65th birthday lunch at Gravetye Manor, Sussex

I believe the saying has it ‘what goes around comes around’.  So take heart, younger readers – or not, depending on your politics!

40 years ago I was 25 for the first time. From 1967 onwards we’d had huge poll leads pretty well consistently. We’d won Council after Council – including Manchester and the GLC and Liverpool! Then, in the spring of 1970 – for no apparent reason – it all started to go wrong. Or so we thought. The County elections in April showed a bit of a Labour revival. The locals in May (yes we did have separate elections in consecutive months in those days! ) were actually quite good for Labour, so Harold Wilson decided to trot up the Mall to see HM and have a GE on 18th June (anniversary of Waterloo).

On the Saturday before polling day the NOP in the Daily Mail showed Labour with a 12% lead over the Conservatives. The Evening Standard was more hopeful – Labour lead 2%. On the morning of the 18^th no poll gave us a lead at all, though they did all suggest a tight finish. I got a huge laugh when explaining to my VI formers on polling day why the Tories were going to win. By Friday afternoon they were hailing me as a prophet.

It turned out to be one of the most exciting election nights of my life and by lunchtime on 19^th Ted Heath was on his way down the Mall with a majority of 30 overall in his pocket.

So what this new senior citizen is telling you all is, we’ve been here before and we held firm to our resolve and we won. As my parents’ generation would have had it, we resolved to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

If this helps you, tell your friends. If not, keep it to thi’sen, as we used to say up North!

Interestingly the BBC hardly reported 20 economists supporting the Conservative contention that the £178billion deficit run up by Labour needs to be tackled sooner rather than later. When 60 other economists supported Brown’s line that we can spend our way out of recession (which is what his policy amounts to) it was headline news on the BBC. To add to its fairness and objectivity the news item referred to the 60 as ‘leading’ economists. There was no qualification of the adjective of course – other than their agreement with Brown (and the BBC?), one presumes.

Locally our papers seem anxious to give credibility to the ’story’ put about by our two Lib Dem MPs about the impending closure of A&E and maternity services at Kingston Hospital. This is in spite of a very explicit letter from NHS SW London setting out the facts in the matter and a clear statement from the Health Minister in the Adjournment Debate last Monday.  One might have thought it in the public interest that this letter be published in its entirety. However, it was written on 27th January and I haven’t seen it in the local papers yet.

One wonders if Mr. Falchikov’s kitchen table isn’t groaning under new confections the media might swallow. Time will tell. Watch this space!

The meeting proceedings began with a question from the floor by Cllr Geoff Austin (Con) politely seeking clarification of the position on Maternity and A&E services at Kingston Hospital.

The Chair, Cllr Don Jordan (Lib Dem), said Cllr Mary Reid (Lib Dem) had some information and she proceeded to tell the panel that the MPs had previously had meetings with various officials and hospital CEOs (including the CEO of Kingston) about this question and had become incensed when they learnt last weekend that the report on the future, which might recommend closure of these services, was being shelved until after the election. They wanted to bring things out into the open as they ‘thought people had a right to know’. All very noble and not a hint of partisan advantage, of course. Cllr David Cunningham (Con), from the gallery, intervened to say that Cllr Mary Reid’s account didn’t tally with what the Hospital CEO  had told the Trust Board that morning in particular the fact about her having known about the possibility of closures. The Chairman had criticised the MPs’ campaign as well. The CEO wasn’t at the meeting so could not comment, but Cllr Cunningham pointed out that   the Panel clerk, had been there and had taken copious notes and could verify whether the account of the Board meeting Cllr Cunningham had given was true or not. Discussion ensued between Cllr Jordan, Reid and the clerk. The upshot of which was that Cllr Jordan refused to allow the clerk to speak on the issue as ‘it would involve him in what was obviously a burning party issue’. Cllr Jordan made his first attempt to close the discussion down.

I (Con) stepped in at this point to say that possible closure of key hospital services was not a party issue between us, but a community issue and that the matter affected other concerns on the agenda. He pointed out that constituents were contacting him and others in alarm at the story and that Ed Davey (MP, Lib Dem)  had sent emails to all and sundry seeking their support for his petition. I knew this as constituents had already sent copies to me. I asked, if the MPs were sure of their ground and genuinely seeking public support, why had he not sent the email to me? My email address was well known.

Cllr Jordan then tried to close down the subject a second time and Cllr Reid suggested the panel may hold an extra meeting with the MPs in private to discuss the issues concerned. I agreed to the extra meeting but insisted that it be held in public as the present one was being held. This suggestion met with much approval from the gallery, especially persons associated with Kingston’s LINk, who nodded furiously.

The background material to the letter from NHS SW London, passed on to Councillors by the Head of Democratic Services the following morning, was distributed to members, but not the covering letter itself, which blows the MPs out of the water. At least I did not receive one. Readers can see this on the Health and Hospitals page of http://surbitonhillcllr.com

The meeting then went on to discuss Maternity Services at Kingston Hospital and, later, Primary Care plans for RBK, which featured the A&E services at KH as an important part of the poly-system structure for north Kingston.

