Sunday, October 4, 2009

Manchester calling

I shall shortly be heading to Manchester for this year's Conservative Party Conference.

No doubt the internal machinations of a political party are of little interest to most people, and certainly the main part of the conference is more of a rally than anything else, but there are interesting debates to be found at the fringe and we are promised more delegate participation than usual this year.

Coleridge Conservatives will be reporting back on any developments of relevance to Cambridge.

Last year we had a bumper crop of good news for Cambridge, such as:
  • Eric Pickles saying no to bin cuts, bin taxes, bin spying and bin fines, meaning weekly bin collections can return.
  • Eric again promising that regional spatial strategies will be scrapped and local authorities given the chance to rewrite their statutory structure plans.
  • Grant Shapps pointing out that so many more homes were built in EVERY year under the last Conservative government than in ANY year under this Labour government, giving the lie to the claim that top-down housing targets are needed to stimulate housing growth. (This also applies to social housing.)
  • George Osborne promising to match any authority that manages to keep its council tax increase down to 2.5% with funding to bring it down to no change (or a 0% increase in Gordon Brown terminology).
  • Theresa Villiers confirmed to us the policy of dropping the requirement to be guinea pigs for congestion charging to qualify TIF funds.
Interestingly, Manchester also currently has one Conservative councillor, up from zero when Cllr Faraz Bhatti defected rom the Lib Dems in 2008.

However, when I arrive tonight there won't be any time for politics but rather:

No comments: