Ever since I started using Twitter and Facebook I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many people take an interest whenever I write about local politics, sport or the chaos that comes with being a father of two.  But I never suspected that the famous right-wing blogger and aspirant Tory politician Iain Dale was one of my Twitter followers.

This week Dale criticised me for spreading the fantastic news that the government is investing £7.7million into the Gloucester linkages projects.  I believe Dale’s comments are very revealing of a Conservative instinct I have never agreed with.  Whenever government investments are announced, disappointment on Tory faces is clear for all to see.  Investment, when properly targeted, improves lives and by kick starting economic growth often pays for itself in the long run.

Consider some of the recent investments our city of Gloucester has received.

• The most recent £7.7million investment in the linkages projects will ensure that people visiting our fantastic new Quays Retail Centre will have easy access to our city centre.  This will mean that tourists visiting Gloucester spread their spending money throughout our city.  This will be good for businesses and great for local jobs.
• The £20million Police HQ in Quedgeley, opening in 2006, replaced the old HQ in Cheltenham and gave our city a modern, local police station.
• The £35million Gloucestershire College is equipping local people with the skills and qualifications they will need to survive the recession and to thrive when the upturn arrives.  This is bringing real new opportunities to our young people.
• £20million of investment meant the Oxstalls Campus could be built, finally bringing University status to our historic city.
• The £43million South West Bypass finally opened in 2007, reducing congestion, supporting the transport of goods and helping local business.

All of these projects – and many other investments I could mention – have transformed our local area and improved the lives of local people for the better. They are certainly not to be sniffed at or dismissed.

You may be aware I have been heavily involved in lobbying the government to improve the linkage between our town centre and the new docks development.  We have now heard  that we have been successful.  Congratulations to all those involved, particularly the businesses and employees in our town centre who will really benefit from this boost

Question from:  Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester – LAB)

Minister answering:  Rt Hon Rosie Winterton

Question

To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, when he expects to conclude his deliberations on the Gloucester Linkages Project 293964

Answer

The Department has now approved the additional funding of £7.7m being sought for the Gloucester Economic Linkages Project.  I have today written to the South West Regional Development Agency informing them of this decision.

I think we saw the best and the worst of Parliament this week. On the plus side I think we moved closer to getting a £30 million investment from the government in to education in the City of Gloucester for a new-build Academy Secondary School.

It’s something I’ve been pushing for – for ages. Education Secretary Ed Balls gave my question in the Chamber on Monday a very positive response which leads me to be very hopeful that it should now happen.

On the downside, I’ll bet you probably didn’t notice the story about me trying to get £30 million for new school buildings in Gloucester because everything was drowned out by the MP’s expenses scandal (yet again) as Sir Thomas Legg sent a letter to all MPs.

If MPs and Parliament are ever to emerge from this mess so we can return to the big issues like education, health and the economy, then they are all just going to have to swallow some medicine and stop moaning about the Legg enquiry.

Yes, he’s made a new set of rules – but the old rules are totally discredited. If anything, when the dust settles, I think we’ll all be left asking why Legg didn’t take things further. Why didn’t he ask those who had ‘flipped’ homes and deliberately avoided capital gains tax to pay it back? Why didn’t he ask those who had worked the system by ‘maxing’ up their mortgage interest to the entire allowance to pay something back?

Talk of legal challenges and MPs refusing to co-operate with Legg’s audit will just drag down the reputation of Parliament even further. I think the sensible thing for all of our MPs to do is just to co-operate with the audit and if Legg says that someone – anyone – has to pay money back, they should just do it and let us then move on to a new and cleaner system that is independently assessed.

Maybe then we can get back to the important issues of the day that make a difference to the lives of our constituents, like investment in new schools.

Politics has to be about policies.  When people cast their vote at the forthcoming General Election they deserve to know exactly what changes they will see in their daily lives, regardless of which party they choose.  It is only carefully considered policies that can make these changes, not slick PR or spin.

The Prime Minister’s speech at conference reminded us it was only a Labour government that had the foresight and determination to introduce the policies that have transformed our country in the last twelve years.  The minimum wage, paid maternity leave, the Climate Change Bill, Civil Partnerships, reduced waiting lists and record school results could only have been delivered under a Labour government.

