Author: johnredwood

As I understand it the UK will not  be signing up to PESCO, the new system promoting more EU defence integration. This is a system under the control of the EU institutions and therefore would not be appropriate for the UK as it leaves. The UK is offering defence collaboration, mainly through NATO. The UK is offering a bilateral Agreement UK/EU where both sides keep a veto.

I see the CBI is going to Downing Street to urge delay in leaving the EU and urge that we keep as many of the features of our membership as possible.

We should remember how they lobbied and lobbied to get the UK into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism which gave us boom and bust, and a  large recession, which did considerable damage to their member companies.

They then thought the Euro a good idea and claimed we would lose out by not joining it, especially in the City. Instead the City grew and flourished outside the Euro.

Now they want to prolong the period of uncertainty by demanding a Transitional period, and delay making our own trade agreements. Above all they seem to want to cripple the UK economy for longer with large transfers of money to the rest of the EU, with the consequent big drag on our balance of payments.

They could be helpful to their member firms if instead they concentrated on lobbying the EU not to impose any new barriers on their trade with us when we leave. It’s the EU which pretends to want new barriers, not the UK.

Remain, Labour and many in the media are running endless stories about the possible fall of the PM or the government. These stories are false mischief.

Let me remind you of the process to remove a Conservative PM. 15% of the Conservative MPs have to ask for a Confidence vote in the leader.Then more than half the MPs have to vote No Confidence. As most Conservative MPs support the Leader neither of these two events are about to happen.

For there to be an early General election the government would have to lose a Confidence  motion in the Commons. I know of no Conservative. MP who would vote to do that. The DUP are not after an early election either.

I have read with interest the allegations that Oxford and Cambridge do not admit enough pupils from poorer and non professional backgrounds. From my regular contacts with Oxford I think it is a much more welcoming institution than when I went there, which does much more to reach out to people who do  not come from communities with strong Oxbridge links. The University spends time talking to schools that have no history of sending pupils to the university, time encouraging more students to apply, and provides a range of bursaries and scholarships to help some students with costs. It has made good progress in changing attitudes within the University and in welcoming people from all backgrounds.

I was the first person in my family to go to university. I was surprised when a teacher suggested to me that I put my name in for the Oxford entrance exam at the beginning of my fourth term in the 6th Form. I was just 16, as I had jumped a year at  prinary school. What little I knew about Oxford made me think it was unattainable. They told me at school I would  be in  with a chance, and I am grateful to them for putting opportunity in my way. Everyone with a chance needs an adult in their school or family circle who suggests they try. Governors, Councillors and teachers must ensure all state schools look out for talent to apply to the best universities.

I was  very self critical in the 6th form, struggling to develop a  well informed voice I was happy with. I pitched myself against the great minds I read in books and thought I always fell short. I tried out  various styles of analysis and writing. One essay attracted particular criticism from a teacher which it doubtless deserved. When challenged why I was writing like that, I replied  defensively without thought or good reason that I assumed that was what Oxford would want.

Then came one of those defining moments that teachers sometimes achieve without realising it. He replied, “In that case why do you want to go there?” The sheer irreverence of the quip made me realise Oxford could be for people like me, and was only worth going to if it could further my development. He in a way liberated me from possible  failure, and confirmed a realisation I had often flirted with that  study  was about me, the quality of my enquiry  and the development of my ideas. There are strict limits to how much anyone else can teach you once you have grasped the conventional wisdom of your subject. I was already grappling with what I thought were the imperfections of the contemporary work in my discipline.

I was invited to interview. The system was you went to stay at your first choice College,  but had to stay for longer in case other Colleges in their group – there were 3 groups – also wanted to interview you for a place.

I was staying in a noisy room in an annex building on  a main road. It was cold and the room friendless as the student that usually lived there had had to strip the room for my arrival. I waited and waited until I was finally summonsed to an interview. It was perfunctory. There was no apparent intellectual challenge. I assumed they were going through the motions and had decided against me by the time I got there. I had not researched who was likely to be interviewing me and felt cheated there was no good argument.  I did not understand the significance of the hypothetical question about which year I could turn up if offered a place.  I waited and waited for an interview elsewhere but none came. I was finally told I could go. By this time I was thinking I was glad I would go off to London who had already offered me a place if I got 2 E grade A levels . In London they had engaged with my views at the interview.

I was amazed when a letter came some time later offering me a place and an Open Scholarship. My bad feelings about my sojourn  at Oxford were banished by the offer and by the positive reaction to it of my school. It certainly changed my life. Oxford did not need  me to take any  A levels but I stayed at school to complete them. 2 Es were needed for a local authority  grant. Although that took all the pressure off, for me it did the opposite. I now felt I had to live up to the faith placed in me. I got permission to go to the local university library to work, as I had run out of books to read at school.

In those days we were not to my knowledge invited to any preparatory or introductory discussions. There was no attempt to reach out when you arrived for interview. The Oxford I went to was full of ex public school boys who were better prepared.  They were more used to the College life as it reflected patterns from the richer boarding schools. They had been  tutored for the exams and made conversant with the dons who would interview them.

