Is mankind's highest ideal to live without
incident or adventure? And if so,
when did this begin?

Last week, the Localism Bill was passed into law. I was glad to support its passage.  Through 13 years of New Labour, we witnessed continual moves towards centralised planning and micro-managing of our everyday lives. This new law will see central government interference cut and give power back to citizens, community groups and local councils.

To accompany the Act, the Government have helpfully updated the ‘plain English guide’ that was produced to accompany the Bill. You can read it here.

For councils this will mean: 

• Clarification of the rules on predetermination in order to free up councillors to express their opinions on issues of local importance without the fear of legal challenge;
• Abolition of Labour’s discredited Standards Board regime;
• Greater control over business rates.  Councils will have the power to offer local business rate discounts, which could help attract firms, investment and jobs;
• Cancellation of Labour’s unfair ‘ports tax’, which threatened to cripple key businesses, it simplifies the process for claiming small business rate relief to help small shops and small firms; and
• New planning enforcement rules, giving councils the ability to take action against people who deliberately conceal unauthorised development.

For local communities it will grant:

• The Right to Bid to run local services;
• The Right to Challenge by putting forward ideas to help their community;
• The Right to Veto excess council tax rises;
• The opportunity to draw up Neighbourhood plans;

However, there are caveats. I am an advocate of local referenda so I was disappointed to see that the Lords removed the flagship ‘local referendum’ provision from the Bill. That would have allowed voters to launch local referenda on local issues. Referenda do remain for council tax, right-to-build and neighborhood planning, but I know this will be a disappointment to some people in Wycombe.

Neighbourhood plans must, understandably, work inside some limits. If major infrastructure is decided upon at a national level, such as this benighted high-speed rail line, or if a strategic local plan calls for a certain number of homes to be built, then the Localism Act has safeguards to ensure neighbourhood plans do not override these wider ranging policies. Again, this will be a disappointment.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Localism Act will live up to its initial goal of radically decentralising power and fostering an environment where communities will have a greater say in their local area. We will see…

N.B. The author is Tim Hewish - my Parliamentary Researcher.

As a Historian, I welcome the Education Secretary’s announcement at conference today that History, as a discipline, will be at the core of the curriculum. For too long, Labour had been allowed to reduce the significance of our history, preferring to re-write it or worse simply ignoring it.

That is why I fear for the current crop of young people who have been taught under New Labour. To have a world without historical insight makes for a short-sighted people; since they will often view the world in the here and now, as opposed to critically exploring why certain events in the world are why they are.

A spot check approach to history has led to a misinformed nation. From the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to ideas on Capitalism and Communism, this generation often takes what they hear from one unverified source and apply this as truth. The rigor of History as a discipline needs to brought back and I am glad Mr. Gove is signalling in the right direction:

One of the under-appreciated tragedies of our time has been the sundering of our society from its past.
 
Children are growing up ignorant of one of the most inspiring stories I know – the history of our United Kingdom.

Our history has moments of pride, and shame, but unless we fully understand the struggles of the past we will not properly value the liberties of the present.

He is also correct in identifying that the current approach we have to history denies children the opportunity to hear Britain’s narrative in a connected way. One only comes to understand history when context is provided, as the world’s events do not occur in isolation.

History is a constantly lived experience; each and every one of us has the opportunity to leave their mark upon history. It doesn’t just occur on the world’s greatest battlefields or from the pens of key treaties. Children need to grasp the fact that something as simple as their own family tree can have a complex and historical significance, which has its own personal story to tell.

As Conservatives, we cannot just merely reclaim education as our own, we have to transform it and that means capturing pupil’s minds. Not through indoctrination like the previous socialist Government, but by opening up the vast and often untapped resource that is our national history.

As Labour pours another £11bn of poison into the wells, I find myself reflecting on the economics of the Left, people who seem to be lamenting coming “Tory cuts” after so much “Labour investment”.

In the first place, Labour plan their own substantial cuts. More to the point, Labour’s spending was funded not by sustainable prosperity, but by one long credit expansion unbacked by real savings, which has now, inevitably, come to an end.

Left-wingers’ admirable intentions seem to be unmatched by a reasonable understanding of the means to bring about the good ends they intend.

The shortest and surest way to understand basic economics is, purportedly, Henry Hazlitt’s famous Economics in One Lesson:

Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore. The long-run consequences of some economic policies may become evident in a few months. Others may not become evident for several years. Still others may not become evident for decades. But in every case those long-run consequences are contained in the policy as surely as the hen was in the egg, the flower in the seed.

From this aspect, therefore, the whole of economics can be reduced to a single lesson, and that lesson can be reduced to a single sentence:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Nine-tenths of the economic fallacies that are working such dreadful harm in the world today are the result of ignoring this lesson. Those fallacies all stem from one of two central fallacies, or both: that of looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and that of looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of other groups.

Read more

Via The Scotsman, we learn of Sir Ken Macdonald’s view of Tony Blair in respect of the war in Iraq:

TONY Blair deployed “alarming subterfuge” to mislead the British people over the war in Iraq, one of his top law officers has said.

Sir Ken Macdonald, who was director of public prosecutions at the time of the invasion, launched a devastating attack on the former prime minister, accusing him of acting like a “narcissist” as he tried to justify his actions.

Mr Blair had exhibited “sycophancy” towards Washington in the run up to the war in March 2003, Sir Ken said.

Read more…

An excellent video explaining Labour’s legacy and our plans:

We just can’t get rid of this desperate government soon enough.