On behalf of Britain’s 15 million pub goers, I support CAMRA’s campaigning to:
1)    Promote the interests of Britain’s pub goers
2)    Champion well-run community pubs
3)    Rebalance alcohol taxation to support beer and pubs
4)    Reform the beer tie to deliver a fair deal for consumers
5)    Support the role of well-run pubs as solutions to alcohol misuse

Its always been my experience that a pub where the publican takes the trouble to serve well kept real ales, will be a well run pub in all other respects. Generally where the beer is good, the food, cleanliness and behaviour of customers is good too.  We are very fortunate in Shrewsbury to have a good number of quality real ale pubs in our town. This is not a matter of luck, it has taken a lot of hard work by dedicated landlords and CAMRA members. Shrewsbury has 12 pubs listed in the 2010 CAMRA Good Beer Guide, Hereford only has 2.

A well run community pub has so much to offer residents, especially those pubs which serve the excellent local brews now being produced in Shropshire. Such pubs provide a responsible controlled environment for the consumption of alcoholic drinks and deserve our support. We have all seen the dire consequences of irresponsible supermarket retailing of cut price, low quality booze, which often gets into the hands of minors.

Therefore I will be signing up to support CAMRA’s Beer Drinkers and Pub Goers Charter. I would urge those who care about our local community pubs to visit the CAMRA website at www.camra.org.uk and pledge their support.

Now his latest Lib Dem focus leaflet screams in banner headlines that Shrewsbury’s health services are in crisis. The RSH is full to bursting point, the boss has resigned and according to Dr West, we are at risk if we burst an artery at the wrong time. Strangely, he never has anything good to say about local NHS services, or the dedicated staff, many who have been his colleagues, who work so hard to run our NHS.

Of course I’m not saying we shouldn’t scrutinise our local NHS performance, or debate allocation of resources and service provision. But in my opinion we are never going to find the best solutions unless we adopt a more balanced approach to the subject. NHS funding has never been an easy topic. Finite resources have to be balanced against an ageing population and continuing, and often expensive, new medical advances.

But scaremongering and making misleading claims should have no place in this debate. The RSH is currently dealing with patients requiring treatment as a result of the coldest winter for thirty years with much snow and ice. No wonder the RSH is currently busy. What are the RSH supposed to do, put patients with broken limbs to the back of the queue?

I would have expected someone who spent such a long career working for the NHS to be able to take a more balanced view. After all Charles West was a manager in the NHS himself. He should also recognise the improvements Labour has brought to the RSH. The new day surgery treatment centre for instance, which is now carrying out operations such as cataracts, even on Saturdays.

I’m afraid Dr West’s comments on our local NHS are taking an unfortunate tone. I can’t recall him publishing leaflets in the past attacking the NHS in such a partial and unbalanced way. But since he became the Lib Dem candidate this is the regular message he gives out. Is this really concern for  local patients, or just naked political opportunism?

The letters page of the same edition of the Star continues in the same vein.  Local resident Ian Minshall reports that at the public meeting in Hanwood Village Hall organised by Daniel Kawczynski, he asked about the UK’s continued membership of the EU. The amazing reply from our MP was that if he received as few as 500 letters from constituents seeking UK withdrawal from the EU, he would campaign to his Party leader, David Cameron, to make the UK leaving the EU official Conservative policy!

Assuming the letter records the meeting accurately, this is a bombshell. Conservative policy is unequivocal that Britain should remain a full member of the EU. Yet upon receipt of letters from less than 1%  of his electorate, he will attempt to reverse the whole Tory position on Europe and re-ignite all the divisions that wrecked the party in the past. And don’t believe 500 letters will take long to arrive. On the very same letters page was yet another contribution from Oswestry’s strongest critic of all things European, Bob Wydell. In his letter he mentions that he has written between 1300 to 1400 letters to the press, before once again fretting about the mass immigration he feels has swamped Oswestry.  It will not take Bob’s friends long to fill Daniel’s postbag to the required level.

