Thursday 7 May 2009

A tribute to my dad

I HAVE been neglecting the campaign trail for a few days now, the reason being that my dad died yesterday.
My dad, Bryan Thorne, had been in St Margaret’s Somerset Hospice, Taunton, after falling badly at home and suffering a knock on his head.
The fall triggered the end of his battle with cancer, which began in February, 2007, and seemed to have been won after undergoing emergency surgery to remove a large tumour from his bowel.
However, about 12 months ago, it became a battle with liver cancer and we were told it was inoperable and the end result was inevitable.
After the fall last week, my mother could no longer continue to care for him at home and it was agreed the only course open was to admit him to the hospice.
We were told he might last no more than a few days, but he held on for six days in total and passed away shortly before 9 am yesterday. He was 79 years old.
As the eldest of his five children, I was with him holding his hand at the end.
It is the most distressing and emotionally disturbing thing I have ever, ever, ever had to do.
Many of you reading this will probably have already gone through something similar in losing a loved one.
I now know how you felt and how you may still feel today.
I write this not for sympathy, rather just to try to clear my mind and try to refocus on the next few weeks.
My dad would have been upset if he knew he had disrupted my campaign. He always only ever wanted me to succeed in anything I did, and was always willing to help if he could.
I know my dad was very proud of me being a councillor although he was never a Conservative.
My dad was a lifelong Labour supporter, even defending Gordon Brown because he thought he was a Labour Prime Minister.
He said he would never vote Tory because of what happened in Suez in 1956. I could never understand the logic of his attitude.
My family have a tradition of helping others, a tradition steeped in trade unionism and I have been told accounts of my great-grandfather handing out union money to workers to help them through the hardship of strike action while they fought for a better quality of life.
In my younger working days I was also a trade union officer, albeit a right-wing one and often I found myself voting in a minority of one.
It therefore surprised my dad when, in the autumn of 2006, I told him I was standing as a Conservative candidate in the Taunton Deane Borough Council elections of May, 2007.
But he knew that in my own way I would be doing my best to help people, like generations of my family before me, and he supported me fully, despite the arguments we would have when talking politics between ourselves.
He often used to really annoy me with his attitude and it would require my mum to intervene and get us talking about something else.
Football was my dad’s passion, and he was a lifelong Arsenal fan.
Being a Liverpool fan myself, there were again many heated discussions - much more so than when talking about politics. One thing we had in common, however, was that we both disliked Man Utd.
He served in Navy and was stationed in Malta for some years, and my younger brother was born there.
In his latter years, my dad would take my mum back to Malta for holidays, staying several weeks at a time. He loved the country and I think if he could have afforded to do so, he would have moved there to live.
  • The photograph shows my dad, Bryan Thorne, on holiday in Malta in 2005.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

A visit from Shadow Chancellor George Osborne

GEORGE Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, was in Taunton Deane today, and briefly chatted with me.
I think I had about 20 seconds with him during a reception at The Castle Hotel to launch the Conservative manifesto to which I have signed up as a candidate for the County Council elections on June 4.
Brief though it was, George Osborne made a lasting impression on me - I was still thinking about him while driving home afterwards!
Seriously, though, he was an impressive politician.
Actually getting to meet him and to be in the same room and hear him speak brought home just how good he is going to be when he sits at the Despatch Box next year as this country’s next Chancellor.
I think it was probably George’s first visit to Taunton Deane, but he had been well briefed by Councillor Ken Maddock, who is the leader of the Conservative group at County Hall and who will be council leader if we win the elections on June 4.
George knew all about the fiscal mismanagement of the county council under the Lib Dems and how they have doubled our council tax and landed us with a mountain of debt.
As well as launching the manifesto, George Osborne highlighted how important Somerset is to the national political scene.
It is one of the few areas where Conservatives are principally up against Liberal Democrats rather than facing a contest with Labour.
This means the election battle will be very different from other areas.
Against Labour, it is possible to talk about how their Government has ruined the country, brought about the worst recession we have ever known, and created the fastest-growing unemployment queue ever seen.
With the Lib Dems, this cannot be done as they are not, and never will be, in Government, which means they can - and frequently do - say anything they like about what should be done with the country, without any concerns about how it would actually be done if they were running the economy.
The drawback for Somerset electors is that this Lib Dem national ‘it doesn’t matter what we say because we’ll never be held accountable’ attitude rubs off on their Somerset councillors.
It results in Somerset Lib Dems telling the electorate many things which are not true by any stretch of the imagination in the desperate hope that they will not be kicked out of office for doubling our council tax, tripling our county debt, and making a mess of our roads and pavements.
A case in point is the £25 million of council taxpayers’ money which the Lib Dems have lost in Iceland.
The Lib Dems tell us that the money is not lost, because there is a slim chance some of it may be recovered.
They also say that even if it was lost, it won’t make any difference to council taxpayers.
They must think people like you and I are stupid.
If you lose your wallet in the street, then the money is lost, even if you hope that maybe you will be lucky enough that it will be found and handed in.
And to say that £25 million makes no difference to the county is plainly daft. The list of what services the council pay for with £25 million is huge.
The tragedy of the Lib Dems’ gamble on risky investments in Icelandic banks is compounded by the fact that not only did they make a bad investment, they also made a bad choice of bank.
For, the bank they gambled on is not even one of those which has since said it hopes to return substantial amounts to UK councils.
Another case in point is how Lib Dems tell us that they are committed to improving education in Somerset.
Yet, they have started a vicious round of closures of small rural schools and have ignored the protests of local communities.
They also say the school closures are not financially motivated.
Yet, they quote the higher cost per pupil of educating children in a small school and point to how the money will be better spent in a bigger school.
  • The photograph shows George Osborne holding a giant credit card to symbolise the high spending and high borrowing nature of the Lib Dems at County Hall, with Councillor Ken Maddock symbolically cutting it in half. They are watched by county council candidates, including John Thorne (second, left).

