The silence from Babergh is deafening! Today I didn’t receive one e mail from Hadleigh, which is, I think, a first on a weekday.
With luck things may hot up on Monday when we are due to hear from the Boundary Committee with regard to its preferred options for Local Government reorganisation in Norfolk and Suffolk. I hope to have information up on the blog by early afternoon on that day subject to the lifting of press embargoes.
I have not however been totally idle.
Having confessed to having some time on my hands, I have become more involved with the South Suffolk Conservatives Womens’ Committee, taking up the role of Chairman last month. I have to say that I did this with some misgivings, but so far have found the experience interesting and rewarding. While the group is run by women, the events are open to all, and the aim is to be a politically oriented group rather than simply a fund raising organisation.
In this capacity I drove over to Haughley Park yesterday to attend an Eastern Region Conservative Womens’ event, the theme of which was ‘A Rural Way of Life’. There were three excellent speakers, including Jim Paice, MP for South Cambridgeshire and the Opposition spokesman on Agriculture. (Both the MP and the venue are pictured above).
Paice spoke for almost an hour without a note. It is clear that if the Conservatives get into power they will review the red tape that currently burdens farmers. This, given the need for the UK to grow more food, must be a good thing. I questioned whether such de-bureaucratisation was possible given the number of directives that come from Brussels, but was told that there is plenty of scope to reverse the embellishment and gold-plating that has become the norm in Whitehall.
Paice told us that 25 percent of the population of the UK still live in rural or semi-rural areas. This significant minority have been very badly treated by the Labour Government, which has transferred resources away from rural areas, and as we know here in Suffolk, has undermined local services, post offices etc. etc.
