us out of the latest debacle, and if the Eurozone collapses, it will give Cameron all the ammunition he needs to re-negotiate our relationship with Europe, and once again return to the "Common Market" which after all was what we voted to join, and extricate us from this European federal experiment which has so spectacularly failed.

We can once again take control of our borders, our laws, our taxation, our spending and our way of life, without the constant interference of unelected bureaucrats from across the water.

One for the old guys.

This last weekend saw the annual Open Golf Championship played out over the magnificent links at Royal St. Georges Golf Club, Sandwich, Kent.

As is usually the case, the great British weather played a huge part in proceedings with all four seasons coming and going within a few minutes, at one time on Sunday huge raindrops like goose eggs pelted down, followed a few seconds later by bright sunshine, the only consistent factor was the 20-30 mph winds that blew across the course all week.

To emerge as the Champion Golfer of the year in conditions such as those takes a rare talent, fortitude, a cool head, and a fair slice of luck. Darren Clarke has all the talent in the world, keeps a cool head under pressure, is perhaps more resilient than any other player on the tour, and admitted that he had his fair slice of luck too. Starting early on Thursday and late on Friday he managed to avoid the worst of the rain, although his 69 on Saturday in pretty dire conditions must have been the round of his life, then yesterday when it all could have fallen apart he played superbly, under the most enormous pressure to claim the Old Claret Jug.

Darren Clarke is a great guy, he has been through an awful lot in his life, his form has deserted him for years on end and he more or less took five years out of his career in the prime of his life to help his wife, in vain as it turned out, to fight breast cancer. He deserves every bit of the adulation that will come his way over the next weeks and months.

But what is really special in my view was the manner of his victory, he doesn’t use the course as his own personal spittoon like the un-missed Tiger Woods, he doesn’t complain about the weather like his young Irish protégé Rory Mcilroy, he doesn’t look like the world will cave in when he misses a putt like the eternally grumpy Sergio Garcia, he plays with a smile on his lips, and a twinkle in his eye, just like the late great Seve Ballesteros who lost his own fight with cancer a few months ago.

Darren like most of us Sunday golfers likes a glass of Red or a pint of Guinness, he knows his way around a menu, his parties are legendary. He generally avoids the gym like the plague, and is well known for having a quiet puff whilst stood on the tee sharing an off colour joke with his playing partners. I have not heard one person offer any form of criticism of Darren Clarke as a golfer or as a human being. The spokesman for the R&A said yesterday that golf is a game of skill and strategy, it is not always the strongest or fittest that come out on top.

So the much vaunted challenge from the world’s top ranked players failed to materialise, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood failed to make the cut, Mcilroy just made it but finished well back in the pack, Kaymer similarly never put in a meaningful blow on Sunday. It was left to the old guys Clarke, Mickelson, and Bjorn to show the flat stomachs how to play when the going gets tough; the only young pretender to show was Dustin Johnson from the USA who briefly threatened before succumbing to the treacherous par 5 14^th.

So Darren Clarke will show the world how to be a champion with humility and good grace, I predict that he will show the world how to celebrate as well, he is supposed to be playing in the Irish Open on Thursday next week, he said today that he’ll play if he sobers up in time, that’s my sort of golfer!!

Look out we're back

Well here it is! After a short summer recess, Shepton in Blue is back and better than ever (well I guess you'll be the judge of that).

What to write about now I'm back? Red Ed and his inability to lead Labour out of the wilderness, Nick Clegg and the rapidly disappearing Lib Dems, phone hacking and the demise of the Screws of the World, the Accommodation review at MDC or the crisis in the Euro mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!

I think I'll start with the Euro crisis, I wrote some months ago about Alistair Darling running off to Brussels and signing us up to the European stability package, with George Osborne warning him not to do it, well after weeks of denials from Darling, Milliband, Balls et al, the truth finally came out last week when a freedom of information request revealed that Osborne had indeed demanded that Darling did not sign us up to long term financial commitments after Labour had lost the election but before the new government was in place. Darling completely ignored this and committed us to £billions of support for the beleaguered Euro even though we are not part of the wretched single currency.

Cameron has now negotiated us out of that deal, but that won't happen until 2015 and by then we will have stumped up many billions of pounds in financial aid, I said at the time that Darling should hold his head in shame, he ought to be up in front the beak with all his fellow expenses fiddlers, treason wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration.

