Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Labour and marginals

A letter in today's Telegraph reads "I cannot help thinking that the problem with rural post offices is that they are not in marginal Labour seats. ".

Over the weekend, the Telegraph reported that hospitals in Tory seats were twice as likely to be closed as Labour ones.

John Prescott wanted to do massive building programs in parts of Essex and the South East that were as Blue as the sky.

Is there a pattern here?

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

New Brentwood Blog

Councillor Brandon Lewis, Leader of Brentwood Council and Tory A-Lister, has set up his own blog. It could do with a decent spell/grammar checker though.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Tax cuts

One issue that dominated the recent Tory conference was that of tax cuts. Namely, David Cameron and George Osborne's refusal to commit to tax cuts while at the same time spouting out a line about "economic stability". But what I didn't hear them say was that a future Conservative government wouldn't introduce tax cuts (apologies for the double negative there).

For me, this appears to be more an issue of presentation and policy. There is a perception out there amongst the floating voter that Conservatives would introduce tax cuts to benefit their rich friends regardless of the impact that would have on the ordinary voter. This perception needs to be challenged - not by dropping a commitment to tax cuts, but by emphasising that it's not the only issue that concerns the country.

I was pleased to see Norman Tebbit argue that tax cuts should be introduced at the bottom of the range to benefit those on lower incomes. Labour may have been more right than they intended with Dave the Chameleon - "Underneath he's still true blue" - the issue is not that people object to Conservative policies, they object to the Conservatives. And the only way to get Conservative policies is to change the image of the Conservatives.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Nappies

I remarked at choir tonight that we were using cloth nappies for the boy. A fellow choir member over heard this and said "ah, you must be a Cameron type."

Is this how we're recognising the Cameroons now?