Education Questions in the House at 2.30 today - Prudhoe and my thanks to the Department of Education team for setting aside money to rebuild Prudhoe Community High School in these difficult times will be top of my list.
I am also looking forward to Thursday when I am spending time with Aung San Suu Kyi, when she comes to the Houses of Parliament. Her story is amazing, and a triumph of hope and perserverance over adversity. The daughter of the Burma’s independence leader was a housewife living with her academic husband and their two sons when she went to nurse her dying mother and found herself thrust into the leadership of the country’s democracy movement. Her husband, Michael Aris, has since died of prostate cancer and she was unable to see her two sons, Alexander, 39 and Kim, 34, grow up. When she left her home in Oxford to care for her ailing mother in her native country in 1988, she expected to be gone for just a matter of weeks. Neither she nor her family could possibly have imagined that she would return 24 years later, a Nobel laureate, having spent 15 of those years under house arrest. She is, quite simply, a truly great woman.
Amongst many meetings this week I am also meeting with:
- the energy company concerning the problems caused on the Otterburn road by the Green Rigg wind farm installation
- and trying to meet with several constituents who are coming to London
