Ed Vaizey

The Lib Dems in Wantage are shameless. They have just put out a press release claiming credit for a new footpath, when in fact it was the excellent local Conservative district councillor Bill Melotti (www.billmelotti.me.uk) who first brought the issue to public attention.  The Lib Dems are also trying to cut the subsidies available for all arts groups in Wantage.  And now they are claiming an independent candidate in Wallingford, Lynda Atkins, is in fact a Lib Dem…

I have been deluged with mail on our threatened Post Offices.  I have five under threat in my constituency - Childrey, Ardington, Fyfield, Upton and Long Wittenham.  The two  I know best - Childrey and Ardington - are thriving and very busy.  Clearly “profit” is not an issue - the Post Office is simply pushing through a plan that means that all Post Offices will be three miles apart, and any in between get the bullet.  I’ll be spending the week end putting together the case for each Post Office before my show down meeting next week.

I have just sat through the first few hours of the Northern Rock debate.  It may seem a marginal issue, but PArliament is being treated with contempt - as per usual.  The entire Bill will have been done and dusted by midnight - just 8 hours after it was first put before Parliament.  It themn moves to the Lords, where the unelected representatives get twice as long!  Why is the Government in such a hurry - after all they have been prepared to wait 5 months to avoid precisely this debacle.  Surely they can wait a couple of weeks for Parliament to debate it.  Or is this Thursday’s “topical debate” (and you can be sure it won’t be on Northern Rock!) too important to be passed over?

So, about three years after David Davis suggested it, the Government looks set to accept intercept evidence in court.  Makes the case for 42 days even weaker.

No, this is not a sudden Vaizey prediction that Bill Clinton will come back into the race.  It’s a plug for my good friend and colleague, Bill Melotti, who is standing as a County Councillor in Wantage and Grove, follwoing the sad death of Jim Moley.  Bill works tirelessly for the local community, he is young and switched on, he will be a huge asset for the town and village, regardless of yuor politics.  If you live in Wantage and Grove, please vote for him.  His website is www.billmelotti.me.uk

I popped into the BT Archives yesterday, to be shown around by their head archivist, David Hay.  In a non-descript building in Holborn, BT employs three archivists, David and a museum curator, and spends about £2 million a year keeping its archives going.  There is still a business case for them, in terms of marketing and in potential legal disputes, but it is also part of their corporate social responsibility. (Although I was sad to leanr that BT closed their museum during the dot com crash, and dispersed the collection, albeit to five national museums.)  I looked up my dad in old phone books, and was also astonished to come across my grandfather, a barge builder in East London.  Looking at their names in the phone book, it was almost as if they were alive again.  A year ago, I would have had to have come into the building to do that.  Today, I can download these pages from the web.  Archives are far more accessible, and asa result far more sexy.  There has been a proposal to give businesses tax breaks for maintaining their archives, but it has been resolutely ignored by the Government.  We will have to look at it.

Hmmm, my far out prediction that Mitt Romney would be President by this time next year?  McCain seems to have got the big mo’ at the moment, but the fight has not yet been lost.  But I am preparing for a gracious admission of defeat on this one.  Not on Clinton versus Obama though.