Hexham Annual General Meeting

Annual General Meetings are a good barometer of the state an association is in: tonight's meeting in the Beaumont Hotel was well attended by a broad cross section of the community, from Bellingham to Ponteland, featuring young and not so young - from all walks of life. The great thing about this association is the way it is so united.

After the formal business of the election of the officers and the Chairmans report the head of the Unitary Council Conservative Group, Peter Jackson, gave an update on what the Councillors are doing in the brave new world of Unitary. Putting it simply they are making the best of a bad job. Then Peter Atkinson MP gave a speech outlining the view from Westminster and the efforts David Cameron and the team are making to combat Brown and the slow slide into a ever bigger morass of debt. He also explained with relish how he was looking forward to taking me on the Summer Tour - with all the trips up byways and dead ends that it so wonderfully features!
After that it was my turn to explain what we are doing locally, the campaigns we are running in West Prudhoe, Hexham, Ponteland and Corbridge, the extensive details of our 3 1/2 week plan for the Euro Election campaign and the increased activity in the association - with supper clubs, a new conservative future, and a sense of optimism and going forward.

James McCardle had found a wonderful quote from the minutes of the 1950 address by the then new prospective parliamentary candidate Rupert Spier, which described how upon standing he was received with "rapturous applause and acclamation". I told this story and indicated that I accepted that times had changed and that I did not expect such a reception...

After the formal business we all went to the bar and put the world to rights ... a good evening all round

Humshaugh and Wall Annual Lunch - Understanding a Quadrillion

To Humshaugh for the famous lunch that people literally drive 50 + miles to come to; it is an instituion based on wonderful people, a slick organisation and the best puddings in the County. No wonder fans from Newcastle, Tynemouth, Durham and beyond make the trek north of Hexham! Peter Atkinson MP spoke really well about the Government's troubles and what David Cameron is doing - both to high light the weakness of the government's position and the real alternative that we propose. His best line was the comment that in the old days a million was lot of money, then a billion; now a trillion is not so much apparently and the government are talking in quadrillions, whatever that may be! One cannot help wondering if the government are turning the pound into lire as the currency continues to cumble? On any interpretation government borrowing is not what it used to be.