To all stoical fellow fans and season ticket holders  – it’s been a long time coming. Saturday was a great day, the sun shone too! Great day for Wolverhampton.

Paul

On Tuesday, David Cameron came to Wolverhampton.

Please click on this link :

 http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/02/Cameron_Direct_in_Wolverhampton.aspx

The ability to think on your feet, be natural and sincere is essential to any politician.  It’s going to be interesting to see how Gordon Brown does spontaneity and working without a script during the next general election campaign.

Paul

Last weekend I visited my old University of Warwick. Quite an odd experience being on the platform rather than in the audience as I used to be.  The talk was part of the one World week and the topic for discussion was, do we live in a Disunited Kingdom? Speakers included Councilor Sood, the Lord Mayor of Leicester,  Peter Tatchell the Australian-born English human rights activist, who gained international celebrity for his attempted citizen’s arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and 2001 and Tariq Modood MBE  who is professor of sociology, politics and public policy and the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.

I’m not going to lie – I was incredibly nervous, but I really enjoyed the experience. I spoke personally about how I had seen the UK move in a positive direction compared to when I had been a fresher and sat in the audience.  Maybe not everybody agreed with me but if you make it personal and passionate then at least people accept the sincerity of your views and appreciate your perspective.

As I’ve always said, personal politics often reflects an individual story. Without this you can’t speak on any platform that is genuine.

Paul

Last week I met with Grant Shapps – shadow Minister for housing to discuss issues around Wolverhampton’s local needs. We’ve just had a weekend of  Margaret Beckett talking about  a bit of a pick-up in the sector despite the fact that Ernst & Young have warned that house prices could fall a further 16 per cent this year, following a similar decline in 2008.

Grant responded by saying : “The Government has lost all touch with reality. Experts say 75,000 families may be evicted from their homes this year, yet the housing minister actually seems to believe that life is getting better.”

Right move, the property website, reported that 43,416 properties come on to the market this month, less than half of the number in January last year. It blamed falling house prices, which it said were deterring homeowners from selling their properties. It also found that so-called forced sellers, who need to sell their home, have had to lower their asking prices dramatically to achieve a sale.

The evidence of any recovery would appear to be patchy at best, while the rest of  us carry on living in the real world with the consequences of a big painful correction, despite the fact that we were told that this housing boom was different ! 

Paul.

Happy new year folks, hope you all enjoyed the festive break. On Friday I attended the above meeting and had a chance to have a long chat about local issues with Philip Bradbourn – one of our Conservative MEPs for the West Midlands region.

Paul.

Listening to Sir John Major speak recently about the current economic conditions has helped put things in perspective. I think the most important point he made was that Labour’s Pre-Budget Report was not about tax cuts, it wasn’t about helping the economy, it was about helping Gordon Brown cling on to power.  Brown’s decade of economic mismanagement has doubled our national debt to over £1 trillion. As a result, everyone earning more than £20,000 a year will pay more tax. Put another way we have increased our level of debt more quickly than we did in the Second World War. 

To be fair, Gordon Brown did start by sticking to strict prudent rules. However, it is the abandonment of those investment rules from about 2000 onwards which have placed UK Plc in the most vulnerable position compared to our competitors. Recently the German Chancellor said it would be folly to follow Gordon Brown to “join in a multi-billion race simply to create the impression we have done something”!  We need do no more than look at the Japanese example where years of spending and tax cuts left nothing except a huge legacy of public debt. Spending money we haven’t got, and adding to the already record debt levels, will not only leave an unfair burden on our children for the long term it will actually make things worse now. It will hamper the recovery with higher taxes just as the economy gets going again. Where we urgently need action before Christmas is to get lending going and to protect jobs.

There is an economic alternative. We can get credit flowing and save jobs with a £50bn National Loan Guarantee Scheme, freeze council tax for two years by cutting wasteful Government spending and reduce employment costs for small businesses by cutting National Insurance and through a tax break for new job. We can also help small businesses with cash flow by delaying VAT bills for six months and over the long term get the public finances back under control with an Office for Budget Responsibility, so no Labour Government can ever bankrupt this country again.

