Monthly Archives: January 2007

For once when I asked the government a written question I received an answer. I asked?? <em>"How much carbon dioxide is put into the atmosphere each day ,and what proportion is from human sources"</em> The answer stated "The amount of carbon dioxide emitted from human sources is small in comparison to natural flows:at around 3% [...]

Yesterday the Opposition held a debate in the Commons on the worrying presence of the killer bugs, MRSA and CD, in some of our hospitals. We did so because we are concerned by the number of deaths and serious illnesses contracted whilst in hospital. We did so in the spirit of wanting the government to [...]

Gordon Brown has dined out on his success in making the Bank of England independent. Many give him credit for this and assume it has led to a uniquely favourable out-turn for interest rates and inflation. In practise the UK has continued to pay a price. Our interest rates have been continuously higher than US, [...]

London’s economy is growing twice as quickly as North and west. The South-east is also a relative hot spot. Labour began by wanting to even things up, but now they want to bulldoze the surplus houses in the North, whilst concreting over the south. Instead they should ask themselves what is making?? London and the [...]

Yesterday we debated the government’s proposals to reorganise local government and local health services. As so often with this government they spun a good yarn. They told us there needed to be more local decision taking, greater freedom for Councils, and more patient involvement in the work of the NHS. If only. That is exactly [...]

Today in the House we will debate the government’s Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill. Despite??this long winded and apparently democratic title, we discover the Secretary of State wants powers allowing her to decide whether Counties and Districts should survive or whether they should be abolished. The costs of compulsory reorganisation would, of [...]

Ten days on, and still no boardband or phone line. The engineer who came on Friday to fix it told me it was probably a fault in the exchange, and he was not qualified to deal with that! It almost as bad as it used to be when BT was a nationalised monopoly. We need [...]

Either the??critics are right, and the government is witholding important?? and incriminating information in the cash for peerages enquiry, or the government is??paying the price for losing the confidence of the public and the trust of?? the police because of the way they have behaved in recent years. If the government is found to be [...]

It is ominous that we have been unable to get clear assurances from the government that any proposed transfer of power to the EU that might arise from the Merkel plan will be put to the British people in a referendum. I will table written questions tomorrow to seek further clarification, but it looks as [...]

It was not good this morning to hear the "Prime Minister in waiting" tell us the UK had to use hard as well as soft power, and going on to say that we need to threaten the use of force and use it when necessary. It would be good to know who the enemies are [...]