They didn’t get one. The curious can read what I think on the Surbiton Hill Forum website and the comments made by some others.

I am sad for the ward I served for so long and love so much that, where it formerly had councillors who knew their stuff and fought for their constituents – all of them! – to ensure that at least their concerns were given a fair hearing, it now has three glove-puppets for Derek Osbourne, one of whom has moved out of the Borough.

We move on. The Conservative Party in Westminster has gone into coalition with the  Liberal Democrats for the welfare of the country, and because they couldn’t form a stable government on their own. My views on the Liberal Democrats are well known. All views are, however, open to be modified by experience and I hope that experience of  Messrs. Clegg, Huhne, Laws, Alexander and Cable in office will lead to a modification on my part.

I wish the Coalition government well.  Let us hope that the Lib Dem ministers will put national interest before party interest and that the party itself will grow up at last! So far, so good – but but there will inevitably be strains in both parties in the months and years ahead.

However, our country faces very grave difficulties – graver than many have been willing to acknowledge, so, in Churchill’s words ‘Let us go forward together!’

• A further smear appears about Tory cuts in local services.  We, who campaigned to keep open day centres for the elderly are, apparently, about to close Alfriston. Actually it was kept open 12 years ago as a result of a match funding deal between Kaleidoscope and RBK on the motion of Labour Cllr. Jeremy Thorne and myself. Davey certainly raised publicity about it and caused Lib Dem councillors do do a smart about turn.
• The Tories, who campaigned for weekly recycling collections in 2006, are also supposed the be about to launch an attack on recycling. When we’ve pledged to freeze the Council Tax for 2 years (at least) there’s no way we’re going to risk increasing our liability to pay Landfill Tax.
• The Lib Dems know this very well. Their allegations are based on absolutely no foundation other than Lib Dem scaremongering. This ‘Voice’ is full of it from start to finish.

Ed Davey wondered why we were sceptical about his and Ms. Kramer’s reported ‘threat’ to Kingston Hospital. The answer is obvious – treated over the years to the ceaseless diatribe of scares, half-truths, downright untruths and snide innuendo which is the stock in trade of the Liberal Democrats, and of which this ‘Voice’ is a prime example, what decent person can believe a word they say?

Much discussed was the consultation questionnaire the Council had put out to selected roads. It hadn’t been warmly received and, on reading it, I could see why. One was presented with a series of ‘yes/no’ questions to which it was almost impossible for a rational person to answer ‘no’.

I could almost hear, as I read, the conversation this would have provoked between James Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby:-

Hacker: I’m not very happy with this questionnaire, Humphrey.

Appleby: Oh really Minister. Why ever not?

H: Reading the answers I’m no wiser as to what people think of the scheme!

A: (smiling) Really Minister? Thank you, I’ll pass on your compliments to the Circumlocution Department. They will be pleased!

H: (indignant) It wasn’t meant as a compliment! Consultations are supposed to tell the Administration what people think………aren’t they?

A: Why ever should we want to know that?

H: So we can respond to their wishes and give them something they’d like!

A: (shocked) Really Minister – there are times…….(smiling again) We already know what they want better than they do. Consultation is about getting them to agree that they want what we know they want – or ought to want. It’s not about finding out their views, it’s about persuading them to either agree with us or keep quiet.

H: But that’s really all just a confidence trick on the public…….isn’t it?

A: (exasperated) Yes Minister!

The C-pod in action

The C-pod was in action again yesterday morning in Oakhill Road. Helen Whately, Nick Kilby, Janet Bowen -Hitchings, Mavis Cracknell and self were in attendance. So were numerous people doing door knocking and delivering literature throughout the area.

Local residents came along in sufficient numbers to keep Janet and me, who stayed on the pod, fully engaged in dealing with local problems from 10.30 to after half past 12.

A very successful morning’s work – followed by a trip to Chessington North and Hook in the evening for a ‘Beetle Drive’. This has become a Chessington Tory tradition, going all the way back to at least 2002. I can assure you that no actual beetles were injured in the process! If anyone doesn’t know what a beetle drive is, I will explain on request.

It would be greatly appreciated all round if there could be an agreed code of conduct on these operations. The attraction is the width of the roads and the proximity of the Test Centre in Douglas Road.

Apart from a great meal we were treated to an amusing after dinner speech by Justine Greening MP, just coming to the end of her first term as MP for Putney. It was very appropriate as she and Helen Whately have much in common and we’re all hoping that Helen will join her as one of a growing body of young Conservative women in the House after the Election.

I was particularly heartened to meet new people from Surbiton Hill who have recently joined the Association and one of our candidates in St. Mark’s Ward who helped to organise the very successful Farmers’ Market in Maple Road last Saturday.

It really is great to see the energy and dynamism of new people coming into the party these days. For myself I am more enthusiastic about the quality of the slate of candidates we have ready for next year’s Council election than I have been since Wansdyke in 1976. I can’t wait to see what they’ll do in the Guildhall!

My contribution to the debate was as follows:-

Mr. Mayor,

We are making a budget tonight in circumstances most of us have never encountered before. 32 years ago I did encounter them, in Wansdyke, North Somerset, not long after the last Labour government had gone to the IMF, in similar circumstances to those we face today, to ask it to get us out of the mess they had made.

The watchword then was, as it should be now, to cut your suit according to your cloth, safeguarding the services of those who need them most, pruning out waste and avoiding unnecessary spending on grandiose schemes that benefit relatively few of those who actually pay our Council Tax.

Doing this we managed what isn’t being managed in this budget – we made a modest cut in the district rate and went on to repeat that performance in the subsequent two years. We were determined to beat inflation.

This budget imposes a CT increase this year and proposes further similar rises in the next two years – on top of all the rises there have been in years gone by. We have given in to inflation.

I want to concentrate on safeguarding services for those who need them most. The provision of services to people with learning difficulties has been identified as a high budget risk area. I am relieved to see that the Administration is alive to this. However I cannot suppress two concerns:- we cannot simply shrug off the way in which the specific needs of some of our most vulnerable in this regard have been dealt with by the PCT with our connivance. I refer of course to the users of Springboard, for whom Cllr Mary Clark has fought so valiantly and with little by way of practical support from the administration. Of course one could say they aren’t our responsibility, but if the PCT was strapped for cash to run it, why did RBK not help? It was fast enough to find another £600,000 a year for 3 years for the Rose out of the taxpayer’s pocket, in this Budget, and that wasn’t our responsibility either.

There is a further consideration to which I don’t think we have given enough consideration in this Budget and that is the impact of the credit crunch upon the willingness or ability of persons of working age, dubbed ‘baby gloomers’ in the press, to contribute financially to the support of elderly and infirm parents. And the unprecedented cut in interest rates to next to nothing will undermine their ability through their own savings to look after themselves. This is a recession which is likely to hit us in the south east much harder than any previous one in my lifetime and pressure on care services for adults, especially the elderly, could, in my view, increase considerably more than this budget allows for.

Budgets reveal an Administration’s priorities, Mr. Mayor. This budget reveals some parsimony towards the vulnerable people of the Borough which sits ill alongside the repeated acts of generosity towards the prestige project across the road. This is why I cannot associate myself with it.