Ready for Change….the video

Conservative Party Conference 2009

As already revealed exclusively on Richard Willis’s blog, I am in Manchester for Conservative Party Conference. Although the facilities here have been fantastic, it hasn’t been easy for us bloggers – too little seating outside the conference hall and even fewer tables have made it difficult to find a space to settle the laptop and start typing. Free wifi would have been a nice idea too. Luckily I came prepared with my mini PC and a 3G dongle, although I didn’t find all that much time to use them.

I’ve been here since the weekend and it’s been a fantastic conference and a great opportunity to catch up with friends and re-energise in the run up to what will be a long general election campaign…essentially from now until next May.

Conference is a chance to meet old friends, make new ones, share ideas, attend fringe events on very specific areas of policy and, yes, to have fun and relaxation. I was able to catch up with my old friend Matthew Groves, who is fighting hard in Plymouth Moor View and also with Antony Calvert, who is hoping to unseat Ed Balls.

I learnt more about the new website/networking site, myconservatives.com which will be a great campaigning and fundraising tool and will make it much simpler for activists and supporters to help out in campaigns of their choice, whether in their own areas, or by helping friends in different parts of the country. If you’re interested in helping to bring this country the change it needs, I suggest you take a look at this new site. I have just joined the Alok Sharma campaign on myconservatives.com and hope that everyone who reads this will join too!

I saw most of the big speeches of conference, including both of William Hague’s speeches and George Osborne’s sobering and sensible message. I also attended as many fringe events as I could, although as they are all held at mealtimes it is normal for several interesting meetings to clash with each other.

Last night I went to one of the most entertaining events of conference: Iain Dale’s blogreaders’ party which was great as instead of another political speech, he’d arranged for us to be entertained by comedian and impressionist Steve Nallon (best known for being the voice of Margaret Thatcher in Spitting Image).

I am writing this on Thursday afternoon having been in the conference hall for Cameron’s uplifting and inspiring speech. It was a speech which really struck a chord with activists, who are no longer prepared to put up with Labour accusing us of not caring when they are the ones who have ruined lives by encouraging the dependency culture, who have broken our economy with their irresponsible and indiscriminate spending and who have left, once again, a country in desperate need of rescue. I leave conference today knowing that Cameron is the man to achieve that.

Autistic Children

Last night I attended a special themed meeting of the Council’s Education and Children’s Services Scrutiny Panel.

The meeting was very well attended by interested parties and members of the public and was a great opportunity to learn more about the challenges faced by children on the ASD spectrum and their families.

I was particularly impressed with the card scheme promoted by the Berkshire Autistic Society. The purpose of this is to provide people with an autistic disorder with a card which contains information about their condition. Many people on the ASD spectrum experience difficulty with communication and it is hoped that the card will assist in situations where the autistic person is in a difficult and stressful situation and unable to communicate in a way which would normally be expected, particularly in situations involving the authorities. The Society has provided training to the police, local A&E and ambulance service. Such has been the interest shown in this scheme that the Society estimates that it needs to raise £6,000-£10,000 for the cards.

It seemed, from the various contributions, that one of the biggest challenges families face is communication, particularly communication from schools to enable them to properly prepare their autistic child for what to expect in school. Experiences clearly vary between those schools that are well attuned to the different needs of each ASD pupil and those that either do not fully understand what is needed or have not embraced the need to understand and adapt to their pupils’ needs. Opinion seemed to be that problems of poor attitude in some sectors still persist, despite specialist training being provided and it seems that bridging the gap between training and attitude will be one of the main challenges for Reading.

Reading Pride 2009

On Saturday I, along with many of my Conservative colleagues, attended Reading’s Pride event in King’s Meadow. I wasn’t able to make the Parade unfortunately but I got down there early afternoon when it was still sunny. This is the poster (right) we had on our stall and we had the same design on our T-Shirts.

Reading Conservatives had a strong presence yet again and we had loads of people come to talk to us at our stall. Our cakes (adorned with tree logo icing) were very popular and disappeared quickly.

The event was another great success and the organising committee deserve congratulations for having once again done a fantastic job. To me, the best thing about Reading Pride is that it is not a niche event and it was great to see that it attracted a range of people – young and old, families and friends, people who would consider themselves members of the ‘gay community’ and people who would not. It was just an inclusive and diverse fun day out for everyone.

During the day we had 8 Conservative councillors come to help out and show support, including current Mayor Fred Pugh. Both Rob Wilson MP and Reading West prospective candidate Alok Sharma attended. We had huge support for our petition which called for an anti-bullying policy on LGBT issues in schools – thanks to all who signed it!

Cllr Tim Harris (in the photo right, next to Rob Wilson) organised the Conservative stall and asked David Cameron to send us a personal message of support, which he did:

“I am delighted to send my best wishes to all those attending this year’s Reading Pride festival and parade. Pride events have built up a great reputation over the years as a celebration of diversity and a means of raising awareness and promoting equality. Reading Pride is no exception with some 10,000 residents now attending each year. This is a great tribute to all involved, and to Reading itself. Have a great day.”

Donkey Blog

My attention was drawn this week to reports of the arrest of the people behind the donkey blog in Azerbaijan. One reason I was interested in this story was that I have just visited Azerbaijan and came back with a favourable impression of the country and its people and I’d wanted to think it was more of an open society than this story suggests.

