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Saturday, 25 April, 2009 
Here's a petition that looks interesting... the deadline for signatures is 22 October. http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/#detail
Thursday, 23 April, 2009
Tuesday, 21 April, 2009
At the start of the Labour government in 1997, Gordon Brown promised us prudence in public finance. Prudence, of course, was dumped. A publication by the National University of Singapore shows that using sensible forecasts of growth – not wildly optimistic ones based on best wishes, or a fear of annoying Gordon Brown – brings windfall benefits. In Singapore’s case, using conservative estimates for planning over a 25 year period brought an unexpected income gain worth £142 million per year.
This, the report concludes, was ‘simply a by-product of the [Singapore] Government's philosophy of “fiscal prudence”.’
Let's dump Gordon and bring Prudence back to Britain.
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‘Singapore's recurrent budget surplus: The role of conservative growth forecasts’
Department of Economics, National University of Singapore, Block AS2, #05-11, 1 Arts Link, Singapore 117570, Singapore
Aided by strong economic growth the Singapore government has been able to keep both the tax rate and the government expenditure rate low and yet generate healthy budget surpluses year after year. Although the gap between the tax rate and the government expenditure rate is the obvious source of the surplus, this paper shows the presence of another subtle source, a surplus generated by conservative growth forecasts that lay the base for revenue projections. An omitted variable bias in a model based on the tax smoothing hypothesis led us to consider the role played by the growth forecast error in predicting the budget surplus. Our computations show that on average the under-prediction of the tax base (GDP) must have contributed about S$ 376 million (or about 13%) per year to the realized budget surplus over the period 1990–2005. This appears to be simply a by-product of the Government's philosophy of “fiscal prudence”.
This letter from Andrew Bower, prospective Conservative candidate in Coleridge Division for the forthcoming county council elections, was published in today's Cambridge News, but not in the on-line edition: Quango can go
Friday, 17 April, 2009
Sunday, 12 April, 2009
One of the Conservative commitments for the next general election is to restore cabinet government to our foreign policy decision-making and establish a national security council.
We need to learn the lessons from Iraq so that we do no repeat the mistakes in places such as Afghanistan.
I support the - long delayed - decision to hold an inquiry. The inquiry must cover the decision to go to war, and examine the mistakes that were made in its conduct and its planning. There is also concern that the remit should be set out in a statement to Parliament and that the Leader of the Opposition, and Privy Councillors in Opposition parties, are consulted properly.
Saturday, 04 April, 2009
The Cambridgeshire branch of the NHS Retirement Fellowship group invited to me for a morning talking politics - as part of an all party panel - listening to the welcome by the branch President, Dr. Mary Archer, and a briefing by the Fellowship's Executive Director, Mike Brown. There was a Bring and Buy, a Plant Stall and a Raffle in aid of th Air Ambulance at lunch. I had to leave to spend the afternoon campaigning... and missed the real fun real fun: talks on 20 years in journalism, a gardeners' question time and a general knowledge quiz. The local Fellowship organiser can be contacted at 1 The Fairway, Bar Hill, Cambridge, CB23 8SR. Membership is open to everyone who worked in the Health Service. If you can join, do join. Richard Normington
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