Monday 4 May 2009

Manifesto pledges which just don't stack up

MANIFESTO season is upon us, the time of year, or, rather the time of the quadrennial, when local politicians make all sorts of claims about what they have achieved for you during the past four years and what more they will do in the next four years.
All you have to do is give them your vote and everything will be okay.
I never cease to be amazed at how these manifestos and claims of achievements can twist the truth to a point where what is being said is unrecognisable when actually compared to what was done.
One local politician who comes to mind must be nothing less than a superhero if they have single-handedly done all that they claim.
In fact, you wouldn’t need any of the other councillors at all, as they are so wonderful.
In truth, though, a single councillor in the political system we have at the moment can only work as part of a team and should share collective responsibility for both achievements and failures.
That is one of the reasons why you won’t find me saying that I have single-handedly saved, for instance, a phone box or a Post Office, as it wouldn’t be possible to do it on my own.
What I will say, is that personally I have done what I can and that it is the Conservatives (plural) who have achieved it.
Take the much-trumpeted zero council tax increase at Taunton Deane Borough Council as an example.
The credit for this rests with the Conservative opposition group of councillors, although most of the work was done by our group leader Councillor John Williams.
It was his alternative budget which was cherry picked by the Lib Dem administration on the very day they were proposing a 2.7 per cent council tax rise – with the effect that they then agreed with the Conservative zero increase proposal and put that to us at the evening budget meeting.
I played my part as a Conservative councillor by inputting to the alternative budget, but I’m not claiming any superhero powers and saying I did it alone so therefore you should vote for me.
Looking at the manifestos which have been published, it is interesting to read the ‘key facts’ the Lib Dems want you to remember when you go to vote, and then to compare them with what the ‘real facts’ are.
Lib Dem ‘Key fact’ – they ‘will continue to keep council tax increases among the lowest of any county’.
True fact – they have already doubled your council tax during their reign of power and are now so worried about losing control that they are trying to appear to be matching the Conservative pledge to ‘freeze’ your council tax.
Lib Dem ‘Key fact’ – they ‘have plans currently being actioned to invest in jobs and businesses’.
True fact – they have just been forced to publicly admit their claim to be investing £5 million in the Somerset Economic Recovery Plan was a crude spin doctor deception because all but £280,000 is money from other organisations or was already in the budget.
Lib Dem ‘Key fact’ – they have achieved the highest recycling of any county.
True fact – they have broken their promise to give us plastics and cardboard recycling and it will be 2011 before most people actually get it, if at all.
Other examples of bending the truth can be found in the Lib Dem 2009- 2013 manifesto published on their website.
It claims, for instance, they will ‘protect village schools’.
Well, we are in the middle of a savage Lib Dem cost-cutting exercise which is closing village schools such as Blagdon Hill and Nynehead and others, and leaving many others under threat.
Only Conservative councillors, including myself, have fought against these closures.
The Lib Dems claim, for instance, not to have closed any special schools – but they don’t say it is not for want of trying and that if Mark Formosa, the Conservative Parliamentary candidate, had not battled them in Wiveliscombe, then Kingsmead School would have lost its special needs unit.
They claim credit for the successful 'Handyperson Service' – it is actually called the Handyman Service, which shows how politically correct they cannot help being – but they don’t give any credit to the Taunton Deane Conservative administration which actually started it some years ago.
They claim to have eased traffic congestion on the Silk Mills road by building a railway bridge.
But in truth they have ruined the good work of installing the bridge by creating a mess of traffic light-controlled junctions and different vehicle lanes which now cause as much, if not more, congestion than before.
They promised to roll out 120 new transport schemes and to improve road safety, but they have done nothing to progress a new railway station for Wellington, or a northern distributor road for the town, while we have seen those yellow signs on 'Red Routes' advising of safety amendments to come in 2008 amended to read '2009' - and we are still waiting.
I could go on, but I suspect few people have even read this far.