Publications

The reasons for introducing new laws can be categorised in many different ways, to raise revenue for government, the right wrongs, to advance the public good are just some of them. However legislation is also about bringing up to date how we deal with new advances in technology.

I welcome the recent emphasis upon the issue of caring. Given the rising numbers of older people as life expectancy continues to climb it is inevitable that many more in our society will need to have access to the care sector and in turn more of us will become carers in due course.

One of the greatest weapons that an MP has is the opportunity to ask questions. There is no better exemplar of this than the fact that each day starts with a Question-time when Departments are called in turn to answer Oral Parliamentary Questions from MPs. This culminates in Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

Since the spike in food and fuel prices of a couple of years ago there has been a complete reappraisal of the importance of food supply in our society. It is often forgotten that the financial crash was largely instigated by those rapid increases.

A key role of being a Member of Parliament is to be there when people need advice and help and to act as a local advocate to try to protect and maintain facilities of major importance to the locality.

The recent announcement by Government of a raft of measures to help keep pubs open is welcome but long overdue. I have been working for the last few months along with Greg Mulholland from the Lib Dems and Brian Brian Binley from the Conservatives through the Save the Pub Group in Parliament to liaise with those who can start to protect this important British institution.

Back last summer with others I put a bid together to British Gas for funding under their ‘Green Streets’ initiative. This encourages communities to introduce energy efficiency measures, including new renewable technologies. The heart of our bid was to achieve 100% loft insulation in two selected Stroud communities.

Of all the addictions human beings face by far the most insidious is gambling. This is because of the sums of money involved, the ease through which an individual can get into debt and the number of means by which someone can now gamble.

By trade I am a teacher, and latterly I worked as a teacher trainer. I know that there are many who would refer to George Bernard Shaw’s maxim that those who can’t teach teach teachers but I shall ignore that slur and concentrate on the more edifying thought that we need to recognise the importance of teacher training and all that it offers.

I have just got hold of a document by the life company Aviva which publishes research on both retirement and more importantly pre-retirement. As such it examines the prospects for the finances and potential lifestyles of over-55s in the UK who by 2011 will it is estimated makeup 29% of the population.