Before I came into politics I spent nearly two decades in business. The Government has become obsessed with spending. They seem convinced that the UK can only grow by us all continually shopping (fuelled by more debt) which is why they turned a blind eye to what was going on in the city. We used to focus on making things in Britain and made money through our trading skills and ingenuity in providing niche marketing and business advice. The back drop for this environment should be sensible money management, which is at the core of any successful business. Be careful of grand announcements by this Government as they are often a smoke screen and a PR exercise in the race to be seen to be doing something. From my days in business my colleagues would often say to me that those who are anxious to appear busy often don’t know their brief or are busy running to stand still. The problem is as every day passes Labour are spending more and more of our money on keeping themselves in jobs.

Paul

On Friday I received a visit from Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury. We met with the Street Pastors of Wolverhampton, who regularly patrol the streets of the city centre until the early morning. Their roles involve providing water for late night revellers, making sure that people get home safely and most importantly diffusing tension and potential trouble by calmly offering mediation when tempers can be running a little high.

The Pastors love their work and go out in all hours and all conditions without any worries about their own personal safety. I can’t get one comment out my head, during our discussions it was remarked that a common response to the offer was help was ” I don’t even care about myself, why should you care about me ?”. So often at this time of year we get carried away by the commercialisation of Christmas when so so many just really need quality time with those they care about. It struck me that the Pastors are the perfect embodiment of the season of goodwill and epitomise the true Christmas spirit.

Paul.

Alan Duncan, Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulation visited Wolverhampton on Friday. With the pre budget report and Queen’s Speech at the forefront of peoples’ minds Alan wanted to talk to businesses about Conservative plans that would help the current economic situation and also hear firsthand about how the Government’s plans and actions have helped or hindered enterprise in Wolverhampton.

In the heart of the Black Country and Britain’s manufacturing base we both visited Rubber Astic who are based in Bilston and are a leading designer and supplier of sealing solutions, gaskets, washers and seals. The general feeling was that cash flow will be key to businesses surviving the downturn and that we need pragmatic policies to get through tough times. The changes to VAT were seen as ineffectual and more focus had to be applied to the cash flow situation of the SME sector. This will result in less cost to the Government as employees are retained by businesses in the medium/short term rather than the workforce having to be trimmed and so obviously supported by the state.

Paul 

On Friday the Christmas lights were switched on in Tettenhall. I managed to grab a moment with star attraction Maisie Wills after she had switched on the lights - I still can’t believe she’s a 100 ! 

  After a coffee and some mulled wine, not a mixture I’d recommend, a good time seem to be had by all. I am pictured with Maisie and Councillor Joan Stevenson.

Paul

Following the Pre-Budget Report UK PLC is facing a £ 1 trillion national debt and £ 40 billion tax hike for all British families. It’s a £20 billion temporary tax giveaway with almost £40 billion of announced permanent tax rises – that’s almost £1,500 for every family. Buried in the small print is another £100 billion of unspecified tax rises to come. The Chancellor, in one move, has doubled the national debt to more than £1 trillion, and borrowed more than at any time in our history. We now know that Britain will be paying off Gordon Brown’s debt for decades to come. With this Budget, Gordon Brown has mortgaged the country’s future to try and safeguard his own.

The permanent tax rises that we face include £20 billion on National Insurance, £10 billion on income tax, £5 billion on alcohol and cigarettes and £2 billion on pensions. By 2012/13, anyone earning more than £20,000 will be paying more tax. So the majority of earners will be permanently worse off by April 2011, even before the alcohol and tobacco tax rises. By claiming to hit the rich he will in fact  hit most teachers, journalists, social workers, police officers, paramedics, firemen, office managers and professionals. The rich will in turn either migrate or redefine their income as capital gains and easily circumnavigate Brown’s clumsy attempts to capture revenue and headlines.

What wasn’t mentioned in the report was that borrowing next year will be the highest as a proportion of GDP on record and that the Government’s growth forecasts are much more optimistic than those of independent forecasters. If the recession is in line with external forecasters, and therefore worse than the Treasury forecasts, borrowing will be catastrophically high. The Government is borrowing more than the entire debt it inherited from all previous Governments put together. To put this in perspective £295 billion more borrowing than was forecast just eight months ago – more than £11,000 per family. What’s more, buried in the small-print is a £100 billion black hole in tax receipts over the next Parliament whilst the Chancellor has also cut the NHS budget by £1.4 billion in 2010/11. Finally in terms of businesses in Wolverhampton and throughout the West Midlands we face a £2.8 billion tax rise though the NIC tax increases.

There is an old Indian saying - that any dream is possible and any ambition easy to fulfil when you use another person’s money. Gordon Brown has taken a huge gamble to secure his tenure at number 10 and has used our money as collateral for the wager.

Paul