The Memorial has been shortlisted for a Heritage Lottery award and if it wins will recognise not only those fallen heroes but the enormous efforts by those who achieved this incredible piece of architecture.

Please give your support by going to the voting page here.

Alternatively call 0845 386 4459 to vote by phone.

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The details aren’t clear yet but it looks as if everyone is going to be charged more. Now, I’m the first in line to say we need to do something about this country’s appalling drinking to drop culture, but I remain unconvinced it is the price which is the problem.

A few pence on the price of a can of lager at 70p surely won’t make a difference. Some popular alcohol is certainly very cheap as it is but would those prone to drinking to excess change their habits if it was double the price. I’m really not convinced it is price related. Our household could spend ten times what we do on alcohol each month but we don’t simply buy ten times as much.

It’s in the culture to a great degree. But I also think it may well be an age thing. Twenty years ago I don’t recall drinking to excess… certainly not on anything remotely like a regular basis. That said I think I was probably a little more likely to drink more at one time in my late teens than now.

I do wonder whether raising the legal age to 21 would be a sensible thing to try. One thing is very clear to me, and that is Labour’s total relaxation of the licensing laws has seen a doubling of the number of people hospitalised for drink related reasons. Bearing in mind ministers said it would take away the temptation for throwing vast quantities of alcohol down at a pace, it seems that was a massive misjudgement.

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And it’s very serious… in some parts of our society things are in social decline. But not everywhere. Many young people are busy doing things that will further their life experiences in a very positive way. Pupils between 11 and 18 at Rawlett Community Sports College are doing just that.

Rock Challenge is a worldwide charitable event which encourages young people to make the most of their lives, get the best education they can and generally be good citizens. In the UK Rock Challenge over 250 schools have entered the competition which uses the very best in dance, music and drama to highlight social issues affecting the world and particularly young people.

Rawlett Community Sports College have been heavily involved for the last few years and this year found themselves in the premier group for the great work they’ve been doing. It culminated in 90 young people from the school performing in the UK national final in the north of England. They did exceptionally well with four categories where they were judged as ‘Excelling’. In fact out of all 268 entrants they came 16th overall which is fabulous.

I think it’s hugely important to encourage this sort of thing. Everything from Scouting and Cubs or Brownies to community organisations and Duke of Edinburgh Awards. In fact any activity which encourages responsibility, self confidence, a sense of loyalty and good citizenship. In the early 1900s it was considered that the youth of the day were losing there way and that’s when Robert Baden Powell wrote Scouting for Boys, something which revolutionised the way youngsters were brought up for years.

So, I’m very pleased to help out with funding the Rock Challenge and am keen to help other initiatives which will accomplish some of the traits for young people I mentioned earlier.

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The vast majority of them are competent riders who make the most of their bikes but do it in a sensible way. But, a few plainly have little concern for those around them or, quite frankly, the danger they can cause. It started late this year. Normally it’s early March when constituents start contacting me about motorcyclists riding at enormous speeds, weaving in and out of traffic or using illegal exhausts which are incredibly noisy.

This year the concerns started in late April. I visited a well known spot on the A5 to see what people were concerned about. Tuesday’s the night with a massive gathering of riders at Bassetts Pole. What I saw on the A5, and also part of the A38, was crackers. Most were riding faster than the speed limit but, to a great degree, safely bar the illegal speed. But then there were the loopy ones who tend to give bikers a bad name.

As well as the odd ones there were a couple of small groups of riders, one of which was made up of four bikes and another of five, who were overtaking cars on the dual carriageway, probably at 80 plus, on the inside and outside of the cars they were overtaking. Another pulled an attempted high speed ‘wheely’ but didn’t really get far off the ground and then there were a couple who were going at a speed I wouldn’t have any idea how to guess as it was that fast. And that was in the space of 20 minutes.

It’s worth remembering that it’s not just themselves the irresponsible motorcyclist’s are putting at risk. It’s other road users as well as causing real concern, upset and worry for locals who live close to the problem areas, or in the villages, some of which become a race track at particular times.

This was a couple of weeks ago and as a consequence of my request then for some work to be done to reassure local people on this issue, the County Road Safety Unit put together a programme for this area to enforce illegal practices and educate motorcyclists on riding more safely. I was invited to attend the gathering at Bassetts Pole tonight by the County Safety team and what I saw was seriously impressive.

