Tuesday 29 September 2009

Go Gordon! Just go...

I have just been listening to the speech by our Prime Minister at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton. I must say that I am shocked and angry at that man. He continues to drivel on about "Tory cuts" and "tax cuts for the few not the many", I cannot stand it any longer. The Conservative Party stands for individual choice above all else, less state control and greater happiness at a basic level of the family. A sensible balance between rights and responsibility, I see no sense with Gordon Brown.

Firstly, he is an unelected Prime minister. He has not taken himself and his party to the electorate and sought office - this tyrannical abuse of our most intrinsic principle is shocking. The President of Iran has just rigged an election - at least there has been an election there! Secondly, he asks why the Conservative Party are promising cuts across the board in the public sectors of NHS, Policing and the Civil Service - I shall tell you why, because that baboon has presided over our economy, as Chancellor, since 1997. In that dozen year span Britain has borrowed more money than every previous administration put together - inflation adjusted. To put that in perspective, we, as a country, are borrowing £330,000 a minute. We are saddled with such a gargantuan debt, that because of this total arse, each new born child is saddled with a personal responsiblity of £20,000. If he were the CEO of a corporation he would have been fired 11.9 years ago!

Suffice it to say, that yes, the Conservatives are having to promise cuts - but if he wants to know why there is no money in the coffers to fund the sort of change that everyone wants, then he should look at his record. What could we have done differently? We would not have borrowed during a boom, we would have put money away for a rainy day, but because of him we have borrowed more money than Churchill did whilst fighting off the Nazis, than Thatcher whilst retaking the Falklands, than the Duke of Wellington used whilst fending off Bonaparte. I cannot stand it when I see that man stand in front of a television camera and drop his jaw every two seconds explaining that he is the right man - he is guilty of bankrupting our country and leaving us so badly off that we are the worst prepared country in the G20 for weathering this financial storm. We do want change, Gordon, and most certainly not from you - you have done enough damage already - In the name of God man, GO!

Christopher Loftus - NUCA General Secretary

Saturday 19 September 2009

Philip Hammond MP at the Nottingham Bluecoat School

NUCA were privileged to arrange and enjoy the visit of Philip Hammond MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, for an open question and answer session at Nottingham Bluecoat School on Thursday 17th September, a few days before university term starts. Mr Hammond spoke to an audience of around a hundred GCSE and Sixth-form pupils at the school, as well as several NUCA members who were in attendance, on topics ranging from the economy to university education to the invasion of Iraq. He spoke convincingly and with clarity on these issues, but what stood out the most was a commendable honesty about the state of the nation’s finances: Over the past twelve years, the national debt has increased to almost 100% of GDP, and, according to Hammond, this is closer to 200% when the balance sheets of the recently nationalised banks are included in the calculations. Under Gordon Brown, the nation is borrowing £300,000 per minute, and even the Labour Party have begun to use the C-word to talk about future public spending: Cuts.

Hammond was frank about the need for the next government to restrain public spending and seek savings wherever possible. He pointed out that about half of public spending was not on things like education, defence or health, but consisted of “transfer” activities: namely, giving money to people in tax credits, pensions and benefit payments. Many of these transfer activities introduced under New Labour have had precious little effect on the problems they are designed to address; for example, benefit payments intended to reduce child poverty do not appear to be working and child poverty has actually increased. It seems likely that we can expect much of the needed savings to come from better management of public money in this area under a Conservative government.

It wasn’t all grim economic news, however. Hammond rightly presented the Conservative party as the party of genuine opportunity, decentralisation and limited government. Appropriately enough, his constituency of Runnymede and Weybridge contains the site of the signing of the Magna Carta, the start of a great British tradition of opposing tyranny and excessive government interference; a tradition which has fallen somewhat out of vogue in the corridors of power under New Labour, but which we can hope to see revived under a Conservative administration. If the first Cameron term in office is going to be dominated by an agenda of fiscal responsibility and education reform, then the second will be about decentralisation. Hammond sees this as a tremendous possibility for the long-term as it could break the cycle of the last thirty years of British politics. Currently parties in opposition build up support locally, win power at the national level, lose local government support gradually, and then lose general elections. Local elections are used to register protests against the party in power in Westminster since local authorities have no power to speak of anyway, and decentralising local and regional issues to local and regional authorities will reinvigorate politics at these levels and radically change electoral dynamics at a national level.

(L-R:Philip Whitehead, Christopher Loftus, Hamish Stewart, Philip Hammond MP, Derek Hobbs (Assistant Headteacher), and Nick Allsopp)

Our thanks go to both Philip Hammond MP for speaking at the school and to Derek Hobbs (Bluecoat Assistant Headteacher) for being willing to organise and host the event.

Following the Q&A session, NUCA President Nick Allsopp interviewed Philip Hammond (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EITZRa__daE) and also saved the taxpayer a £10 taxi fare by giving him a lift to his next engagement in the city centre. As Tesco would have it, every little helps.

Philip Whitehead - NUCA Member

Welcome to the NUCA Blog

Welcome to the Official Blog of the Nottingham University Conservative Association. In addition to our established website (http://www.nottinghamcf.co.uk/) and our newly launched YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/nottinghamcf) we are launching this blog as a means of expanding our association's reach both on and off campus, to promote what we do and to allow our members the opportunity to publish articles, to review our events and make any other written contributions relevant to NUCA.

If you are a member of NUCA or would like to get involved with the society this year, this blog is just one of the great opportunites what we can offer to our members. With the next academic year being the general election year this is an especially exciting time for NUCA and I really look forward to NUCA fully playing its part in delivering the next Conservative government.

Nick Allsopp - NUCA President