It now appears that Portugal may well go the same way a Ireland and Greece, with Spain not far behind, and thanks to Darling and his cronies we are now mixed up in the whole sorry mess. If that isn't enough, we then get Balls and Milliband sounding like a stuck record with their "too deep and too fast" mantra regarding the cuts, this sorry pair backed up by their leftie friends in the BBC, force this diet of negativity down everyone's throats at every opportunity, the new BBC chairman Chris Patten has already said as much and intends to change it. The last thing this country needs is constant negative carping by the discredited Nu Labour luvvies, a diet comprehensively swallowed by our local left wing apologist Chris Inchley.

 The fact is that the coalition government have succeeded in preventing this country going down the Swanee alongside Ireland and Greece, the economy is growing and being re-balanced with jobs being created in the private sector at a greater rate than they are being lost in the public sector, I'd rather the whole lot just said thank you for getting us out of the mire and then shut up for ever.

When profession and politics collide

As a businessman and local councillor I have to be scrupulous to keep business and political matters entirely separate. The penalties for nest feathering are very severe, it is therefore essential that the public is fully aware what your interests are, and that you declare them when necessary.

Having said all that, I now find myself in a position where my professional expertise and my role as a Conservative councillor have met neatly in the middle.

Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport and Cabinet Minister, recently announced that he intended to carry out a review into the MOT testing regime, and to come forward with recommendations regarding its future. The previous government did a similar exercise some five years ago and decided to leave well alone, "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it", however that was before the financial crash, and the need for every government department to save money where possible.

I have read numerous pieces in the last few weeks, written by people with little or no knowledge of the MOT scheme that insinuate that the current scheme is "Gold Plated" and out of step with the rest of Europe, that vehicles are now more reliable and do not need to be tested as often, and that reducing the incidence of testing will somehow save money for the motorist and the country as a whole.

I have to say, most of that is complete rubbish.

We have more experience of testing vehicles than the rest of Europe put together, we started back in the early 1960's and have continued ever since. Most of the other countries in Europe have based their testing regime on our experience, however some 20 years ago the European Commission, in a bid to get testing systems introduced into every country in the EU, allowed new members to introduce a halfway scheme, where vehicles where first tested at 4 years old, and then every other year after that, what is known as a 4-2-2 schedule, the theory was that our 3-1-1 schedule was too onerous as a first step, but all members should strive to get there eventually.

Now 20 years later, it appears that we may have our standards dragged down to European levels rather than the rest of Europe reaching ours. The implications of this change are too awful to contemplate, it will probably lead to the closure of many rural garages that rely on their MOT trade to exist, it is estimated that some 40,000 mechanics will lose their jobs as a result. Countries that have 4-2-2 at the moment have an accident rate for killed and serious injury accidents, (KSI) attributed to mechanical defects of around 7%, our KSI is about 3%, changing to 4-2-2 in this country will almost certainly lead to an extra 350+ road deaths every year.

The insurance industry have already said that premiums are sure to rise as a result of increased accident risk if the change is implemented, this will completely wipe out any savings the motorist will get from the £25 per year reduction in MOT fees paid and on top of all that all evidence points to the fact that even though vehicles are more reliable there is no evidence at all that they are any safer or that the components on a modern car last longer than in the past. In fact tyres, brakes and suspension components do not last as long now as they did even 10 years ago and failure rates are still going up!!

So I find myself on both sides of the argument at the same time, only on this occasion no one has yet to convince me that a change to 4-2-2 will be for the better in any measure, my representations to the government review team will certainly make that point.

When two world's collide

As a businessman and local councillor I have to be scrupulous to keep business and political matters entirely separate. The penalties for nest feathering are very severe, it is therefore essential that the public is fully aware what your interests are, and that you declare them when necessary.

Having said all that, I now find myself in a position where my professional expertise and my role as a Conservative councillor have met neatly in the middle.

Philip Hammond, Secretary of State for Transport and Cabinet Minister, recently announced that he intended to carry out a review into the MOT testing regime, and to come forward with recommendations regarding its future. The previous government did a similar exercise some five years ago and decided to leave well alone, "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it", however that was before the financial crash, and the need for every government department to save money where possible.

I have read numerous pieces in the last few weeks, written by people with little or no knowledge of the MOT scheme that insinuate that the current scheme is "Gold Plated" and out of step with the rest of Europe, that vehicles are now more reliable and do not need to be tested as often, and that reducing the incidence of testing will somehow save money for the motorist and the country as a whole.

I have to say, most of that is complete rubbish.