For me, Daniel Kawczynski’s position on Europe has always been full of contradictions. In debates in Parliament he frequently adopts a very critical tone to the EU, describing himself as an “Arch-Eurosceptic”  regularly.  Yet the rest of Europe does not share his views, countries keep joining and more are in the queue to join the 27 members of the current EU. This included Poland, when 0ver 38 million Poles joined the EU in 2004. It is strange how insular and anti-European his views are, when one considers Daniel Kawczynski was born in Warsaw and lived in Poland until he was 11 years old.

Speaking to local railway people, I was shocked to find out just what a poor quality service Arriva were proposing. Wrexham & Shropshire run a locomotive hauled train of carriages, just refurbished to a very high standard, which is fit for purpose for a such long journey. The catering, with a proper buffet car, is a particular highlight, along with the customer service, which is rated the best in the country. Their new Class 67 locos have a top speed of 125 mph, thus giving the opportunity to speed up schedules as line speeds rise.

Arriva however, were proposing to run one 2 car Class 158 diesel multiple unit to Birmingham, where they would couple up to another pair for the run to London. Quite apart from the lack of space I remember these units were built and introduced some 20 years ago. They have reliability problems,  as many local passengers know to their cost from regular cancellations. The top speed is 90mph. The best catering you would get is a trolley service. Whilst the people of Mid Wales might be disappointed, the fact is the Regulator has, for now, saved them from a very uncomfortable 5 hours on this inferior proposed service.

I shall be writing to Arriva Trains Wales to request that they reflect on this decision. Instead of trying to force Wrexham & Shropshire off the local rails, in my view Arriva should focus on their current local services, which often fall well short of the standards Shrewsbury passengers expect. Arriva need to tackle the chronic overcrowding on the Birmingham line. They must improve reliability, to stop the infuriating practice of turning late trains round short of their  destination. Arriva should be concentrating putting their own house in order, instead of dreaming up clumsy attempts to wreck a competitor’s high quality service.

Excuse me, but we taxpayers have already paid our hard-earned money once to bail out these banks, why on earth should we put yet more money the banker’s way?

This Tory proposal to sell these bank shares at a discount beggars belief-we taxpayers want every possible penny of the money back we had to stump up to repair the damage caused by the reckless bonus driven excesses of the bankers.

If George Osborne and his Tory chums lived in the real world he would know the ordinary hard-working British public are, with good reason, very wary of the Stock Market.  I’ve spoken to many Shrewsbury people who owned shares in High Street banks and never dreamt they would become worthless, yet this is exactly what happened to investors in Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock.

As a result the discount required to tempt small investors back into this sector is going to have to be very, very, large. So as a result of this Tory bright idea, we stand to get only a fraction back of the vast sums we poured into propping up the banks.  And as the mouldy cherry on top of this Tory financial cake, it will be a safe bet that the only people making money will be  some of the same financial ‘experts’ responsible for the banking crisis in the first place.

If this is the best the Tories can come up with by way of economic policy, is it any surprise their poll ratings are slipping?

Regularly I am told the standard of equipment and presentation is below what our residents and visitors have a right to expect.  The image of Shrewsbury they portray to visitors is one of not caring  whether they have a comfortable and  relaxed visit at all.  It is vital for the economic health of Shrewsbury that we make the most of the opportunities and income well planned tourism offers.
The current provision of public toilets in Shrewsbury is just not doing that.

What a massive shame it is that our Tory led Borough and County Councils instead chose to waste some £750,000 on the Darwin “celebrations” and the hugely costly Quantum Leap slinky sculpture.

Investing wisely in our basic facilities in my view would have been the sensible course, and would be far more likely to bring the repeat visits the Darwin fiasco has so conspicuously failed to produce.

