Publications

We are now well and truly into Autumn as we can tell from the way that the leaves have disappeared off the trees and the winds have got ever stronger and temperatures such that there is a real nip in the air. I saw this for myself last Saturday when I attended the presentation ceremony for the Gloucestershire Awards of the Campaign to Protect Rural England held at the Westonbirt Arboretum on that really wild, stormy day.

The Badman Report which has been selectively spun by Gloucestershire Local Education Authority needs to be read as a whole so that we can initiate a proper debate on the future for secondary education in the county. Of course most attention in the South Vale will be concentrated around the treatment of the Vale of Berkeley College now proposed for closure by the LEA.

The decision by David Cameron last week to deny a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty if he was ever elected to power was a final slap in the face for British democracy and bodes ill for the likely character any future Tory government.

I gave my annual address to the Stroud and District Business Club breakfast last week. Understandably I took as my topic the recession and its aftermath.

A great sadness of doing this job is the number of times when you meet parents who have lost children prematurely. Sometimes this is through a road accident or from something that has happened through an accident at home. However the most common reason is because of problems in birth or through a sudden illness or condition.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch of a Community Policing initiative at the Co-operative store in Stonehouse. There was no better example of visible policing with everyone from the Chief Constable downwards on duty. Certainly this will have made the good denizens of the town feel a lot safer.

The memorable intervention by Francis Pym in the 1983 General Election when he warned of the dangers of landslides has been prayed in aid on numerous occasions as the danger when one party gets dominance in the British political system.

Over the next few weeks we will hear a gathering chorus on the importance of the forthcoming Copenhagen Conference called to get the world to set new targets to deal with climate change.

The constitutional survey project which I helped initiate earlier in the summer reaches its culmination this Saturday, the 24th October, when we hold a final meeting on it. This will be held at the new lecture theatre in the joint sixth form block at Marling and Stroud High School at Downfield and will start at 3pm.

I have taken a close interest in the care profession over the last five or so years having witnessed it at first hand with the support that my father received over that time.