Incidentally, we have since learnt that the website to which the MPs invited constituents to refer was registered by one of them as long ago as 11th December

Filed under: Elections, Health and Community, Lib Dems, Politics ]]> http://kingstontorycllr.net/2010/02/03/election-campaign-2010-local-no-1/feed/ 6 pauljohnston http://kingstontorycllr.net/2009/11/04/lisbontreaty-letter-to-dt/ http://kingstontorycllr.net/2009/11/04/lisbontreaty-letter-to-dt/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:13:20 +0000 pauljohnston http://kingstontorycllr.net/?p=279 ]]> In case the dear old Telegraph doesn’t publish my letter, here it is.

Sir,

It is a pity that your headline of yesterday (3^rd. November) accused David Cameron of ‘reneging’ on his commitment to a referendum on Lisbon, when in fact he had no choice in the matter.

The pledge he gave in 2007 was sincere and would have been implemented if it lawfully could have been. Very sadly, now, it can’t. If this broken Parliament had been dissolved after four years like the previous two we would have a new government by now and the referendum would almost certainly have occurred. The Irish changed their mind in their referendum, encouraged no doubt by the intervention of Nigel Farage of Ukip in the Republic’s domestic affairs. The Czech President has attached his signature to it. And Gordon Brown continues to cling on for dear life as the Parliament Act permits him to, more’s the pity. So the ghastly treaty has become Law, but David Cameron is not responsible at all for any of this.

The ‘reneging’ was done by Blair and Brown – and their Liberal Democrat fellow travellers – not by Cameron. However some of your correspondents want to punish the innocent Conservatives by voting for Ukip or some such. When will they ever learn that fragmentation on the right in politics merely lets in the left? If they want another five years of Gordon Brown and his Lib Dem Europhile allies, let them vote Ukip by all means. But let them be aware of the consequences and not expect to find much left of the Britain they have known and loved at the end of them.

I must say that I had hoped that by now we would have had the general election the country is crying out for. In all my years in politics (back to the Macmillan era) I’ve never known a government – or a Parliament! – that needed to be put to sleep more than this one. Both lack moral authority and credibility, are turning the country I love into a laughing stock, undermining its institutions and leading us sleepwalking into a federalist Europe, having broken faith with us over a Referendum on Lisbon. And spare us the casuistry about Lisbon not being the Constitution – as a document it may lack the baroque flourishes of Giscard D’Estaing’s original but it is the same thing in all essentials as the Constitution.

Autumn is a sad time with leaves falling from trees, exposing the stark reality underneath. But it is also a time of promise of new leaves and new growth to come in the Spring. Let us hope that the metaphor is good for this government and that the people of Britain will see the stark reality of its ugly cluelessness and despatch it to the oblivion it has shunned for far too long.

It’s great to see that Ulster is starting out on the road back into the mainstream of British politics. There are lots of Johnstons in Belfast and environs, quite a few of whom have complained in the past that they were unable to affect the government of their country by their votes. Now I hope they will be able to!

Being a learned Telegraph man, I would have expected him to point out how electoral systems have effects on voter behaviour and how a national list system distorts the political system in favour of minor, fringe or extremist parties.

To fight the Euros, a party can establish itself as nationally significant by getting a mere 70-odd candidates from an electorate of 40 million plus. No big deal – especially when the List System means that it doesn’t matter if no-one has ever heard of any of them before. They get a free post so they can get their leaflets into every house or flat without having to go to the immense trouble of setting up and maintaining a large volunteer base to deliver them or establish a publicly visible candidate selection process. Their absence on the ground during the election locally was a good indication of their real level of support.

In some instances the press and TV give them loads of free publicity. Ukip is a case in point, very much so. The Telegraph and the broadcast media were strangely silent about the antics of many of the ‘Ukip 12′ of 2004 while saturating the papers and airwaves for three weeks non-stop – with the biggest headlines I have ever seen the Telegraph use – about (mainly) Labour and Tory MPs’ expenses. Mr. J is rather coy about that this morning too.

Well, I hope Mr. J and his friends are satisfied with the outcome. I have no doubt that his owners are. I write as a loyal Telegraph reader since 1961. Their expenses campaign, timed and drawn out as it was, has done a wonderful resurrection job on Ukip and paved the path to Brussels of Mr. Griffin and his chum in Yorkshire. As Nigel Farage asked last night,’who could have believed this could happen even five weeks ago?’ Who indeed!

This leaflet is one of the most cynical ploys I have seen from this source in quite a time. It asks readers to sign a petition for ‘a fair deal for Gurkhas’ (in large letters) – having just celebrated forcing the Government to give them one! What it really wants is the details of your name, address, email address, mobile number and landline number so that Lib Dem activists can pester you in future – it even says so in very small print, thus skirting round the Data Protection Act. None of this information is relevant to this bogus petition. My advice is not to sign it at all, but if you do, confine yourself to name and address only and state that you do not wish to be included on any database held by the Lib Dems for any purpose.

It also invites you to join the Lib Dms or make a donation. It is fair enough to invite people to join or donate to a political party. We do it all the time – but to do it under cover of helping a justly admired group of soldiers strikes me as beneath contempt.