The latest Surrey Comet reveals:

"Expenses racked up by MPs last year have been revealed by the House of Commons.

They claimed a total of £87.6million, up five per cent on the previous 12 months.

Kingston's pair of Lib Dem MPs notched up a bill of £262,583 between them.

Ed Davey, MP for Kingston and Surbiton, claimed £126,983 while Susan Kramer, MP for Richmond Park, claimed £117,837."

These expenses refer to running offices in constituencies (such as the one in Berrylands) and 'communicating with electors' and secretarial assistance and are allowable to all sitting members under arrangements voted in under this Labour government. Lord Ashcroft, a Conservative peer and donor, discussed the implications of this munificent regime in the Daily Telegraph a couple of weeks ago. He pointed out that such generous taxpayer funding inevitably allows sitting MPs to appear very active on the constituents' behalf and places candidates seeking to replace them at the next General Election at an unfair disadvantage as they must either raise their own money or rely on the fundraising efforts of party volunteers to be in any position to compete. How many coffee mornings or raffles would one have to hold to raise £127,000 do you think?

Lord Ashcroft has set up a fund to help aspiring Conservative candidates in target seats to compete more effectively. It is open to to other parties to do the same. Ashcroft's scheme is under attack from some Labour MPs including, it would seem, the Leader of the House.

Am in Lancashire for a few days visiting family.

Yesterday I went to see my oldest living relative, my cousin who is 86. She served in the Land Army during WW2 and has worked all her life. Now she lives in a sheltered bungalow in Carnforth. She is as cheerful as she has ever been but is in need of daily care to help with the routine tasks of life which she can no longer perform unaided. She has a wonderful carer, whom I met yesterday.

It has brought home to me - if it needed bringing home - just how important domiciliary care can be to a person rendered physically disabled by age and a long working life. It should be a matter of pride to all of us to take the best care we possibly can of the elderly who need it. We really do need to think very hard before cheerfully - or tearfully - cutting such services either now or in the future.

A photo of David Cameron's speech at Blackpool. Had I gone to it this would have been the 26th Conservative Conference I had attended, starting in 1962 at Llandudno when the issue of the hour was whether or not to support Harold Macmillan's belated bid for Britain to join the EEC. The party was pretty divided on the issue and representatives went around with 'YES' or 'NO' written on their conference badges for days before the big debate. The issue was settled by a big speech from the Lord Privy Seal, one Edward Heath, who was i/c the negotiations.

My first Blackpool conference was in 1963 when Harold Macmillan announced his resignation from the Premiership and a leadership battle started in the Conference itself. The main contenders were Quintin Hogg (Lord Hailsham) and R. A. Butler. Again people festooned their badges with 'QMH' or 'RAB' according to taste. The issue was settled partly by a very poor speech made by RAB in Macmillan's absence. The succession went to neither main contender, but to the Earl of Home, who quickly became Sir Alec Douglas-Home MP. Incidentally he was the last Scotsman representing a Scottish constituency to be PM until Gordon Brown - who looks now like being PM for longer than the one year of Sir Alec's tenure - but not much more!

Last week was easily as historic as either of the other two. Whatever he says Brown was fixed on an early election, which he has now called off. He has done so because the Blackpool conference has led him to believe that the Conservative party is more ready for a fight - and in a better shape to win it - than either he or they imagined. The work of Cameron's review groups was introduced and discussed. Some ideas were accepted and some not. The whole thing was tied together brilliantly by DC himself in one of the greatest Conference speeches I have ever heard in all these years. He outlined a programme of policies which was coherent and which put the 'modernising' tendancy into context, showing how it was compatible with traditional Conservative ideas. Thus it bound the party together while at the same time really making clear the contrast with Brown and Labour. They at Bournemouth had little of relevance to say about any of the issues we face as a country except that they want to smash the Tory Party.

I have hitherto been a 'Cameron sceptic' - but I no longer am!

Treatment Centres like Tyrwhitt House funded by Combat Stress has facilities that have been specially built to provide for ex servicemen and woman who are physically disabled and suffer from PTSD. Projects like 36, Grays Lane in Ashtead help families to get closure to loved one at the rehabilitation centre Headley Court; this could only come about by donations collected by SSAFA. Charitable organisations engaged in assisting serving and former members of the armed forces and their families, saves the MOD £££, so why should 15% from donations collect during events held on MOD Defence Estate property go back to the HM Treasury? Would members please write to their MP or if you are on the internet go in to the web page http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/servicecharities/ and sign the petition

A story is circulating that the world-famous Red Arrows have been banned from appearing at the 2012 London Olympics because they are deemed "too British". This story has given rise to an on-line petition to the Prime Minister at this address.http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RedArrows2012/?ref=redArrows2012

The authors of the story say that the Arrows are being ‘banned' because their military background might be "offensive" to other countries taking part in the Games. The display team have performed at more than 4000 events worldwide, but the Department of Culture, Media and Sport are alleged to have deemed the display team "too militaristically British".