We have more experience of testing vehicles than the rest of Europe put together, we started back in the early 1960's and have continued ever since. Most of the other countries in Europe have based their testing regime on our experience, however some 20 years ago the European Commission, in a bid to get testing systems introduced into every country in the EU, allowed new members to introduce a halfway scheme, where vehicles where first tested at 4 years old, and then every other year after that, what is known as a 4-2-2 schedule, the theory was that our 3-1-1 schedule was too onerous as a first step, but all members should strive to get there eventually.

Now 20 years later, it appears that we may have our standards dragged down to European levels rather than the rest of Europe reaching ours. The implications of this change are too awful to contemplate, it will probably lead to the closure of many rural garages that rely on their MOT trade to exist, it is estimated that some 40,000 mechanics will lose their jobs as a result. Countries that have 4-2-2 at the moment have an accident rate for killed and serious injury accidents, (KSI) attributed to mechanical defects of around 7%, our KSI is about 3%, changing to 4-2-2 in this country will almost certainly lead to an extra 350+ road deaths every year.

The insurance industry have already said that premiums are sure to rise as a result of increased accident risk if the change is implemented, this will completely wipe out any savings the motorist will get from the £25 per year reduction in MOT fees paid and on top of all that all evidence points to the fact that even though vehicles are more reliable there is no evidence at all that they are any safer or that the components on a modern car last longer than in the past. In fact tyres, brakes and suspension components do not last as long now as they did even 10 years ago and failure rates are still going up!!

So I find myself on both sides of the argument at the same time, only on this occasion no one has yet to convince me that a change to 4-2-2 will be for the better in any measure, my representations to the government review team will certainly make that point.

Somerset gears up for the future

You have probably heard by now that the Somerset and Devon bid for funds to develop a high speed BroadBand network across both counties has been successful. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) put everyone out of their misery early on Friday morning when they announced that Somerset and Devon were to receive £31 million out of a total pot of £50 million to bring high speed BroadBand to the South West.

It is difficult to over estimate how important this announcement is, whilst it will be great for all of us that use the internet to have world leading connection speeds, it is business that will be the primary beneficiaries, and the fact that we will have the infrastructure in place will have a profoud impact on the prospects for business growth.

The bid model indicates that this injection of investment will bring an extra 50,000 jobs to the two counties and £750 million in extra turnover, in an area that has traditionally had lower than average incomes with higher than average house prices, an injection of business at the predicted level will have a dramatic impact on prosperity.

When the project is completed it is predicted that over 85% of people will have access to super fast BroadBand, with speeds up to 200 magabytes per second. If we compare that with what we have currently, many rural areas have virtually no BroadBand at all, and when there is a connection they are lucky to have speeds of 1 or 2 mbps. Even in the major towns it is unusual to have speeds over 10 mbps, I live just over a mile from the Shepton exchange and my speed is 8 mbps.

Direct connection to a fibre optic pipe will certainly give speeds in excess of 200 mbps, but even if the fibre optic pipe is only brought to the local junction box, with the original copper connection from there to the house it is likely that we will see 40 mbps or more in the majority of homes.

With more and more remote working, or "agile working" as it is sometimes called, it is essential that households have access to good communications to enable development to continue.

Somerset gear up for the future.

You have probably heard by now that the Somerset and Devon bid for funds to develop a high speed BroadBand network across both counties has been successful. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) put everyone out of their misery early on Friday morning when they announced that Somerset and Devon were to receive £31 million out of a total pot of £50 million to bring high speed BroadBand to the South West.

It is difficult to over estimate how important this announcement is, whilst it will be great for all of us that use the internet to have world leading connection speeds, it is business that will be the primary beneficiaries, and the fact that we will have the infrastructure in place will have a profoud impact on the prospects for business growth.

The bid model indicates that this injection of investment will bring an extra 50,000 jobs to the two counties and £750 million in extra turnover, in an area that has traditionally had lower than average incomes with higher than average house prices, an injection of business at the predicted level will have a dramatic impact on prosperity.

When the project is completed it is predicted that over 85% of people will have access to super fast BroadBand, with speeds up to 200 magabytes per second. If we compare that with what we have currently, many rural areas have virtually no BroadBand at all, and when there is a connection they are lucky to have speeds of 1 or 2 mbps. Even in the major towns it is unusual to have speeds over 10 mbps, I live just over a mile from the Shepton exchange and my speed is 8 mbps.

Direct connection to a fibre optic pipe will certainly give speeds in excess of 200 mbps, but even if the fibre optic pipe is only brought to the local junction box, with the original copper connection from there to the house it is likely that we will see 40 mbps or more in the majority of homes.

With more and more remote working, or "agile working" as it is sometimes called, it is essential that households have access to good communications to enable development to continue.

Back in the Groove.

