Steve Barker of Tiddington, Oxford, urgently needs some help for his Doctoral research at Oxford Brookes University Business School into
the effect of involuntary redundancy on attitudes to work in future jobs.
To date, no one has looked into this, and the results could be very far reaching.
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Press Release on pig swill-feeding
Boris Johnson MP backs calls for Swill-feeder compensation
Boris Johnson MP, co-hosting a Country Land and Business Association sponsored video screening and discussion with George Howarth MP, last week denounced the Government’s handling of the 2001 Foot and Mouth crisis and the subsequent ban on swill-feeding. Mr Johnson branded this ban a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction designed to divert and distract attention away from the Government.
“The whole of a British industry was destroyed at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. These people had their livelihoods snatched from them by a Government which had, up until a few months before the outbreak, been actively encouraging them to invest in MAFF approved swill processing equipment.
“This ban was the result of one farmer’s illegal swill-feeding practices, practices which the Government well knew about. Had the Government acted as it was obliged to under existing legislation, as set out by the Animal By Products Order 1999, then this horrendous episode would never have happened. Instead, our landfill sites pile ever ominously higher, our sewers clog ever thicker and ex swill-feeders such as my constituent Mick Eadle, victimized by a Government desperate to tar anyone and everyone but itself, have lost everything. At the very least I strongly believe the Government has a moral duty to compensate these people”.
Boris’s occasional column in The Henley Standard
TIME TO GET MILITANT WITH THE RAILWAY BUREAUCRATS (and other bureaucrats…)
As I never tire of saying, the trouble with regulation…
I felt very lucky the other day to host an event for Sue Ryder Care in the House of Commons
Nirvana Natural shampoo …is the victim of what I believe is an injustice
A woman came to see me about a year ago in quite a state, because she had been defrauded of £60,000
Let us all hope, as we look ahead to an election year that Britain will be blessed by intelligent argument that is genuinely dedicated to the improvement of the country
Have you heard of them?…..well…Boris wishes his readers a berry merry Christmas!
We banned a berry – and it took Brussels to stop us being so silly
By Boris Johnson
And while we are on the subject of demented British regulation, and this Government’s lust to interfere in every aspect of our daily lives, let us not forget the breakfast habits of Mr Ron Jones, of Chinnor, in the beautiful county of Oxfordshire, and the insane, costly and ultimately abortive attempts to stop him eating a particular type of berry.
You may not have heard of a saskatoon, and nor, frankly, had I. But Mr Jones is widely travelled, and had come across this odd purple fruit in Canada. He put it in his mouth, as the Indians have done in those parts for thousands of years. He chewed. He was hooked. I hope I don’t misrepresent him if I say that he became this country’s leading saskatoon fanatic, and who can blame him?
Boris Johnson hosted the “We Care: who Pays?” campaign launch for Sue Ryder Care on 15th December in the House of Commons. A number of people gave moving testimonies of how helpful Sue Ryder Care had been in looking after their loved ones who had suffered terrible disease. A few people were moved to tears, including the heroic Olympic rower herself.
This charity really does deserve every possible support.
Boris with Olympic rower Sarah Winckless, Phil Dalton and Barry Stuart – both affiliated with care Centres.
Press Release:
Boris Johnson MP this week sponsored the launch of the Sue Ryder Care “We Care: Who Pays?” campaign in Parliament. The campaign is aiming to promote awareness amongst MPs of the true cost of the care provided by Sue Ryder Care. It is believed that in the past four years alone, Sue Ryder Care has effectively subsidised state care by over £50million.
Well done to my House of Commons office staff. Did you know:
– all the mail from far and wide has been replied to (email and land mail)
– the next batch of letters will also receive individual responses – every single one
That is about 500 extra letters over and above my heavy mail bag. Olly, Maggie, Fiona and Melissa will need a good Christmas and New Year break soon, when I hope the mail bag will shrivel up in size. Ann, on the diary front, and Wayne, in the constituency, have also been working overtime.
Here is my latest press release:
PRESS RELEASE
Following the recent publication of the Future of Rail White Paper, Alistair Darling MP, Secretary of State for Transport, has today announced the launch of the Government’s Community Rail Development Strategy. Fifty six lines have been proposed for Community Rail designation by the Strategic Rail Authority, the aim being to involve local authorities, users and community groups more and to double originating fare income from Community Rail services over a five-year period and to reduce subsidy per passenger by a half.
Commenting on this, Boris Johnson MP said:
“To designate the Henley-Twyford line a community railway is utter lunacy. I fully support involving local communities in the management of local railways and I believe that we must place these railways on a sustainable basis for the future. However, I fail to see how the Government can possibly relate the rhetoric of sustainability to the reality of funding cuts. This is an excuse to marginalise, downgrade and under-invest in important parts of the network.
And I tell you this, gentlemen, I said, and 100 golfers in black tie boggled drunkenly and hung on my words… You know what this Labour Government wants to ban? I yipped.
What? they chorused, red-faced with anticipatory wrath. They want to stop you – smoking! I said. No more smoking in the workplace, or pubs, or restaurants; no more pint’n’Castella in the 19th hole, and in so far as the putting green is a public place, you will probably be forbidden even from having a crafty fag as you steady your nerves!
