Reporting back with 48,000 newspapers

02/11/2009 by Steve Barclay.

People sometimes say that they only hear from politicians at election time.  I do not want this said in North East Cambridgeshire.  That is why we have been running our regular programme of coffee meetings across the constituency on Saturdays, chatting with a wide range of residents about the issues that matter to them.  It is why after being selected we put out 30,000 introductory leaflets.  It is also why a wide variety of local issues have been followed up over recent months, whether across the constituency on issues like the Fenland Road Safety Campaign and the lack of access to speech therapy, or on issues impacting specific areas - flooding in  Whittlesey and Coates, paramedic cover in Littleport, tourism in Wisbech, vandalism and anti-social behaviour in March, and leisure in Chatteris to name just a few.

This week I thought it would be helpful to report back on the last 18 months since being selected at the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate.  So we are putting out 48,000 newspapers, in five local editions to reflect the different issues impacting in different towns.  I still have a full time job which pays the bills so politics has to fit around this in my spare time in evenings and week-ends.  Hopefully the newspaper will be of interest to you, and shows that we are working hard all year round in North East Cambridgeshire.

To read the newspaper please click on the link to the relevant edition for you:

Wisbech
March
Chatteris
Whittlesey
East Cambridgeshire

This week-end I will be speaking at the NFU dinner at Chatteris on Friday evening, holding a coffee meeting on Saturday in Wisbech, and laying the remembrance wreath on behalf of Malcolm Moss MP in both Whttlesey and March on Sunday.

I hope the Prime Minister will reflect, as he stands before the cenotaph on Sunday, on the shameful news just from the last 7 days.  His proposed £20 million Territorial Army cuts which even his own backbench MPs described as shameful, the leaked email from Lt Colonel Rupert Throneloe warning that the lack of helicopters was forcing him to take unnecessary road trips risking lives (which tragically included his own and a teenage private after £2.4 billion was cut in the helicopter budget in 2004 by Gordon Brown), the inquest into the 14 deaths in the faulty Nimrod showing a catalogue of errors, and the 7 deaths from ignoring safety warnings behind the fatal helicopter collision in Iraq.  Tony Blair was quick to send the army to war but Gordon Brown has always refused to pay the costs.  Lives have been lost as a result.  I hope he reflects on this on Sunday. Make do and mend is not an adequate strategy for our armed forces.

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