It's been a sort of get back to normal week this week, I've even manged a few days of paid work, quite a change after spending pretty much all of the previous month involved in one way or another with elections, councils, or politics.

After changing portfolio's at Mendip, I've now got to get to grips with the all new "Regulatory" function, it appears that I have inherited Licensing, Car Parking Enforcement, Planning Enforcement, Environmental Health, Contaminated Land, Environmental Protection, Community Safety and Civil Contingency, basically everything from parking tickets to nuclear war!!

It is going to be a very steep learning curve for the next few weeks, with the first meeting of the new cabinet scheduled for early June, we all need to have our fingers on the pulse before then.

At county I've done my initial introductions and all of the legal stuff, we have our AGM on Wednesday next week, as a new boy I'm not expecting to be given any particular area of responsibility, I think the next 12 months will be a small matter of learning the ropes and representing Shepton effectively at county level. I already have a large case load that I'm working my way through, and if it is anything like my Mendip experience, dealing with cases gets you involved with the various departments within the council and enables you to learn who does what much quicker than any training course.

Tuesday night next week sees the first meeting of the new Town Council, we have lost three very experienced councillors in Margaret Robinson, who retired before the election, with John Gilham and Colin Lockey who were not re-elected. These three have been replaced by Susan Gibbs an Independent with no previous council experience and two Liberal Democrats in the form of Sue Cook and Garfield Kennedy. Sue similarly has no previous experience while Kennedy has at least served a few months at District level.

 I think Tuesday's meeting will be very interesting, there is no political majority at Town level, the Conservatives are still the largest group with 6 councillors, so there will have to be cross party support for whoever wants to hold the various chairmanships and portfolio's, I suspect the machinations could go on late into the evening!

Back in the Groove.

It's been a sort of get back to normal week this week, I've even manged a few days of paid work, quite a change after spending pretty much all of the previous month involved in one way or another with elections, councils, or politics.

After changing portfolio's at Mendip, I've now got to get to grips with the all new "Regulatory" function, it appears that I have inherited Licensing, Car Parking Enforcement, Planning Enforcement, Environmental Health, Contaminated Land, Environmental Protection, Community Safety and Civil Contingency, basically everything from parking tickets to nuclear war!!

It is going to be a very steep learning curve for the next few weeks, with the first meeting of the new cabinet scheduled for early June, we all need to have our fingers on the pulse before then.

At county I've done my initial introductions and all of the legal stuff, we have our AGM on Wednesday next week, as a new boy I'm not expecting to be given any particular area of responsibility, I think the next 12 months will be a small matter of learning the ropes and representing Shepton effectively at county level. I already have a large case load that I'm working my way through, and if it is anything like my Mendip experience, dealing with cases gets you involved with the various departments within the council and enables you to learn who does what much quicker than any training course.

Tuesday night next week sees the first meeting of the new Town Council, we have lost three very experienced councillors in Margaret Robinson, who retired before the election, with John Gilham and Colin Lockey who were not re-elected. These three have been replaced by Susan Gibbs an Independent with no previous council experience and two Liberal Democrats in the form of Sue Cook and Garfield Kennedy. Sue similarly has no previous experience while Kennedy has at least served a few months at District level.

 I think Tuesday's meeting will be very interesting, there is no political majority at Town level, the Conservatives are still the largest group with 6 councillors, so there will have to be cross party support for whoever wants to hold the various chairmanships and portfolio's, I suspect the machinations could go on late into the evening!

Post Election Comment and a very sad loss

Having let the dust settle for a week, I thought it is about time that I looked at what happened last Thursday and what it all means in a wider context.

It is all too easy to get caught up in the euphoria that surrounds victory and sometimes we say things in the heat of the moment that we regret later, so I thought it better to wait a few days and then make a sober assessment of the results.

There have been claims and counter claims from the various spin doctors that this party or that party won this set of elections, however if we look at the overall results, the only thing we can say for certain is that the Conservatives had a fantastic night, and the Liberal Democrats had a thoroughly good pasting.

Not only did we win convincingly in Mendip, and Sedgemoor, we took control of West Somerset from no overall control and very nearly pulled off a huge result in South Somerset where the former Lib Dem stronghold was reduced to a majority of one!!

Nationally we gained very nearly 100 seats, an amazing result when the pundits were predicting that we would lose up to 1000! I can't ever remember a party in government winning seats at local level 12 months into a parliament especially when you look at the cuts that have had to be made in the first year. These seats were on top of the record numbers won in 2007 when the conservatives won 1500 seats mainly from Labour, at a time when the Labour government were as popular as a rattle snake in a lucky dip!