It was a Labour government that realised that markets alone were not enough and that the state needed to intervene to lead us through the recession towards recovery.

I believe voters understand this.  But they also need to know that Labour will be on their side in the future, that we still understand their needs and concerns and that we have fresh ideas that can make a positive, tangible impact on their every day lives. 

I think these measures were the highlights of the PM’s conference speech:

• Tough new regulations on the banking system: tackling bonuses which encourage reckless gambling and ensuring that in Britain markets will have morals.
• Post Offices up and down the land will be given a new role to help encourage community banking.  I look forward to seeing the details on this.
• A guarantee by law that Britain will give 0.7% of our GDP in foreign aid each year.  What could possibly be a better demonstration of Labour values?
• A referendum on changing our voting system at the start of the next Parliament if we win the General Election.  A debate on the more proportional Alternative Vote system has got to be welcome.
• New Family Intervention Projects – these will intervene early where families have the most complex needs and in doing so could save millions as we help prevent people ever committing crime or becoming dependent on benefits.

There were many other policy announcements, but I think these were particularly eye catching in the Hall in Brighton.  I hope they’ll be popular out in the country too.

In a press release designed to attack me for running a petition against an incinerator, Allstone’s have let the cat out of the bag about a possible incinerator on the Railway Triangle. 

In the press release Allstone’s revealed: “Mr Dhanda is trying to drum up protest against a County Council recommendation to allow planning permission for an incinerator on the Allstone site – one of a number of options under consideration.”

The press release goes on to state that land at the Railway Triangle has “been designated by the County Council as appropriate for an incinerator.”

Further confirmation came in a quote from the Managing Director who stated: “There are a number of possibilities for this site and an incinerator is just one of them.”

At least Allstones have been honest, and fair play to them for that, even if the Council haven’t.

This all comes after Gloucestershire County Council had claimed that I was scaremongering about the possibility of an incinerator.

Instead of doing deals in private and trying to silence a local MP, the Council now owe Gloucester residents an apology and a full explanation.They would never consider placing a giant incinerator in the Cotswolds, but they seem to see my constituents as easy prey.

The sensible thing for them to do now is come clean about what they’ve been up to, and then just remove incinerators from the waste plan, as they promised to do in their manifesto.

To see a copy of the article in today’s Citizen please click here and leave a comment.

The truth about the Tory plans to Incinerate
Gloucester City Council and Gloucestershire County Council (both Tory run) have been in discussions about the possibility of a giant incinerator on the railway triangle site.
You can read about it in the Gloucester Citizen front page story http://tinyurl.com/mae8hm
Despite previous manifesto commitments to oppose incinerators the Tories have bid to government for £70m to build a giant incinerator – capable of burning 175,000 tonnes of waste per year. Yet Gloucestershire will only be producing 100,000 tonnes of waste per year by the year 2020, so their plan must be to import 75,000 tonnes of rubbish to burn in my constituency for profit.
Gloucester City Council is infected by many Tory Councillors who also serve them on the County Council, which must be part of the reason that they now refuse to oppose a giant incinerator – which is now the County Council’s preferred option.
There are many alternatives to incineration, like anaerobic digestion (which is better for the environment than incineration), higher levels of recycling and smaller localised waste disposal centres which mean greater community involvement in reducing levels of waste.
The County Council did not bid for government cash for any of these alternatives and instead put all its eggs in the incineration basket. They want to burn for profit and they are determined to put it in Gloucester, nowhere else in the County.
Today’s news will leave a cloud of despair hanging over residents of Barnwood, Elmbridge, Kingsholm, the City Centre and of course Quedgeley (where local groups are already fighting plans for a giant incinerator at Javelin Park).
Its time the 2 councils came clean and stopped having these discussions in secret. The best thing they could do would be to rule out incineration as an option. Instead they say they won’t make a firm decision until 2011 – after a general election. No doubt in their hope that they can help elect a Tory MP for the City who will be acquiescent to their plans rather than one who is challenging them.
One final thought, it’s interesting that my Tory opponent supports the idea of incineration. Yet along with Tory Councillors he would not countenance an incinerator where he comes from in the Cotswolds!
To sign a petition calling on the Councils to delete giant incinerators from their waste plan, please click here http://tinyurl.com/nrkevp

A lot can happen in 24 years. Six World Cups can pass in that time. Come the year 2015 our nation will host its second Rugby World Cup in 24 years.