But, of course, that’s naive of me. I was only there 5 days and in between visiting the main tourist sites (not that they get a huge number of tourists) and long hours travelling across the desert, there wasn’t much time to get beneath the political skin of this interesting Caucasus country. However, on reflection, I think I’m not surprised to read about the suppression of free comment…the signs were there to see.

And I mean actual, big signs. The kind with pictures of a benevolent leader on them – a typical feature of the one party state with a side-line in personality cults. Variations of this picture were everywhere – this one is unusual in that it is a portrait on a wall, whereas they were normally to be found on huge billboards in Baku and beyond. The man in the photo is President Heydar Aliyev. A prominent figure during Soviet times, Aliyev became president of an independent Azerbaijan. He’s actually been dead for 6 years but, and here’s another give-away indication of a one-party state, the current president is his son, Ilham.

Compared to its near neighbours Georgia and Armenia, Azerbaijan seems very Soviet and at the same time more modern and in some ways western. The modernity is down to the oil money, which allows Baku the luxury of smooth highways instead of the pothole ridden tracks Georgia has to suffer. But the Soviet feeling goes deeper than the political system.

This isn’t something the people would be pleased by, because they have gone to some lengths to hide their Soviet past. Soviet-era statues have been left in neglect or removed entirely (such as a statue of Kirov). Soviet blocks of flats still feature on the Baku skyline, but most have received a facelift or a new facade, to disguise their drab origins. One of the main monuments in Baku commemorates the people killed by the Soviet army on 20th January 1990 (left). 

Our local guide, lovely as she was, had a distinctly Soviet quality; she was definitely ‘old school’. She insisted on ‘disciplining’ kitchen staff who failed to provide a meal of sufficient quality (we thought it was fine) and eagerly kept us informed when we drove past the second biggest ceramics factory (it wasn’t ceramics, but to be honest I instantly forgot whatever it actually was). Azerbaijan was the only place I have been where the industrial infrastructure was regarded by the guide as something worth commenting on. I’m almost surprised we didn’t have a guided tour of a factory.

Azerbaijan is an oil-rich country and the capital city, Baku, is a boom-town, the modern equivalent of the Wild West. There’s a lot of western influence (and money) and of the 3 Caucasus countries it seems the most prosperous and has a huge amount of potential. It is disappointing, therefore, that western values have not infiltrated as far as the oil money and that the government feels the need to crack down so harshly on dissent.

In the words of a Rifleman…

I was moved, today, to read this blog post by local MP, Richard Benyon, a former Army Officer.

Reading Station Upgrade

Last week I attended a meeting of the Transport Users’ Forum where the Council’s Head of Transport, Pat Baxter, gave a presentation on the Reading Station Upgrade.

As a commuter I know only too well how Reading Station currently acts as a bottleneck, restricting services in and out of London Paddington (and north-south services). My journey time should take around 25 minutes, but it is frequently 35-40 minutes, particularly on the way home when trains have to queue outside Reading waiting for a platform. The reason is that the capacity on the lines either side of Reading is far greater than the capacity of the station.

The ambitious station upgrade project should greatly increase capacity by adding a number of new platforms but all this will also involve increasing the number of passengers using the station, which has implications for other public transport links in town. As a result, there will be significant redevelopment of the station complex itself.

If you want to see the plans for yourself, Reading Borough Council’s Transport Team is holding a series of drop in sessions over the next few weeks:

• 23rd July (10.30am-4pm) – Civic Centre, Committee Room1
• 4th August (2pm-8pm) – 40 Station Hill
• 15th August (11am-3pm) – 40 Station Hill
• 20th August (2pm-8pm) – Reading Town Hall, Silverthorne Room

More details are available on the Reading Borough Council website.

London Disruption

I am working from home today because I work in the City and rely on the Tube to get me to work. There are alternatives, but they are a lot slower and on a day like today my chances of even getting on a bus would be remote (I’ve tried it before).

I really do find it sickening that when so many people are struggling to keep their jobs, the Tube drivers think it is ok to cripple the capital city, making it difficult for ordinary people to get to work. Do they have any idea of the inconvenience of their actions? The cost to ordinary folk trying to get to work? The cost to the economy?

The insult gets even worse when you read what tube drivers and other staff earn – Iain Dale has a discussion about this here. Now, I don’t know if his figures are accurate and they may reflect additional benefits, overtime etc. But even so, to most of us a salary of £35,000 to £40,000 to drive a tube train seems excessive.

Station staff may have a hard job, dealing with a difficult demanding public, but one of the reasons that commuters are difficult and demanding is that the service is so often poor. Information is often out of date or inaccurate and when something goes wrong there’s hardly ever any attempt to provide travellers with useful information to allow them to plan alternative journeys. Half the time the automatic announcements in the trains are turned off, so in the packed carriages passengers have to contort themselves to be able to see the station name out of the window. The trains all seem to have these automatic systems, so why don’t they use them?

And don’t even get me started on the so-called ‘good service’ – I continually hear on the Circle line (where I am condemned to spend a part of each working day) that it is operating a good service. Sorry, but a train that might, if you’re lucky, turn up in 5 minutes but could take up to 20 minutes is not a good service. I’d hesitate even to call it adequate. In Moscow the metro runs every 90 seconds.

The Tube Strike is expected to cause disruption until Friday morning. Let’s just hope they come to their senses before then.

Another fantastic speech from the South East’s star MEP, Daniel Hannan

Conservative result in Wales

I am delighted to hear that we have topped the poll in my native Wales, although we remain on 1 seat, with Labour dropping  a seat to UKIP. The Labour vote went down 12%.