Politics

Reasons to celebrate the young

I am pretty certain most people think their generation was the best and everyone else who comes afterwards is not quite as good.

Well, among all the doom and gloom, war, upheavals and political uncertainties I thought we could all do with a bit of good and encouraging news.

If my recent interactions with young people in North Dorset is anything to go by then our immediate area and the wider country is in safe hands.

Recently, with the Mayor and Mayoress of Blandford, I had the great pleasure of meeting young St John Ambulance volunteers.

They were engaged and committed to their work. They explained to me how to use a defibrillator. They were happy to be volunteering and keen to help their local community.

Every school I visit I am quizzed and cross-examined about climate change, pollution and what the Government is doing to make things better.

Last Friday I was invited to talk to a group of students about pollution in the River Stour and what they could do to raise the profile of the issue.

A recent visit to the Brownies of Shaftesbury raised similar issues of environment and climate.

I have seen young people raise money for Ukraine as well as welcoming new families into their homes. On Armed Forces Day it was a real pleasure to see the young cadets proudly wearing uniform and taking a full part in the service.

These young people and countless others take a broader and wider view of the world than any other generation before them.

Connected by technology, concerns and values theirs is a view that looks to engage and to help shape the future.

They are certainly more liberal and relaxed in social issues be it sexuality, ethnicity or background.

They are far more interested in what you are doing and going to do than what you’ve done or where you’ve come from.

Theirs is also a world a lot more uncertain than previous generations. Climate change, job security, getting on the property ladder are real issues of anxiety.

My job, and the job of politics more widely, is to address these issues in order to ensure that, what we always thought of as the uninterruptable journey of upward social mobility – but which has frustratingly paused in recent years – is rebooted and in a sustainable way.

Conservative MP for North Dorset Simon Hoare

Climate change is a big issue for young people. PHOTO: 0fjd125gk87/Pixabay

Johnson’s ‘exceptional’ government

Boris Johnson recently claimed his Government’s record is ‘exceptional’. He has never spoken a truer word.

The record includes lockdown rule-breaking in Downing Street; failing to introduce urgently needed changes to the ministerial code and instead making changes that entrench the Prime Minister’s powers over standards in government; attempting to silence public dissent by criminalising non-violent protesters instead of dealing with the critical issues being protested about; accepting donations from Russian donors and failing to stop the UK being used as a safe haven for dirty money; pledging to help end deforestation but paying Drax power station a subsidy of more thab £2 million a day to burn 25 million trees a year; dragging its heels over replacing the zero-carbon building regulations the Conservative Government scrapped in 2015.

The list goes on. An exceptional record but hardly one to boast about.

Government spokespeople take every opportunity to focus on the successful speed of the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out but deliberately ignore the huge failings elsewhere in dealing with the pandemic.

Such as the claim that a ‘protective ring’ was thrown around care homes for the elderly. Not true. My mother caught Covid in Yeovil Hospital but was promptly discharged right back into the care home she’d come from. We now know that tens of thousands of care home residents caught Covid and died.

Then there was the debacle of PPE procurement, with eyewatering profits and obscene commissions being paid to middlemen. Also the purchase of items which turned out to be useless. Billions of taxpayers’ money wasted, which could have been used to achieve a vital reduction of our country’s energy consumption by insulating homes, for example.

Johnson has blamed the media for the dramatic Tory defeats in the Wakefield and Tiverton/Honiton by-elections, saying they focused more on his personal conduct than on policy. So he considers his personal conduct to be of no consequence.

For us to have such a Prime Minister at this time is more than just a national embarrassment, it’s a disaster. The enormity and urgency of the environmental crisis is ever more apparent, unfolding as it is even sooner and faster than was anticipated.

Now more than ever we need strong, compassionate and caring leadership, with an understanding that we are all in the same boat.

No doubt many are now wondering where best to place their political allegiance. As an ex Conservative voter myself, I’m happy to have chosen the Green Party.

Ken Huggins on behalf of the Green Party in North Dorset

Politics

All parties have failed in rail dispute

Greg Williams, on behalf of Dorset Labour

Train stations across the UK were deserted on rail strike days.

PHOTO: Bukkywanderlust0/Pixabay

Politics seems obsessed with boiling everything down to false, binary choices.

At the moment every Labour representative is demanded to answer whether they support or condemn the rail strikes. No nuance, no middle ground. You’re either on the picket line or you’re against collective bargaining and the right to withhold your labour.

Is it any wonder when our politics is so binary that the sides in the dispute have failed to reach a negotiated settlement?

There is a middle ground here – both for politicians and the negotiators.

We should all support workers who, after already having a real terms wage cut during the pandemic, now just want, just need even, a pay rise that goes some way towards helping them with rampant inflation. We all need it.

Yet we can also be angry about the disruption of the strikes and the damage they’ve done to the economy, school exams and the environment. I had to drive all the way to Hull and back for work during the strike rather than taking the train and I was not happy!

How many RMT shop stewards does it take to change a plug socket? Nine, apparently. It’s a cliched and no doubt unrepresentative example but, by refusing to modernise working practices until now, the union leaves itself vulnerable to Tory attacks.

It seems like there’s been a ‘landing zone’ for a settlement on the table for weeks. A pay rise of about five per cent in exchange for removal of outmoded working practices. Five per cent would still be a real terms cut but I do get the point that wage discipline is needed to help tackle inflation. It’s painful but we must all be prepared to endure it.

This should be the case for all pay grades, though. No industry execs should be getting doubledigit increases or six-figure bonus pay-outs right now.

And it should also be the case for pensions. I cannot fathom why it’s acceptable to give an inflationary increase to the state pension but not those of working age on low incomes.

