Of course he’s come into a load of stick from the usual crowd but read here about how he responds to them in the Derby Evening Telegraph.

A Conservative Derby will be a better value, more flexible and safer Derby.

As someone who served for 7 years in the British Infantry under this Labour government (see pic on right), I can testify first-hand how much they’ve let down our armed forces.    

Look at the shameful statistics below and it’s clear that our brave men and women really are lions led by Labour donkeys.

The MoD’s record of waste is staggering.

· £2.5 billion spent on external consultants but they couldn’t find £20 million to train the TA.

· £2.3 billion is being spent on MoD Refurbishment. But they couldn’t find £4m for OTC training.

· £6.6 billion wasted because of lost equipment which includes, among other things, 3,938 Bowman radios and an untold number of laptops

· £113 million wasted on a super hanger for fast jet repair that was never used. 

· £118 million wasted on armoured vehicle cancellations.

· £8 million lost on training courses cancelled.

· And almost a quarter of a million pounds on works of art to hang on the walls of Main Building.

Labour doesn’t understand the Armed Forces.

· Perhaps we should have known this back in 2000 when Lord Mandelson described the Brigade of Guards as ‘a lot of chinless wonders marching round Horseguards Parade doing incomprehensible things with flags’. Since 2001 63 members of the Household Division have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

· We have had individual Defence Secretaries who have been both competent and committed to the Armed Forces but we have had four defence secretaries in four years—one of whom was part time even though we were heavily engaged in combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

· The current defence secretary in ranked 21 out of 23 in the Prime Minister’s cabinet even though Afghanistan is supposed to be a priority of this Government.

· Besides using the Armed Forces as props in a photo shot the Prime Minister has never shown much interest in the Armed Forces.

· Former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Guthrie described the Prime Minister as ‘the most unsympathetic Chancellor of the Exchequer as far as defence was concerned’.

· In 2004 we now know that the Service Chiefs came close to resigning en masse.

· In a final piece of spin of his premiership Tony Blair said that “defence spending has remained broadly stable at 2.5% of GDP – if you take into account Iraq and Afghanistan”.  In other words, much of the burden of Iraq and Afghanistan was being carried by the core defence budget.  The truth is the Ministry of Defence was fighting two wars on peacetime budget.

The Navy is one of Labour’s biggest victims:

· Time and time again, since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, our Navy has been blackmailed into accepting cuts to its fleet to ensure the eventual addition of the two new carriers.

· During the 1998 SDR process, our Navy agreed to cut its fleet of 12 attack submarines to 10 and its fleet of 35 destroyers and frigates to 32 – in return for the promise of the two carriers.

· A decade later we find our Navy with only 8 attack submarines (with a probable future reduction to only 6 or 7) and an astonishingly low 22 destroyers and frigates.

· Maritime commitments have not decreased since 1998 but have risen at a time when our Navy has been slashed, mothballed, and in some cases, sold off.

Our troops were failed going into Iraq and Afghanistan.

· Geoff Hoon stated during the Chilcot Inquiry, within the MoD there was: ‘quite a strong feeling that the 1998 Strategic Defence Review was not fully funded’ and that ‘in the subsequent CSR programmes, we asked for significantly more money than we eventually received’.

On the helicopter budget cut, Hoon said: “Had the budget had been spent in the way we thought we should spend it, then those helicopters would probably be coming into service any time now”

· Sir Kevin Tebbit said at Chilcot that as Permanent Secretary he had to operate in a permanent crisis budget.

· Former CDS Lord Walker said at Chilcot that the SDR was ‘under funded by well into a billion pounds’.

· Lord Boyce said: ‘I was not allowed to speak, for example, to the chief of defence logistics…I was prevented from doing that by the Defence Secretary because of the concern of it becoming public knowledge that we were planning for a military contribution, which might be unhelpful in the activity in the UN to secure a security council resolution’

· An Army Board of Inquiry into the death of Captain James Philippson in 2006 found that there were delays in the delivery of basic equipment and this was partly ‘because the MoD and the Treasury were unwilling to commit funds to Urgent Operational Requirements (UOR) enhancements prior to any formal political announcements’

· This Government was sleep walking into Helmand Province by only initially sending 3,300 troops. The Brigade Commander in 2006, Brigadier Ed Butler, has made clear that the 3,300 soldiers were deployed initially as a result of “a Treasury imposed cap”—not as part of an objective analysis of the situation on the ground.  

