How we’re raising awareness about Charlie Whelan and Unite.
If you’re reading this, the chances are that you – like an average of 12m others in the UK – will also log in to Facebook today. But will you use it connect with your political interests, as well as your friends? Given that it hadn’t hit the UK at the time of the last general election, it will be interesting to see how Facebook plays out in the next one.
Having a Facebook page and updating it regularly is the bread and butter of what political groups and representatives can do, but there’s also room to think outside of the box. There’s also the Facebook Connect feature, for example, that enables users to log in to third party websites using their Facebook account. There have been some fun and practical uses of it so far, though few in the political realm.
This weekend, we launched a campaign using Facebook Connect which we believe is one of the most innovative uses of the tool yet seen in the UK. Built in just a few days in response to the growing concern about the control Charlie Whelan’s Unite union (the union behind the BA strikes) has on Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, the campaign utilises Facebook Connect to raise awareness of the issue beyond Westminster. This campaign makes it easy for people to spread the word out to their non-political friends, thereby bringing a new wave of pressure to bear on this unhealthy meshing of interests.
Once users have connected to the Cash-Gordon campaign, they can start accruing “action points” for reading briefings about the issue, getting their friends involved, donating, or even for directly asking Charlie Whelan a question. Unlike face-to-face traditional campaigning, a lot of online advocacy is hard to measure and often goes unrecognised – action points provide a way of both measuring and incentivising those efforts.
In the brave new world of online politics it’s importantly to keep innovating this way. If you have any ideas on how else we could be using the internet, please let us know in the comment thread.
Posted by Julian Brazier, Member of Parliament for Canterbury, March 21st, 2010 .
One local example shows the sheer scale of wasteful spending.
Driving in my constituency, I keep seeing men working on a glaring – and frustrating – example of the government’s willingness to waste large sums of public money.
Britain’s public deficit has passed the levels in Greece and drawn fire from the European Commission. There are also lots of worthy road improvements sorely needed. Yet a bridge has just been constructed across the A2 linking up a bridleway a few miles Southeast of Canterbury, which is almost unused. The structure, built by the Highways Agency, has cost the taxpayer £1.3 million.
Very few people want this bridge. In fact, local residents have protested to me that it is a visual intrusion. At both ends, the approaches have been permanently (and expensively) scarred by tarmac paths. And the robust steel frame dominates the skyline, in an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Why was it built? I wrote to the minister concerned, Lord Adonis, now Secretary of State to ask why they wanted to waste money on this. The scheme was originally passed a decade ago, when Canterbury Council was run by a Lib Lab administration. Lord Adonis informed me that the death of a pedestrian at the site made it urgent. The fatality occurred eleven years ago. It was a very sad event but the pedestrian was walking along the road in the fog, not crossing it, so a bridge would have made no difference.
Britain urgently needs to bring government borrowing under control. Let’s start by saying ‘No more bridges to nowhere.’
Posted by David Cameron, MP for Witney, March 20th, 2010 .
Dealing with the vested interests can bring real, positive change.
There’s a very simple choice at this election: five more years of Gordon Brown, or change with the Conservatives. But if the British people do vote for change, I can tell you now that it won’t come easily.
Real change is always hard because there will always be people and organisations with vested interests in preserving the status quo – even if that’s not in the national interest. We need to take these vested interests on, and I gave a speech earlier today setting out how the Conservatives will do just that.
Taking on vested interests has been at the heart of so many of the great moments of progress in this country – whether it’s abolishing slavery in the face of commercial interests, or more recently Margaret Thatcher taking on those who controlled council housing and the nationalised industries.
So we know that taking on vested interests can bring real, positive change. But that change can only come about if you have the strength to see it through. Sadly, we haven’t seen that strength from Gordon Brown.
Just look at what’s going on with the British Airways strike. Thousands of jobs and the future of one of Britain’s greatest companies is at threat, yet we have a Prime Minister who won’t come out in support of those who would cross the picket line because the Unite union is bankrolling the Labour Party.
The next Conservative Government will be different. You can see that in how we led the way in dealing with MPs’ expenses. You can see it in our pledge to publish all government spending online. And you could see it this morning in my call for a levy on banks to pay back taxpayers for the support they gave them.
Since becoming leader of the Conservative Party I’ve rolled up my sleeves and argued for what is right, not what is convenient. It’s time we had a Prime Minister that did the same.
The proposals will deliver secure, sustainable and affordable energy.
British energy policy is out-of-date. It was designed almost thirty years ago for a world very different to today.
Securing our energy supplies presents a growing threat and five more years of Gordon Brown would only make an already precarious situation worse. We need change and in this Green Paper we set out plans for the biggest overhaul of British energy policy in a generation.