Outrageous, they said, and for a while the surf of indignation thundered around me, until a man just to my right piped up in level tones: “Well, you know, I am all in favour of a ban, actually.”
What? I said, amazed, but before I could get to the bottom of his dissent, two or three others around the room were putting their hands up and demanding a ban on any kind of smoking in public. But hang on, I said, and I explained the statistics about passive smoking: that you have only to charcoal-grill frankfurters for half an hour on your barbie, and you will inhale the same quantity of carcinogens as you could expect to absorb in two weeks of passive smoking.
Yes, yes, said my friends at the golf club dinner; we know all that, but the honest truth, they said, was that they used to be smokers themselves, and it was a filthy habit, and they thought the new law would help them to resist any temptation to take it up again.
What? I said, still incredulous. Next thing, I said, you’ll be wanting to ban drink in order to remove any temptation to get drunk, or ban cars, to avoid ever being tempted to drive too fast… But then I thought some more about their position, and I could see a kind of attraction in it. Of course it is ignoble to invoke the nanny state in order to correct your own personal weakness, but at least my friends’ motives were somehow honest, and based on intimate knowledge of the people they knew best – themselves.
My black-tied chums weren’t actuated by a desire to impose some superior code of behaviour on others; their motivation was purely selfish, and I can live with the selfishness. It’s the dogooders I can’t stand, and this Labour Government is riddled with people who long to stop other people doing things of which they disapprove. In so far as there may or may not be a case for banning smoking in public, it should be no business of central government – or at least not while smoking is legal.
Continue reading Labour will always decide what’s best (Smoking in public)
* Too many libraries are getting rid of their stocks – particularly classic works – because they think there is no market for them anymore. Press Release (next posting)
* New Local Council Bloggers in Warwickswhire – Following on from “Local Democracy Week” last week, three members in Warwickshire County Council are keeping weblogs (one from each of the major parties) and taking questions from the public which will be answered on the web site. Read by visiting www.warwickshire.gov.uk/ldw2004
* More to follow
The Boris Johnson mail bag is bursting at the seams for plenty more reasons than one lately. (not including the latest Have I Got News For You – how could they be so outrageous!)
Apart from the recent storm, Henley’s constituents are expressing serious concern for the new system of receiving State pension payments – a more streamlined and less flexible route will be the only option from next year. Many pensioners are incensed.
Tax credits, for all the government claims that they would help families, seem to have brought despair to many families who have suffered massive inconvenience from the mismanagement of claims and funds being re-claimed back to the State coffers. All increasing the burden of red tape.
Watlington Car Park – of all villages in South Oxfordshire, Watlington village doesn’t really need to have car park charges imposed in the face of local uproar and desperate pleas from local shopkeepers. Even in the current trial period, they find custom running dry and are in danger of going out of business.
The Mental Capacity Bill and Fox hunting issues are still on the agenda and bubbling along.
Here is Olly’s press release about the recent closure of sub-post offices in Henley. The large post office now cannot comfortably accommodate the demand and the queues are unacceptably long. (“Locals enjoy the opportunity of a chat in the queue” was the defence of the Post Office Chief!)
“Though we had a fantastic response from those people who have been inconvenienced by these closures, Postwatch decided to stick by its original decision not to re-open the investigation and review their decision. Despite Boris Johnson’s strong representations and their acknowledgement of the fact that the closure of Newtown and Northfield End Post Offices will cause ‘significant inconvenience’ to the Post Office’s customers in Henley, they decided that it was impossible for them to oppose every closure on the grounds that it remains important to position these closures within a wider context.
Many thanks once more to those who wrote in to express their dismay at these closures. It is unfortunate that, in the end, the Post Office and Postwatch opted to close these sub-post offices in the face of such strong local opposition.”
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So – now to you – Bloggers
Any issues that rankle? Burning rants? (Let’s rest awhile from the recent embroglio…and have a time of quiet…until you open up the new copy of The Spectator, that is! …How does the aphorism go: “a ‘week’, more like ‘day’, is a long time in politics”?)
How about South Oxfordshire constituents (please declare yourselves!) who would like to respond? We (including Ann – planning the diary to the election, and Wayne – local agent masterminding the campaign) would much value your input.
Go out in to the street and look at your fellow human beings. Any street. See how they walk, and how different it is from the way we used to walk around even 10 years ago.
No one takes advantage of a crisp autumn day to look at the changing leaves or the unexpected curiosities of the urban landscape. No one nods, or flirts, or even looks at anyone else. Everyone has the same drugged, internal, abstracted look: and why?
Because we are all on the mobile. We are either making a call – a call that could almost certainly wait until we get to a landline – and have the tool glued to our sweating ear. Or else we have it in our hands.
See how we heft it and coddle it. Watch how we stroke its smooth skin and wonder what use to make of it next. Shall we dial a number and disconnect, just to leave our electronic spoor? Shall we send a text, an emoticon, a pictogram?
Everyone has one now, in his breast pocket or her handbag, a chocolate-bar-sized dispenser of personal gratification. We can all have that buzz now, whenever we want: the comfort of a voice, the quick fix of external affirmation that we need to get us through the day.
Yes, the British people – make that the human race – have a new addiction that needs feeding. There are now 40,000 mobile phone masts in the United Kingdom, and a further 8,000 are likely to be constructed in the next three years.