Anyway, back to the point. I don’t accept the false, binary choice to either support the ‘strikes’ or the ‘strivers’. I choose to support all working people across the country needing a pay rise. And I’m really annoyed at the Government, Network Rail, the train companies and the unions. They have all failed. They failed to negotiate properly and they collectively caused these strikes.

Putin and a question of political will

I’m in my 42nd year of regular and active reserve service in the Armed Forces, my brother’s an admiral, two of my five girls are military officers and I represent a very large number of service personnel and their families.

In other words, I’m heavily, personally invested in defence.

So, you would expect me to be echoing calls this week, based on what’s going on in Ukraine, for lots more defence spending.

But it’s important to draw the right conclusions from the conflict.

What we’ve learnt, to our very great surprise, are the severe military limitations of the Russian Federation.

A relatively poor eastern European country is humbling the Kremlin’s much-vaunted military.

NATO with its overwhelming might hasn’t even engaged yet. I hope it never will.

Since NATO – even before Sweden and Finland join – seems to have more than enough men and material to tackle Russia conventionally, the issue then isn’t so much hosing more money on defence but whether the West has the political resolve to face Putin down were he to try his luck with, say, Lithuania.

In what manner and how soon would NATO respond if Putin mounted a ‘special military operation’ at the Suwalki Gap to link its client Belarus with its Kaliningrad enclave?

Or maybe, safer from Putin’s perspective, take another bite out of Georgia?

My point is that our weakness in dealing with Putin’s imperialism isn’t military, it’s political.

Closer to home, I’ve been looking at how we reconcile the greening of land-based business to meet net zero targets with the need to grow more of our own food.

I had no idea fertiliser could be so interesting!

‘Levelling up’ is so hard to do

It would be easy to crow about by-election results. Too easy.

Winning the battle of the ballot box is good but there is also the battle of ideas to be won and ensuring the liberal, progressive developments in society of the last 50 years are not lost.

In many ways today feels like the 1970s – Russia as the great enemy, oil price shocks, significant inflation, low investment, a weak pound, a populace hankering after lbs and ozs and a set of industrial and public sector stand-offs like those which ended up with the three-day week.

There is something equally retro-visual about the judgements out of the US Supreme Court, especially in their implications. Abortion today, same-sex marriage and even racial equality under threat tomorrow.

Yet, the right of an 18-yearold to an assault rifle marches on. All down to the interpretation by ideologues of words and sentences from 200 years ago, backed up by their perception of the broad sentiment of the people, however faint the traces.

Similarly, Downing Street seems often to drive forward while looking in the rear-view mirror. Sometimes it presses on with no mirrors at all – signal, manoeuvre without looking.

Put another way, at times we have a prime minister saying, ‘there go the people, I must follow them because I am their leader’ – for example, Brexit – while at the same time much given to a patronising and often secretive ‘I know best’ stance.

Following the crowd is well and fine while things are tickety-boo but not so good when the going gets tough, as now. The problem with ‘I know best’ is that every so often it proves not to be the case – for example, migrants to Rwanda.

There is little room for the views and voices of others when you are hell-bent on your own agenda.

It is very difficult to see how ‘Levelling up’ can work under such a regime. The suspicion is that it will become a top-down re-distribution exercise – like throwing sweets to the audience in a panto, particularly to marginal seats/areas and based on beauty contests of ideas and projects, not on fair assessments of need.

It should not be that way. A vibrant, capable, beautiful place like Dorset should be able to plan and implement its own socially and environmentally positive community-building and sustainable economic future without diktat from but rather with central government confidence and support. A blend of opportunity and fairness.

Mike Chapman on behalf of Liberal Democrats across the Blackmore Vale

Conservative MP for West Dorset Chris Loder

In defence of Hardy’s legacy

Last week, I read that the poetry of several of our greatest writers, including West Dorset’s own Thomas Hardy, was being removed from the GCSE English syllabus by the OCR examination board in measures supposed to improve the ‘diversity’ of the syllabus.

I feel this sets a worrying precedent, not just for the education of young people today, but for West Dorset long-term.

Thomas Hardy was the most ardent champion of West Dorset and its people in recent history. He was a true maverick for his time, challenging the taboos and inequalities he saw in Victorian society, giving a rare voice to the rural working classes of places like Dorset, and, especially rare for his time, giving a powerful voice to women – single mothers who were particularly marginalised in Victorian society – through the many female heroines in his novels.

The fact that Thomas Hardy’s work, alongside the likes of Wilfred Owen and Philip Larkin, has been seemingly dropped in favour of modern, more modern and diverse content, suggests a worrying shift away from the staples of English literature.

West Dorset benefits greatly from Hardy’s legacy. We are fortunate to have the Hardy Players and the Thomas Hardy Society based in and around our county town contributing immensely to the culture of Dorset.

We have Hardy’s birthplace at Bockhampton, Hardy’s house at Max Gate and the many landscapes and settings he described in his work. All of which bring in tourism from around the world and greatly enrich our county.

All of this is sustained by education and propagation of his works in schools. To undermine Hardy’s legacy in schools will no doubt affect his legacy in West Dorset, and this is what I am pushing back against as West Dorset’s MP and have written to the Secretary of State for Education accordingly.

I also wish to thank the many people across West Dorset who marked Armed Forces Day on 25 June – a celebration of the service of all those in the Armed Forces.

Earlier in June, the 14th also marked the 40-year anniversary of the conclusion of the Falklands War. It was a great pleasure to meet Falklands veterans with serving members

Thomas Hardy’s poetry is being removed from the English syllabus by the OCR examination board.

of the Armed Forces at an event in Yeovilton to commemorate this significant event in our history and to remember all those who lost their lives through the conflict.