That is why we launched our energy policy paper, Rebuilding Security, today. It is a comprehensive programme for the long-overdue reform of British energy policy. In it we set out plans to create security guarantees for electricity and for gas – ensuring that the lights stay on and our homes stay warm.
We will also take decisive action to promote nuclear and renewable power, through streamlined planning, a floor price for carbon and improved infrastructure. Finally we will make Britain more energy efficient, through our Green Deal and a new ‘energy internet’, that puts consumers in control of their energy usage.
These policies will deliver secure, sustainable and affordable energy for the years ahead, while boosting investment and creating jobs. Ours is a plan to turn a threat into an opportunity, demonstrating the energy leadership and values needed to get Britain back on track.
We will deliver training to those who need it most.
On Monday at our Jobs Summit we announced the next stage of the Conservative initiative to encourage companies to provide pre-employment training: Service Academies.
These Academies are aimed at the long-term unemployed and young people who are finding it difficult to get a foothold in the jobs market.
This announcement focused on the Hospitality and Leisure sector because this is the area of the economy where growth is projected – when we have finally pulled our way out of this long recession – and where there are lots of jobs at all levels, including at the entry level.
The initiative was strongly supported by eleven of the top names in the sector, such as Intercontinental Hotels Group (the biggest hotels group in the world by rooms), Whitbread, Starbucks, Gala Coral, Pizza Express and Travelodge. Perhaps most interesting was the reason for this strong support. More than anything else, it reflected the excitement of companies at the prospect of a programme which does not have the heavy hand of Government compressing it.
The Service Academy approach ensures that the training content, materials, structure and means of delivery will all be designed and determined by the businesses involved. The Academy will offer the longer-term unemployed a two week course, followed by a four-week work placement. The course will earn participants a certificate which companies across the sector will recognise as an industry standard for work readiness. The top firms involved will aim to offer 20% of participants’ full-time jobs themselves, but other certificated participants will enjoy a head start when looking for jobs right across the sector.
We decided to start with the service industries for another reason. While we are now a predominantly service economy, surveys like the GMI-Amholt Nation Brands Survey suggest that this country is no better than average when it comes to service culture and attitudes – even though our companies have systems second to none. So this represents a golden opportunity to spread the soft skills and attitudes necessary for us to become service world-beaters. Just in time for the Olympics.
We will ensure every family gets the support they need.
David Cameron has firmly put the family at the heart of this General Election campaign. As a working mum with three school aged children, I know first-hand some of the real pressures facing families in Britain today and as Shadow Minister for the Family I believe that the policies of the Conservative Party will help ensure support for families is there, when they need it.
Sure Start Children’s Centres have our full commitment because they set out the foundations for family support in every community. Now the Centres are built, Labour thinks the job is done – they are wrong. The National Audit Office, Audit Commission and OFSTED have all criticised this Government’s failure to develop Sure Start in a way that supports the poorest and most vulnerable families in our communities. Our plans and vision for Sure Start will change that.
We will strengthen Sure Start for every family. Putting in place an extra 4,200 Sure Start Health Visitors – a new universal health visitor service, working through Sure Start to give every family access to the professional support they need in those critical early years. We know from research that trained health visitors are also the most effective way to reach families who are the poorest and most in need in our communities. The changes we plan will address the concerns raised about Sure Start and strengthen it for the future.
But I want to go further; we need people with the best understanding of family life working in our communities; organisations with a proven expertise in supporting families, particularly through tough times. Organisations like Action for Children, 4Children and Barnardos have that expertise and I want them involved in providing more, effective Sure Start services.
It is unforgivable that Labour has used the tactics of creating fear and anxiety amongst families and Sure Start staff as part of their political campaigning, by saying the Conservatives will close down Sure Start. We have clear policies and a clear vision for Sure Start. We know that with our policies Sure Start can work even harder to support our communities helping Britain to be the most family friendly country in Europe.
The big unions, led by Unite, have now got a stranglehold over Labour.
The choice people make in the forthcoming General Election will shape the country for decades to come.
In a speech this morning I spoke about one thing in this election that hasn’t received anything like the attention it deserves: the way in which the Labour Party has changed.
The Labour Party that will go into this election in 2010 bears only the most superficial resemblance to the Labour Party that swept to power in 1997. You can see that Labour has changed for the worse in almost every area – the issues it speaks about, the candidates it fields, and the backing it receives.
Under Gordon Brown, Labour has retreated into its traditional comfort zones, even going back to many of the failed dogmas of the 1970s and 1980s.
The big unions, led by Unite, have now got a stranglehold over Labour. They are effectively controlling the selection process for prospective MPs, and they are also providing the money that oils the whole machine.
The end result is that the Labour Party today is bankrolled by the big unions, indebted to their goodwill, and dependent on their largesse for survival.