The modern Oxford I meet has a much  better range of people from a wide range of backgrounds. There are many more women with the strict segregation of old Oxford with just 5 women’s colleges broken down completely.  The student groups I have spoken to do not see their past school or social origins as significant as it was in the Oxford I attended. Oxbridge provides a good home for those with the discipline of self instruction and study. I just hope every school does encourage their brightest and best to apply. One of the best features of  Oxford when I was an undergraduate was the open lecture lists. You could go to any lecture in any subject. I tended to go to the most interesting lectures in some other subjects to provide a more rounded education, rather than to the ones in my subject which did not normally present new material if you had read enough.

This year there was no march to the Church given the disruption to the town centre owing to the building works and the replacement of road surfaces and pavements. Instead Councillors and representatives of the uniformed organisations made their own way to All Saints for a moving Remembrance service.

We returned to the Town Hall to lay wreaths before the list of names of the dead from the World wars and other conflicts. The service and ceremony were well attended.

I would like to thank the organisers and all who joined in to show how the community as whole remembers.

Today we remember the many who died in the two world wars of the last century and later conflicts. I will lay wreaths in Burghfield in the morning and Wokingham  in the afternoon.

As this year is part of the centenary remembrance of the Great War, there have been plenty  of historical films and books of what happened in that prolonged and devastating conflict.

There have been attempts to defend and explain the actions of those in charge of the armies which  suffered such terrible losses in attack after attack. All too often  the promised impact of preparatory bombardment did not work, leaving the attacking troops to be killed in their thousands  as they stumbled through barbed wire onto machine gun emplacements. There was little understanding and little ability to handle the many medical conditions  brought on by the water, mud and  disease that spread in the trenches, and even less sympathy for  the psychological conditions many soldiers developed after prolonged exposure to shells,  mortars and bombs.

The recruitment of massed citizens armies made politicans and Generals more blase about the extent of the  losses.  Wellington in the Peninsula was careful to protect his troops and avoid battles where losses would be large because he knew he could not easily replace his professional small army. In contrast   the Generals in the First War on both sides just assumed they could recruit many more replacements. The French had to face a mutiny when troops protested about their mistreatment, whilst many  Russians ended up as revolutionaries appalled by the suffering they had experienced in their army.

The bad  political failures included  the Peace Treaty at the end. The terms of this seemed to help set up another gruesome conflict twenty years later. A war is only successful if after victory the victors secure a stable and well founded peace.

The two wars have cast a shadow over the lives of those of us who came after the carnage, as we have sought to understand the suffering of our grandparents and parents and the sacrifices of many in their generations. It cast a far worse cloud over those who lived through the violence. Twice liberty was defended and the allies were  ultimately victorious, but only after herculean effort.

We should  take away from the events of more than one hundred years ago the need to expect more of politics to avoid conflicts becoming so violent. Where armed conflict is unavoidable we should  expect those who do lead or direct troops into battles to take more care of them, working out how to concentrate and use force more effectively than either side managed for much of the First World War. That war is infamous for the deployment of chemical weapons on a large scale, for the cruel dominance of the machine gun and shell, and for the many heroic but  too often futile attempts by infantry to break through massively strong defensive positions.

It is a bit rich the EU demanding more money or else no talks on trade.   There can only be one answer to that bullying – no money.

The UK needs to reverse the argument. If the EU does not start talkig about a free trade agreement with the UK before the end of the year then the UK will press ahead with the WTO option as Plan A and work with business to trade without an FTA with the EU.

Instead of thinking of giving away more of our money to secure talks with the EU the Treasury should be preparing to spend  the money we save on our own priorities as soon as possible. That is what we voted for in the referendum. There is no need to pay to talk!

If we could be sure of an extra £12 bn from March 2019 we would be free to get on with spending increases and tax cuts to power faster growth and improve public services. Why is cutting the EU contribution one of the few cuts the Treasury will not contemplate?

The Treasury also needs to avoid doing more harm. Its Stamp duty and  Buy to let taxes harmed housing. Its VED and diesel attack harmed new cars. Now there is briefing around the idea of more taxes on diesels which is an odd proposal given the importance of diesel car engines to the UK auto industry. There have been past rumours of tax attacks on the sef employed, on pension savers and anyone of enterprise   or prudence.

What we want instead is a budget that provides more incentives to save, to invest, to produce, to build homes. We need a budget that rediscovers the truth that lower tax rates and faster growth bring in more revenue. At a time when the Republicans are planning major tax cuts it would be a bad idea to be still putting taxes up to make us less competitive and to encourage people and companies  with enterprise  to move abroad.

A desperate EU now says it will impose a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The UK should carry on with its  plans for no hard border controls when we leave the EU and the customs union which it has set out in published papers.  We need not impose any new barriers on the UK side of the border. Will the EU really insist on them on the Republic side? They would be wise to work with the UK to ensure good arrangements on both sides  of the border.