|
|
|
|
This is, in all probability, the last “View from Westminster” that I will be able to provide before the general election is upon us. We are, of course, already in the phoney war that inevitably precedes a general election in the fifth year of a parliament. When elections are called in the first, second, third or fourth [...] Over the past five years, many of us involved in national politics have worked together – across the political divides – to establish a consensus on fundamental ecological issues. These include reducing the UK’s dependence on imported hydrocarbons so we can increase energy security and reduce carbon output. We also have cross-party agreement on the need [...] After 13 years as the local MP, I still find that meetings in West Dorset can produce remarkable surprises. Last week’s surprise was to do with Chinese lanterns. If, dear reader, I were to ask you whether Chinese lanterns have any great ecological significance, I wonder what your response would be. [...] If someone said the words “respecting children’s rights”, what would you say in return? “Not another new-fangled initiative”? “Why do we want to fill children’s minds with rights – aren’t there enough people talking about their rights already”? If this would be your natural, sceptical reaction, I would well understand – because this was exactly the sort [...] At first sight, dangerous dog insurance looks like a reasonable proposition. But there is a problem. I think it is right to christen this problem “the gang-master syndrome”. I choose this name because the law on gang-masters is the classic example that best illustrates the problem. Some years back, there was the ghastly incident of cockle-pickers being drowned [...] Who knows best? The locals, or the experts? This is a question that I have repeatedly found myself asking over the years of writing this column. It isn’t always an easy question to answer – because there are things that the experts know that the locals may not; and there are things [...] It is often said that hard cases make bad law – and the thought behind this cliché is surely right. It isn’t possible to construct general rules that will work well for most people most of the time by thinking of the most difficult and exceptional cases. This is as true in the case of rules [...] At present, almost all our electricity comes from big power stations that feed into the national grid. The electricity is then distributed downwards through a system of descending voltages. It is all top-down. And it is basically the same system that was set up in the 1940s and 1950s. But we are now entering a [...] West Dorset residents in the Sherborne area naturally tend to use Yeovil Hospital for the acute services that the Yeatman in Sherborne itself cannot provide. But, for people further south, the normal destination is, of course, Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester. And Dorset County Hospital has been much on our minds recently. As most readers of [...] I don’t know how many times in the last few years I have heard people complaining about “apathy” – but this is certainly something one hears so often that it is in danger of becoming a cliché. And yet, I frequently find that, when there is a topic of real importance to people locally, the [...] |
|
|
Copyright © 2010 Oliver Letwin MP - All Rights Reserved |
|