All this should make us even more proud of the achievements of the board, staff, players and fans of Shrewsbury Town FC. Under the leadership of Roland Wycherley and his team, Shrewsbury has one of the most financially sound clubs in the land. To build a fine new stadium, and be able to consistently challenge for promotion with two visits to Wembley at the same time is a great record. To able to do that while other clubs with far bigger fan bases fall into financial turmoil shows the scope of what Roland and his team have achieved.

STFC are well placed for the final run in to this season, and I’m sure they will do us all the greatest credit as they push towards the goal of automatic promotion.

The hounds, whilst supposed to be on a drag hunt, came onto private property and ripped apart a fox in the back garden of a local resident. Otis Ferry, joint huntmaster, said they had temporarily lost control of the hounds. The lady owner of the land had previously repeatedly warned the hunt not to enter her private land. This incident must have been extremely distressing for that lady, whose horses and pet cat were understandably terrified.

This unpleasant incident illustrates only too well the real practical problems hunting creates for us in Shropshire. This lady had every right, as all residents of country areas have, to quietly enjoy their property without such horrible acts as this being carried out on their land against their express wishes.

But it is not an isolated incident. A few years back the hunt got into the gardens of several houses in Condover village and caused chaos. A local resident recently found the A41-a main Shropshire Trunk Road blocked by the hunt at Tern Hill with all the resulting danger to other road users.

My question is, if a group of other outdoor pastime enthusiasts such as anglers, or rugby players, turned up in a private garden and killed a wild animal, the outcry would rightly be massive. So why are the hunting lobby allowed to do this infringing private property rights with apparent impunity?

The Police have said no laws were broken at Cruckton, and the incident just amounted to “Trespass”. I doubt the unfortunate lady landowner thought that.

Our MP Daniel Kawczynski went on record on Radio Shropshire to categorically state he would support a vote to reverse Labour’s ban on hunting with dogs.

I would ask him does he still support the pro-hunting lobby when they show such disregard for private property rights? Does he not agree that people who have worked hard to buy country property and land, and who do not wish the hunt to come across it, should have the total right to have that wish fully respected?

If the hunt were engaged in a drag hunt, why didn’t they plan a route well away from this lady’s land?

I am pleased to hear that. However this does not answer my concerns about what possible relevance to Shrewsbury & Atcham these five visits  to the Middle East in the last two years had?

There seems to be a direct connection between these overseas trips and the recent article in the Birmingham Post, on MP’s committee attendance records. Parliamentary figures show Daniel Kawczynski among the worst elected representatives in the country who have failed to show up for large numbers of Commons committees. He is listed as present at just 12.5 per cent of the justice committee and 31.3 per cent of the international development committee.

Whilst his explanation of meeting clashes might hold some water should he not have handed his committee place to another MP who was able to spare the time to attend? In my opinion the work of the Commons Justice Committee has to be of far more relevance to the residents of Shrewsbury & Atcham than these overseas visits.

In a nutshell, the Tories have published a 20 page report, which contains a statistic for teenage pregnancy in the 10 most deprived areas of Britain. The figure is based on Government statistics showing 54 pregnancies per 1000 people.

This is expressed as a per-centage : 54%

To those of us lucky enough to have had a state education and did not study Mathematics at Eton, it is clear that this figure should be 5.4%

A mere error with a decimal point says a Conservative spokesman

“It makes no difference at all to the conclusions of a wide-ranging report which shows that Labour have consistently let down the poorest in Britain.”

Well it really should Mr Cameron !

As it stands the publication makes a claim that there has been an 800% rise in teenage pregnancies in those areas; when in fact – according to the figures on which they have based their maths, and presumably accept, there has been a fall of 10%.

It really should make a huge difference. “A mere error with a decimal point” is not the kind of attitude we should expect from a party that is trying to convince us that their election to government would be in the best interests of our economy.

This story will play out both in the media online and off so I’m not going to spend time dissecting this elementary mistake.

It does remind me though of the Tories’ propensity for shooting themselves in the foot whenever they get the opportunity to make political headway. Long may it last.