Next Tuesday's full council meeting has some interesting content in the agenda, including:

 

Presentation of a petition from the Hoddesdon Pool Campaigners

 

Council Tax Setting & presentation of the Councils budget for 2010 - 2011.

 

Independent Remuneration Panels recommendation on Councillors' expenses.

 

I really welcome the IRP's recommendations this year - they are spot on in recommending a freeze on the basic and special responsibility allowances.

 

I have written to the IRP in each of the last 2 years urging restraint and I am delighted that this is the route they have chosen.

 

In these difficult financial times it is quite right and proper that your elected representatives shouldn't add to the burden on the local tax payer.

 

 

 

The proposed freeze in Council tax levels is also very welcome.

 

Philosophically I favour a low tax regime and although the Broxbourne Council element of the Council Tax is only a tiny amount of the overall bill the freeze is good news.

 

This follows the far more significant announcement from the County Council that they were able to freeze their precept.

 

This means that any increase in the overall council tax bill can only be driven by the Police Authority who are yet to announce their decision.

 

Overall this is a good result for the Hertfordshire and Broxbourne local tax payer and shows that prudent management from Conservative Councils really can help local people in difficult times.

I have just finished reading Peters Watt's book about his career at the heart of the New Labour Movement.

 

 

What an interesting, revealing and well (ghost) written book - Mr Watt certainly pulls no punches.

 

Unusually, for a political memoir, this book is actually quite entertaining and engaging but it is the insight that Watt gives to the dysfunctional nature of New Labour that really captured my interest.

 

The half arsed way in which New labour "managed" it's internal and financial affairs is almost unbelievable - Watt reveals that in the 10 years to 2007 The Labour Party had recorded an annual deficit in every year but one.

 

By 2007 New Labour was £30 million in debt and only just fending off bankruptcy, in effect subsisting on a hand to mouth basis by depending on the goodwill of a few donors, rescheduling loan repayments and by having an understanding bank manager.

 

Remember these are the people who are also running our economy - perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that it is well and truly screwed.

 

If they couldn't manage to run a small to medium sized operation like the Labour Party what chance did they have with managing (what was) one of the world's great economies?

 

Watt gives fascinating insights into the personalities of many leading New Labour figures - I thought that the portrayal of Jack Dromey and his better (?) half Ms Harman was especially damaging.

 

Were I a Labour Party member in Leyton & Wanstead there is no way on earth I would vote for Mr Dromey as my prospective parliamentary candidate - if just half of what Mr Watt says is true then Dromey is seriously damaged goods!

 

The great shame is that only a few thousand political anoraks will ever read this book (the syndicated excerpts in The Mail really gave a mere "taster" of the content) - a wider exposure would do Gordon Brown and company a whole lot of no good.

 

Get hold of a copy and have a read - it's good stuff.

Well worth a look - it will make you smile.

 

So that's all right then - Mr Wright's twitter account was hacked.

 

All he wrote was "pigs" - the "scum sucking" bit was added by an anonymous hacker with nothing better to do than infiltrate the tweets of an obscure Labour MP......................

 

Hmmm - not entirely sure Mr Wright is telling the truth, the whole truth etc.

 

Interesting that at about 7pm last night the donations on myconservatives.com to Telford's Tory PPC, Tom Biggins, was £0.

 

Overnight it has increased to nearly £600.

 

Well done Mr Wright - keep up the good work!!

 

Unbelievable that a Minister of the Crown (albeit a Junior Treasury Whip) thought it appropriate to twitter the following:

 

 

What a thoroughly unpleasant and remarkably crass thing for a man in that position to write .

 

More proof, were it needed, of the paucity of talent in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

 

At the last election over 12,000 people voted Tory in Mr Wright's Telford Constituency.

 

How would those people feel if they ever had to seek the help an MP who described the party they supported in such pejorative terms?

 

Mr Wright has a 5,500 majority - let's hope he is another Labour MP looking for alternative employment in a few weeks time!