· The shortage of key equipment in Helmand, especially helicopters, has been well documented and, in part, has led to a number of high profile military resignations including: Colonel Stuart Tootal, Brigadier Ed Butler, Major Sebastian Morley, and Major General Andrew Mackay.

The equipment programme is disastrously delayed and over budget.

· We know that the equipment programme is underfunded—by exactly how much is anyone’s guess but most estimates measure the total in billions of pounds.

· Bernard Gray placed the figure at £16bn over the next ten years. This equates to unfunded liability of £4.4 million per day.

· The plunging value of the pound alone has left an estimated £1.3bn black hole in Britain’s defence budget.

· According to the most recent figures available by the NAO the top 15 major procurement projects are £4.5 billion over budget and are delayed in total by 339 months.

· The A400M aircraft is £657 million over budget and will be delayed by 82 months.

· The Type 45 Destroyer is £1.5 billion over budget and will be delayed by 38 months.

· The Aircraft carriers more than £1 billion over budget. The service entry date for the first carrier has been delayed from 2012 to 2016.

· The decision in 2004 to cut the helicopter budget by £1.4bn— in the middle of two wars—was inexcusable, irresponsible and irreconcilable with the basic duty to maximise the safety of our troops while carrying out a dangerous mission.

It is a picture of serial incompetence and a lack of grip by Ministers on their department.

We’re proving week by week that Derby isn’t a Labour town its a free thinking place where people will make a rational decision based on the performance of the Government, the Council and the policies of the Opposition.

As the Government collapses into discreditted anarchy and the council continue to blunder, the change we’re offering is getting more and more support.  Read on this website or at www.conservatives.com about our policy proposals and if you want to know more, just send me an email, comment on this site or give me a call.

Last weekend was great and there’s more of that coming.  We’re reaching out to the voters and finding out what matters to them.  To see what the Derby Evening Telegraph said about it, just click here.

Thanks again to every who came out to support and, if you want to get involved, just get in touch.

http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk/news/Worldwide-reaction-Lara-Croft-Way-decision/article-1871262-detail/article.html

Just Click Here and fast forward it to the 34th minute.

Something has to be done.  Under Conservative proposals it will be easier for communities to form Community Land Trusts so that local people can come together to stop this kind of decay from setting in.  

We need to do somethign together but first we need to change this failing government.

Although we’re now political opponents, I take my hat off to the guy.  It takes some courage to walk away from friends and colleagues who are getting it so wrong and then to put your hand up and offer an alternative vision.

For that reason, I’ll be hoping that Mr Graves gets to be involved in all the debates, hustings and media coverage in the lead-up to the election.  I’m sure the Labour party will try to sideline him but I’d rather tackle his concerns head-on and see who comes out the best.

CITY MP Margaret Beckett will give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry today about her time as a member of the cabinet during the Iraq War.
The MP for Derby South served as Foreign Secretary under Tony Blair for a year from 2006, but was also a cabinet member for five years during the build-up to the invasion and the war’s early stages.

So far in the inquiry, witnesses have raised questions over whether there was a sufficient legal basis for the war and whether the cabinet was given a chance to properly discuss concerns.

Despite that, Mrs Beckett is expected to defend Mr Blair’s decision to invade Iraq and say that the cabinet was kept well informed about diplomatic negotiations and intelligence reports. Speaking before her appearance, she said: “I wouldn’t say that I didn’t have my doubts. We all had our doubts. We all had our worries and concerns.

“But I’m not someone who is going to pretend now that I didn’t make a harsh and terrible choice in the best conscience I could on the evidence that was in front of us.”

 Mrs Beckett added that the overwhelming intelligence had been that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and that the UK had to act.

The inquiry, headed by Sir John Chilcot, has already heard from Derby-born MP and ex-Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who told how the Treasury, led by then-Chancellor Gordon Brown, had starved the armed forces of cash during the years before the war.

Jack

The Disasters Emergency Committee, made up of 13 of Britain’s leading NGOs, has launched an appeal with the support of major UK broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Al-Jazeera.

The money raised will support the efforts of the DEC’s members to carry out their vital emergency aid work in Haiti. Mitchell added that “many members of the British public will want to do all they can to support the people of Haiti at this time, and I fully support the appeal launched by the Disasters Emergency Committee.”

To donate, call 0370 60 60 900 or visit the DEC website.

The 13 member agencies of DEC are Action Aid, British Red Cross, CAFOD, Care International UK, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Help the Aged, Islamic Relief, Merlin, Oxfam, Save the Children, Tearfund and World Vision.