In the end, all elections are a choice between the arguments of tomorrow and an attachment to yesterday. In this election, it is Labour who are looking back in anger – and the Conservatives who believe in a future built on change, optimism and hope.
Candidates from South Yorkshire joined forces to make a difference.
Last Saturday, a ‘gang’ of Conservative PPCs – including Spencer Pitfield, Michelle Donelan, Anne Crampton, John Sharp – descended upon the centre of Stocksbridge for a team litter-pick. What an effective, worthwhile and easily arranged social action this was.
Having borrowed the necessary equipment (litter grabbers, gloves and bags) from the local authority we split into pairs and within a few hours had cleaned up the town centre’s main thoroughfare. It’s amazing how many bags were filled!
Committed to social action, our aim was to do something really valuable with a clear ‘before and after’ effect. We were determined not to do anything tokenistic and some other options (with people) are hampered by Mr Brown’s ridiculously bureaucratic CRB requirements. I’m fully aware of the need for robust systems, but with the teacher, ex-police officer and GP on the team we have CRB checks coming out of our ears.
Spencer – the candidate in the target seat of Penistone and Stocksbridge – identified litter in some parts as being a real problem, and we can all relate to that in our patches. Also, my time in crime reduction leaves me in no doubt as to the synergy between clean, green environments and lower crime.
As well as the satisfaction of seeing the clean street, we thoroughly enjoyed it! To work together, talk over campaign experiences and share problems for a few hours proved a refreshing break. So – we are going to do it again. One warning though – be aware of who you are working with. We certainly don’t want to add to the dearth of recent criminal legislation but if and when the time comes, I shall be recommending that ‘mischievous or reckless use of litter grabbers’ is made an offence.
We will end the top-down approach and give power to local residents.
This week I took part in a lively debate with Housing Minister John Healey. The event was hosted by the Home Builders Federation and as you can imagine the audience was keen to learn how the next government will facilitate more house building.
Now I would say this of course, but housing genuinely represents one of the most progressive areas of policy for us Conservatives. And whilst the stated objective of the fourth Housing Minister I’ve faced is also to build more homes – I am certain that our approach is far more likely to deliver results.
If you’re not familiar with the crisis in housing, then it goes something like this.
During Labour’s rule there have been around 26,000 fewer homes built each year than under the previous two Conservative administrations. Meanwhile housing waiting lists have soared and fewer new homes are being built than at any time since 1924, when Ramsay Macdonald became Prime Minister.
However, there is more going wrong in housing than just the recession. In fact, we know that it is Labour’s top-down targets which have actually done so much to prevent homes being built when and where they are needed. Unsurprisingly, most people rather resent a lack of control over their own neighbourhoods yet that’s precisely what Regional Assemblies and obscure Regional Spatial Strategies mean.
This approach hasn’t worked in the past and even if the property market returned to less turbulent times, all the evidence is that this top-down system can never deliver. So change is needed.
Our progressive approach will scrap the Government’s target led-planning system and replace it with ‘localism’ which will include powerful incentives to ensure that homes are built where they are most needed. Specifically, we will make sure that for every new home built, the local authority will not just collect the council tax on that home, but will also be provided with the same amount of money from the Treasury in a new pound-for-pound match funding system.
Taken together with our Business Rate Uplift bonus, areas that encourage enterprise and growth will benefit financially in a dramatic way. Suddenly local people will get to share the benefit of economic development, making growth a much more appealing prospect.
Rather than dreaming up Whitehall-inspired housing numbers which owe more to tractor production targets in the Ukraine during the Soviet Union, our system will work with the grain of human nature. It is a simple and fair equation for Local Authorities and the people that they represent – if you build more you will be better off.
Posted by David Cameron, MP for Witney, March 13th, 2010 .
The choice is five more years of Brown, or change with the Tories.
Britain is in serious economic trouble. Not only have we just had the longest and deepest recession on record, but our recovery is one of the weakest in the developed world.
This has all happened on Gordon Brown’s watch. But now the man who promised “no more boom and bust” says he’s got us through the worst of the storm, and all we need is his hand on the tiller to steer us through the choppy waters.
That is 100% wrong. He didn’t steer us safely through the storm – he made it worse for us, by spending and borrowing so much.
So, we’ve had enough of Gordon Brown’s hand on the tiller. We need to change course – as I explain in this week’s video message.
We need to act now to show the world we’re serious about paying back our debts. We need to get more for less with government spending – just as families across the country are having to get more out of their money. And we need to make Britain the best place in the world to do business.
That’s the big choice on our economy today. Five more years of Gordon Brown – or change with the Conservatives with the energy, leadership and values to get Britain moving again.
Philip Hammond has called on Brown to put the record straight after he double counted the no. of businesses helped by the Time To Pay scheme 5 hours ago