There appears to have been a slight resurgence in Labour votes locally, I suspect mainly due to the fact that traditional Labour voters have returned home, after lending their votes to the Lib Dems in recent years in an attempt to beat the Conservatives. However if you look at the picture nationally, Labour gained ground from the Lib Dems in the North, especially the North West, but they failed spectacularly to win in Scotland, ceding power to the Nationalists, and gained nothing worth noting south of Birmingham. Mr Milliband will have to do much better than this if he is to survive until the next general election.

On the subject of saying things that you later regret, I see in this weeks' Journal that Mrs Hudson, leader of the local Lib Dems is quoted as saying "but I think we have to be clear, the Conservatives have not won this election". Wells Mrs Hudson, when I played cricket and someone walked back to the pavilion complaining about the umpire and saying that they were "not out", the usual comment was "look in the scorebook son, and I'll think you'll find that you are".

On a totally different subject, I would just like to comment on the death of Seve Ballesteros. When I started playing golf 25 years ago, Seve was in his pomp, playing shots that us mere mortals could only dream of. He single handedly dragged European golf up by its boostraps, and was a major force in building the European Tour into the global force that it is now. Without him I doubt that Faldo, Lyle, Woosnam, Westwood et al would have reached the zenith of the game, and without him I doubt the Ryder Cup would have become the global phenomenon that it is today.

I can remember watching Seve playing in the Masters at Augusta, late at night, live from the USA, the sound of that perfect strike echoing around the pine trees sent a chill up my spine then, and inspired me to take up the game. Seve was a magician and a gentleman, a fierce competitor but always with a twinkle in his eye, the world is a lesser place without him, RIP Seve we are certainly going to miss you.

Post Election Comment and a very sad loss

Having let the dust settle for a week, I thought it is about time that I looked at what happened last Thursday and what it all means in a wider context.

It is all too easy to get caught up in the euphoria that surrounds victory and sometimes we say things in the heat of the moment that we regret later, so I thought it better to wait a few days and then make a sober assessment of the results.

There have been claims and counter claims from the various spin doctors that this party or that party won this set of elections, however if we look at the overall results, the only thing we can say for certain is that the Conservatives had a fantastic night, and the Liberal Democrats had a thoroughly good pasting.

Not only did we win convincingly in Mendip, and Sedgemoor, we took control of West Somerset from no overall control and very nearly pulled off a huge result in South Somerset where the former Lib Dem stronghold was reduced to a majority of one!!

Nationally we gained very nearly 100 seats, an amazing result when the pundits were predicting that we would lose up to 1000! I can't ever remember a party in government winning seats at local level 12 months into a parliament especially when you look at the cuts that have had to be made in the first year. These seats were on top of the record numbers won in 2007 when the conservatives won 1500 seats mainly from Labour, at a time when the Labour government were as popular as a rattle snake in a lucky dip!

There appears to have been a slight resurgence in Labour votes locally, I suspect mainly due to the fact that traditional Labour voters have returned home, after lending their votes to the Lib Dems in recent years in an attempt to beat the Conservatives. However if you look at the picture nationally, Labour gained ground from the Lib Dems in the North, especially the North West, but they failed spectacularly to win in Scotland, ceding power to the Nationalists, and gained nothing worth noting south of Birmingham. Mr Milliband will have to do much better than this if he is to survive until the next general election.

On the subject of saying things that you later regret, I see in this weeks' Journal that Mrs Hudson, leader of the local Lib Dems is quoted as saying "but I think we have to be clear, the Conservatives have not won this election". Wells Mrs Hudson, when I played cricket and someone walked back to the pavilion complaining about the umpire and saying that they were "not out", the usual comment was "look in the scorebook son, and I'll think you'll find that you are".

On a totally different subject, I would just like to comment on the death of Seve Ballesteros. When I started playing golf 25 years ago, Seve was in his pomp, playing shots that us mere mortals could only dream of. He single handedly dragged European golf up by its boostraps, and was a major force in building the European Tour into the global force that it is now. Without him I doubt that Faldo, Lyle, Woosnam, Westwood et al would have reached the zenith of the game, and without him I doubt the Ryder Cup would have become the global phenomenon that it is today.

I can remember watching Seve playing in the Masters at Augusta, late at night, live from the USA, the sound of that perfect strike echoing around the pine trees sent a chill up my spine then, and inspired me to take up the game. Seve was a magician and a gentleman, a fierce competitor but always with a twinkle in his eye, the world is a lesser place without him, RIP Seve we are certainly going to miss you.