There was the enforcement side with a couple of the camera vans out on roads on the way to Bassetts Pole as well as a Safety Partnership motorbike with the same enforcement equipment, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service were there in numbers, the police road crime unit and the Staffordshire Road Safety Partnership team too. All along with more than 800 motorcyclists.

And it was a really good atmosphere. The Safety Team guys had set up a large tent full of road safety information and the chance to sign up for advanced motorcycle training. Police and Highway safety officials were out and about with fire officers and others talking to the crowds of bikers and there was genuine interest and positive vibes going in both directions.

I was pleased at the response and exceptionally impressed at the extra effort which was put in. The approach of enforcement and education on safety seems to be a well received combination. In fact, credit where credit’s due, the County Highway’s motorbike safety campaign which is running across much of Staffordshire appears to be very successful. It’ll be interesting to see the results of the enforcement side from today.

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I visited there on the Saturday it opened a few weeks ago and since then their efforts to encourage the slightly older people in the area (+60) to learn how to use computers and the Internet is really going well. My mother always says that she’s not interested in that sort of thing and yet when I sit her down with a laptop connected to the Web it is very difficult to get her off it a couple of hours later.

Each time that happens the protestations about not really being interested become less plausible. I suspect she may well be a user in the near future.

And it was similar at the club in Fazeley. There were those that were up and running on the Net already and there were those that had a similar view to my mother. That said, like her, start getting pictures of where they’re off to on holiday and they were soon showing much more interest.

I was so impressed with the idea of this I thought it would be a great idea to use some money from my County funding scheme to encourage new people to have a go by offering free sessions to kick things off. That’s being sorted out at present but I’d better get a move on because I’m told the free slots are almost full already.

So, a great success and well done for finding such a good way to get new people using the Internet, learning and accessing services they would never have found without it.

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Simon Mayo was the interviewer and the subject Angela Eagle was supposed to be answering questions on was the plan to raise Vehicle Excise Duty rates retrospectively, or to be more precise, Gordon Brown’s difficulty arising from replying to the same Parliamentary question asked in May and then again in June with completely contrary and conflicting answers.

And what was excruciatingly annoying, to the point I wanted to throw something at the radio, was her obvious and irritating attempts to avoid answering a clear question asked numerous times about why the two answers were different. The PM was accurate with his answer to the question about the number of car tax ‘losers’ in May but in June he clearly answered the same question inaccurately by saying there would be fewer losers than in May. So, in May he was right and in June he was wrong.

Now, I think he just got it wrong the second time. He was under pressure and made a mistake in the House of Commons. And, actually, if Mrs Eagle had said that the PM made an unintentional error, and was sorry, that would have been it. But no, not Mrs Eagle, she decided to tackle it a different way. When Simon Mayo asked about the wrong answer he gave in June she quoted what he said correctly in May. He asked a second time and got the same answer again. He asked it a third time and, once again, was quoted the words from his May answer.

So he tried a new tack, asking her directly to stop quoting what the PM said in May and instead answer the question of his June inaccuracy. Would she finally give in and say that he made a mistake? No, of course not! She prolonged the cringe making nonsense three times more by quoting the May answer despite pleas from the interview.

It was just silly. It made her look completely batty and, much worse than that, reinforced the very worst traits of some politicians… not answering questions they don’t like. Yet again the credibility of our democracy was the big loser, second only to Mrs Eagle’s.

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But I’m not sure sure it’s not a clever rouse. What many who are celebrating the news forget is that there is another proposal, by the same group of developers, almost identical to the eco one other than the houses aren’t the eco friendly type. The principle is exactly the same… a massive new build so close to Lichfield City that it almost joins Lichfield itself with nearby Fradley, very limited infrastructure with real problems in improving it and a widespread view that it would change the very nature of Lichfield and the surrounding area forever.

And why might it be clever? Well, I do wonder whether the developers think that the withdrawal of plans for the controversial Government promoted eco town, is an ideal opportunity to portray the other non eco proposal as the better of two evils. As Lichfield District Council threw out the proposal for the eco development it’s pretty odds on that the similar non eco plan one will also be refused.

