Driving down the M1 on Sunday night on my way to Westminster I was reflecting on the weekend gone by. Oh and before you start, my car is bio fuel and so I am apparently saving the planet and not destroying it. Interesting that Wellingborough has only one of nineteen bio fuel pumps in the country. You would think that if the government were serious about Global Warming, they would provide some fiscal incentive to encourage its use.
I had just stopped at the M&S at the Toddington motorway services to stock up with bread, milk, ham and fruit for the week ahead. M&S on the service station is about the only good thing you can say about them – still, back to my thoughts.
That morning, my wife Jennie and seven year old son Thomas were attending the Civic Service at Wellingborough School, nothing unusual to say about that as the previous weekend it had been the Holocaust Memorial Day service plus the homeless awareness service at the Full Gospel Church in Rushden.
Anyway, back to the service. We had a particularly good sermon from the school chaplain and we were mid way through prayers, you know praying for the government (they certainly need it), local councillors and other civic leaders, when suddenly out of the blue, we were praying for our other son Alex who at that very moment was flying off to Afghanistan as an RAF pilot. I could see my wife’s eyes glistening and a mixture of pride and foreboding came over me.
Isn’t it weird that our newspapers on Sunday were not full of information about the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, but about an MP that allegedly fiddled his expenses?
Got to stop now, as I need to ring a constituent who is about to be made homeless…
I never knew that about Wellingborough…the bit about the biofuel that is and I consider myself someone who is actually quite green. Where are the other? Does any one know? I live in the south is there one near me?
Interesting to read how Mr Bone has to stop and go shopping, I would have thought that he would have just sent one of his researchers.
Its odd that you have this impression of our MPs having an army of staff looking after them, or as recent newspapers suggest half their extended family, yet they still do those little day to day tasks like having top pop top the shops. hmmmm!
Peter
I am amazed that you managed to get home at all. Travelling back from our daughter’s house in Derbyshire on a Sunday evening I was frustrated that the average speed on the M1 appears to be 30mph or less! Our major motorways are 40 - 50 years old and traffic volumes have increased probably 10 fold since the. I understand the green arguments fully but it seems that successive governments have added no significant road or rail capacity for decades, hence the overcrowding on all forms of transport. I am interested in the Conservative Party’s transport policies - the government’s policy appears to be ‘If it moves, tax it!’.
30 - 40 years ago local economies were much stronger than now with local manufacuring business and a supporting network of suppliers of services. People could easily walk, cycle or get a bus to their place of work. Since the mid-70s we have seen most of manufacturing go offshore with a massive loss of jobs, skills and pride - never mind the record balance of payments deficit.
This has had a consequential impact on the environment:
a) virtually every product we buy is imported and shipped thousands of miles, roughly 95% of the all products sold in the UK have arrived here by ship. These imported products are then shipped by road all over the UK.
b) local economies are far weaker and there are much fewer higher, skilled job opportunities for people in work or young people about to start work. Consequently, people now have to travel much longer distances to work thereby increasing road and rail traffic.
I don’t have a ready-made answer but I do believe that we need a long-term strategy to reverse this country’s fortunes for the sake of the generations to come. Otherwise we really will become a nation of shop-keepers!
Steve