I’d like to thank the Scottish Labour Party, the Lib Dems and Reform for delivering a massive Labour majority on such a small share of the vote. Voters in Scotland switched from SNP to Labour, voters in the southwest and elsewhere switched from Con to LibDem, voters all over the place switched from Con to…
Category: THE POLITICS: Ministers, MPs, government policy
Dear Mr Reed, 3, marches and manifestos
Dear Steve Reed, in just a week’s time you may be in your second day in your new job as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I hope so. As a Labour member I’ve been delivering leaflets for Lee Barron in Raunds, a small, ex-boot-and-shoe town in Northants, and in the Corby…
Dear Mr Reed, 2 – Badgers
Dear Steve Reed, in just over three weeks time you may well be Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. If so, that will give you great opportunities to make the world a better place and that must be an exciting prospect. However, one hot potato will be firmly on your desk –…
Dear Mr Reed, 1
Dear Steve Reed, just think, in a month’s time you may be in your second day in your new job as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. How will your first day in the job have gone? I’m a Labour Party member, living in the marginal seat of Corby in Northamptonshire, and…
Poor response from Rebecca Pow – the Minister ‘responsible’
The Westminster government is a busted flush – it does not do the big things right and cannot even do the small things. I wrote to my MP, Tom Pursglove, on 19 January – click here – to enquire about lack of progress by government on five straightforward matters on which simple government action is…
If this is a big announcement…
This is the smallest, least consequential, big announcement you will ever see. Alex Sayer claims that she has been working with some of ‘the top people in government’ to launch a new group at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester (aka ‘the end of the line’ conference). She claims that she has got friends –…
Complaint to Defra
Comments Off on Complaint to Defra
I complained to Defra about the fact that they took over 5 months to reply to an enquiry from my MP- see here. I received this reply this week: Dear Dr Avery, Thank you for your email of 25 January, regarding your complaint about the time taken to respond to your MP, Tom Pursglove, who…
Low Standards at Defra – I complain
Defra Service Standards Adjudicator I wrote to my MP on 10 August last year about the failure of Defra to respond properly to a parliamentary petition. My MP, Tom Pursglove, forwarded my letter to George Eustice (then Secretary of State, Defra) on 18 August. Yesterday, 24 January, I received a reply from Defra (from Trudy…
More on the risk assessment on gamebird releases
The risk assessment published yesterday by Defra, but presumably done by APHA, is vaguely interesting but not spectacularly well-informed. It’s not that well-informed because no-one has invested in studying the process of disease transmission of avian flu to, within, or from wild birds. So there is quite a lot of guesswork dressed up as something…
Sunday book review – The Diary of a Secret Tory MP by Anon
This book did make me laugh out loud. And that’s quite an achievement because it attempts to satirise the awfulness of the current bunch of Tories in Westminster whose collective awfulness is almost beyond parody. Almost, but not actually as this author does a great job in exaggerating the behaviour and callousness and making it both…