The question is, what happens then? For those who don’t know the planning system, if it was refused locally, the developers have the right of appeal to an ‘independent’ Government Inspectorate. And, on top of that, if the District Council was overruled by the Inspector, the costs and penalty awarded against the council could be massive.

There is a well founded rumour that the consortium of developers have a war chest to fight a refusal by the District Council of a cool million pounds. That is extraordinary but Conservatives at the district council, have vowed to fight any challenge to a refusal to the very very bitter end.

Will Government kill the local democratic process and force this through. Quite frankly, I don’t know!! Read more at the residents’ website FACT.

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And Cath and I were there! A special day which was made all the better by glorious sunshine for almost the full three hours of the event during a day of heavy rain. Unlike many places you see in pictures or on the television it was pretty well exactly what I was expecting. I remember that the White House was so much smaller than I thought it would be. But Buckingham Palace was enormous, beautiful inside and every bit as grand as I would have expected.

The gardens were immaculate, very large and it was entirely possible to forget we were in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. The surprising thing was the absolute freedom to walk anywhere in the gardens at all. Great expanses of lawn with a large boating lake, winding paths through densely wooded thickets, a single tennis court and several summer houses.

But there was a bit of a quandary. Instructions on our information pack made it clear that no cameras and no pictures were allowed. How can you possibly be somewhere like that and have nothing to stick in the photo album. Clearly it was rightly designed to avoid any pictures of the Queen and Royal guests because, well away from where they were, officials were happy to turn a blind eye when mobile phone cameras started to come out.

So, a swift chance of piccy just to show we really had been there. And once the garden party was over and we were walking back out through the courtyard toward the front of the Palace just about everyone who had a camera phone started snapping away.

Thinking back, the thing that strikes me most is just how good Britain is at pomp and ceremony. From the small crowns topping off the thousands of small chocolate cakes and the lines of incredibly brightly coloured Yeomen of the Guard to the mass of different Commonwealth countries in national dress and the foreign military in full dress uniform with the British diplomats who were so keen to impress their foreign dignitaries. A real experience.

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It’s one of those ones that is tough to crack because whilst I can arrange for the occassional enforcement it would take an almost permanent effort to tackle the issue head on. But more recently the focus on traffic problems has been more on speeding traffic and particularly issues around the school crossing at school time. Some idiots appear unable to wait and have chosen to jump the crossing, nearly hitting the crossing patrol officer.

The Head Teacher of the local primary school has been understandably vocal in his concern. It’s a new angle on the ongoing traffic related problems in Hopwas and things were made a little awkward from my point of view a couple of months ago when the local MP decided to highlight the issue in the media. That’s fine but the success on dealing with the actual problem was somewhat limited and it put me in a difficult position because Highways are within my remit but I really dislike the appearance of being oportunist and in this case I felt that it would have looked like I was doing a real ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ job. So I didn’t intervene and, on reflection, that was probably wrong on my part. It’s also gained me some criticism which is hurtful as I do try pretty hard on the whole.

However, a couple of weeks ago, it became clear that little of substance was being done to address the problem and my concerns were heightened having spoken to the school last week. But today’s a new day and after a number of conversations, a robust letter just to reinforce how serious I am about sorting this out and some pretty straight talking I’m pleased with the proposals the Highway Safety Team suggested to me last Thursday.

They are clearly significant and balanced despite the ’stats’ of accidents being somewhat low. They’ve taken the right view of getting ahead of the game and doing something before the stats on accidents are added too. Absolutely right!!

So, if all goes according to plan, and I’m sure it will, before the start of next school term the area will be designated a mobile enforcement route meaning regular and planned enforcement action. The signage will also be installed reminding drivers of that, the warnings about the school crossing will be made clearer and the Police Road Crimes Unit will also be targeting the area at target times… in fact, the latter are so quick off the mark they’ve already been down. That’s tremendous work and the fact they talked to the crossing patrol officer has been very positive.

All in all, a pretty satisfying, and speedy, leap forward in tackling this problem and when I spoke to the Head Teacher, parents and the crossing officer today they seemed fairly pleased at where we are now heading with this. All should be in place by September and I’ll make absolutely sure it is.

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