Recent News

As many of you will know, in addition to my role as a Basildon borough councillor for Billericay East, I have also been, for a little over two years, a member of the Council of Governors of the Basildon & Thurrock University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Although this website is primarily devoted to my role as a…

Well, it was only a matter of time and all of us in the Conservative Group predicted it would eventually happen – how could it not with such a motley assortment of waifs and strays? – but the inevitable has finally officially been announced. The UKIP Group on Basildon Council has split. Councillors have formally…

  In the wake of the recent debate on stalled attempts to amend the 2004 Hunting Act, I wanted to set out my own stance on the issue. I first started thinking about the fox-hunting debate some fifteen years ago, while I was still at university, when I started debating it with a friend who…

As regular readers will know, I do not generally write up meetings of Basildon Council’s Planning Committee, but last week’s meeting held on Tuesday 30th June turned out to be an unusually controversial affair. Firstly, a bit of background on the new enlarged committee, which now has ten members: four Tories – Cllrs Carole Morris…

The problem with the whole tax credit system is that it is, and always was, an insidious ploy by the Labour Party to ensnare yet more people – people who are working for a living – in the perfidious web of the Welfare State and increase the ranks of the ‘client class’ that makes up…

So, thought I’d write-up the Basildon Council Annual Meeting held on Thursday. These are normally quite civil, set-piece affairs, where we elect our Mayor and Deputy Mayor for the municipal year and also pass the winning party’s Order Paper, enabling them to form an Administration. The Order Paper confirms the Leader and Deputy Leader of…

Believe it or not, it has taken me about a week to recover from Polling Day. I have never fought a General Election campaign before – in 2010, I stayed up with a friend and watched the result coming in on the telly – so to do so as an agent, running an MP’s re-election campaign,…

It is now officially Polling Day and chronic insomnia allows me this opportunity to make some election night predictions and speak briefly about the elections before us – not just the General Election to Parliament but also our own local borough council elections. Every politician says at every election that it is “the most important…

Touchingly, some of you have chided me for not updating my blog for a while. Apologies, I didn’t realise I had such a loyal readership! Some of you who have received election leaflets from John Baron will have seen my name on the bottom of them and that is because I am acting as Mr…

Last week’s election interviews were a clear illustration of the choice facing Britain at the next election: competence and strong leadership from Prime Minister David Cameron or chaos and weakness from Ed Miliband.   The Prime Minister put in a strong performance.   He highlighted that 1.9 million more people are in work than in…