It’ll be part of a sporting decade that sees London host the Olympic Games, The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the Rugby League World Cup and the Cricket World Cup in England and, who knows – perhaps the football World Cup too in 2018.

In the year 1991 I was a student at Nottingham University and can clearly recall the Rugby World Cup which saw England ultimately finish runners up to Australia at Twickenham. And just how much change will a visitor to Gloucester for the 1991 group game between New Zealand and the USA see if they return to visit us again when Kingholm hosts another World Cup match in 2015? By then Kingsholm is likely to hold 18,000 spectators.

Well, back in 1991 they would not have had the choice of hotels in Gloucester that we have developed and are continuing to develop. They wouldn’t have been able to travel in through the South West by-pass, they wouldn’t have been able to shop at the Quays, see new life in the Docks and then wander through the town to admire the new stand at Kingsholm.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot more to do for our visitors and our own residents, which is part of the reason I’ve spent so much time trying to help sort out the multi-millions in funding required for the ‘linkages’ work between the Docks and the Town Centre, but look, as a City we are now a world of progress beyond where we were in the investment starved days of 1991.

The fact that alongside great stadia of world renown, like Wembley, Anfield, Twickenham and the Emirates stadium will be the our own City’s sporting cathedral of Kingholm is not just a big boost, I think its also an acknowledgement of how far the City has progressed.

We’re the best in the world at running ourselves down, but this week’s decision is real reason to be proud – of Gloucester Rugby and our City.

Of course the Tory Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Gloucester is wrong.  The idea that immigrants are given a priority to social housing has been dismissed as a myth by the equalities watchdog.

A study for the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that only 1.8 per cent of social tenants had arrived in Britain within the past five years.  Some 87.8 per cent were British-born and 10 per cent were foreigners who had been living in Britain for more than five years.

Perhaps the Tory PPC should read the report, he can find it here

http://tinyurl.com/lg2c5y

What you think?  Leave a comment

Are the Tories right to bring back fox-hunting if they win the next general election?
I voted to ban hunting with hounds, but not out of a narrow prejudice against the countryside, and not with a desire to carry out class war either. Before I made my decision to vote for a ban on fox-hunting I went out and spent a whole day with the Cotswold Hunt. I tried to keep an open mind.
Members of the Hunt themselves confided in me that chasing foxes through fields with hounds was not the best way to keep fox numbers under control. I can recall a marksman saying he could kill ten foxes outright with ten bullets in clean strikes. He knew this was much cleaner and more effective, but it didn’t have the pomp and pageantry that goes with the hunt.
The fox-hunters can continue to have their sport without tearing a live mammal limb from limb, by drag-hunting instead – where they follow an aniseed trail rather than a fox.
I would positively encourage drag-hunting, and the other country pursuits that go with it, like the ‘point to point’.
Although I wasn’t comfortable with it, I had no real issues with the swilling of port (which is symbolic of the fox’s blood) which happens before they hunt. However, the key difference between those that hunt, and the overwhelming majority of us who live in Gloucester who wanted fox-hunting banned is this: by banning hunting with hounds the fox-hunters lost out on the thrill of the ‘kill’. I found the idea of the ‘kill’ and the pleasure that goes with it distasteful.
I can recall the last time we had this debate many people said “townie” MPs like me didn’t understand the countryside. But time and again I met farmers who were upset and angry about packs of dogs and horses tearing through their fields. It’s simply untrue that the countryside was universally ‘pro-hunting’.
By rowing back the changes and making promises to the fox-hunting community the Conservative Party fails to leave this issue in the past, where it belongs.

I don’t make a habit of reading the Daily Mail, however I was delighted to read the rave review of Gloucester by Frank Barrett recently.  As the MP I’m obviously biased about the City’s appeal, but I have to say it put a smile on my face to read such a glowing recommendation of Gloucester as a perfect choice for a bargain break this summer. 

http://tinyurl.com/nqxnrr