Welcome to my blog. I am a former local journalist who now works in PR and a Conservative and community activist in Woking and Horsell. This blog will keep updated on local issues as well as my interests and quirky news stories.
Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb, among other things
There’s a very interesting letter published in the Times today that sums up one of the big post-election questions and ties in to the Conservative Political Discussion Group debate that was held tonight at Churchill House.
Conservatives all agree that the public sector needs to be trimmed. We like to think that we can get this from efficiency savings and managed vacancies and possibly that is true. Carl Thomson and John Redwood’s excellent leaflet showed that there is waste all around. But for every time we abolish a Quango, scrap a government scheme or cut a swathe through a government department, there is a risk – although not necessarily a certainty – that jobs could be lost.
I think that the public would be quite approving of 40,000 civil servants and local government officers being stripped from the public liabilities if there wasn’t a recession and memories of redundancy or threats to their own jobs weren’t quite so raw. So the problem for spending-cutting Conservatives is this – how can we invigorate the private sector to create the jobs for those we need to cut from the public sector? Because unless that happens, there won’t be the cuts that some would like to see.
British manufacturing will continue to decline and our financial services sector – the powerhouse behind the 1995-2007 economic boom – looks to have blotted its copybook and is now the target of government ire. So what do we have left? What can Britain give the world? We have a long and established tradition of innovative and creative thinking, invention and a slightly different perspective on a problem. If Britain has any hope of still being great in 2050, this hope lies in science, technology and the support services that surround it.
We can no longer export goods as cheaply as other countries and our services sector will soon be swamped by the rigours of increased scrutiny. But what we can export is patents, ideas and technology – but only if the funding is put into the necessary research.
In Churchill House, we were debating the differences between Labour and the Conservatives in the long and short-term. Labour would maintain and increase the state economy to 60% of GDP or above. Only the Conservatives can challenge this. It’s a risk; but it could change the position of Britain in the world and be the bang that echoes through the next century of our history.