I am indebted to Mr. Moore for his comment on our ward blog in which he draws attention to the RAF website which calls this story ‘rubbish' and would recommend all readers to view Mr. Moore's comment and the website (link http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/teamnews/.

Gordon Brown has emerged as the outright winner in the 10-year long contest with Tony Blair to see who can tell the biggest whopper of them all.

Tony, seen here boasting of his own achievements, has been completely outclassed by Gordon's performance in Iraq yesterday.

He announced that 1000 troops were coming home from there by Christmas - failing to point out that 270 of them have already returned to Britain, more are already on their way and 500 (yes HALF of the number) are still in Germany and haven't been in Iraq in the first place. Even Jeremy Paxman http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?tab=all&go=homepage&scope=all&q=newsnight&Search.x=34&Search.y=14&Search=Search couldn't conceal his disgust at this cheap, cynical ploy.

I've seen it coming for years. It was pretty obvious after the 2005 General Election that the Conservative Party had taken Iain Duncan Smith to its heart after he ceased to be Leader far more than it ever did while he was Leader. I was in the hall in Blackpool four years ago when he was given 18 standing ovations for his last Leader's speech a matter of weeks before the Parliamentary Party turfed him out of office to replace him with Michael Howard.

A lesser man might have got all wounded and slunk off into the undergrowth. But IDS didn't do that. With and through his Commission for Social Justice he has transformed the way the Conservative Party looks at social deprivation and our broken society in a way I would scarcely have thought possible five years ago. He has got out there among the volunteers who try to help the vulnerable make something worthwhile out of what might otherwise have been lives which too many of our young citizens now lead - in Hobbes's words 'nasty, brutish and short.' And he has brought in the volunteers and the vulnerable to address the Party Conference in person or on video. The result is that, so unlike the other Conferences, this Conservative Conference has faced the real problems of real people (and the people themselves) and pledged its support.

This afternoon the Conference gave IDS the longest and most heartfelt ovation of the week so far - not because it was orchestrated but because it wanted to. Not bad for 'a quiet man'.

George Osborne gave a very good speech in Blackpool yesterday - the best by far I have heard from him. What was particularly good was the way he affirmed his attachment to Tory values with the pledges on abolition of Inheritance Tax on estates under £1m and Stamp Duty on house purchases under £250k.

You may say these commitments are overdue. I would say they need to be the first of many. Above all the ghastly Tax Credit benefit system - Gordon's very own invention - needs to be replaced by something simpler to operate and not designed to cause maximum misery by paying people too much and then trying to claw it back when they've spent the money.

Anyway, George has managed to scare Gordon so much that he felt he needed a photo op in Iraq to recover and - typically - to grab a headline by announcing the imminent return of 1,000 soldiers..........half of whom came home weeks ago!! What would Daddy have thought about whoppers like that?

Remember these two?

Hand in hand they ran Britain through the last ten years - TB/GB joined at the hip - inseparable like Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, but the laugh was on us. Now one pretends the last 10 years had nothing to do with him. Are we really going to let him get away with it?

It seems that the Labour conference didn't have much to say about the environment. GB hardly mentioned it. Hillary Benn was seen not using his 'bag for life' and London Community Recycling Network's latest communique suggests some interesting reading:-

"Labour-ious fixation on green light for election

 

This week the Labour party had their Bournemouth conference and Hilary Benn was spotted forgetting to use his ‘bag for life'. Environmental policies were sparse, however and the focus remained on whether there would be a snap election:

 

- Hilary Benn phases out traditional lightbulbs (read the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' speech here)http://www.labour.org.uk/conference/hillary_benn"

If you read it please note the blue, white and red masthead - part of the famous 'Britishness' no doubt.

Meanwhile, back at home I have been contacted by a Berrylands resident who has had a visitation from the Trial Recycling Enforcers who seemed unable to decipher the word 'biodegradable' on a biodegradable composting bag he had used to avoid the plague of maggots in his food recycling bin.

I am also trying to find out more about the Kingston Permaculture Centre.....

Should have gone to Blackpool, I suppose.