Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the...
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It is for this reason I am so disappointed with the current government, they have done nothing to reverse the taz on pensions, nothing to reduce the hike on fuel taxes, nothing to reduce road tax, nothing to deflate the bloated public sector, nothing to reduce the number of none working immigrants, nothing to end this farce of a fiat currency.
I mean look at it its just a joke isnt it, sure they keep saying Labour messed up, but none of them ever want to put right what is messed up. Hey, they have now had 3 years in office and have not even started.
Dont even think of going down the line of cutting taxes wont help with labours debt, You and I both know if you reduce the tax rate you increase the tax take.
Now are the conservative party going to cut spending or are we as a nation going to go bust?
* Net immigration cut by a third
* Lots of the fuel duty increases planned by the previous government cancelled and duty currently frozen
* Councils given the opportunity and incentive to freeze council tax
* Benefits capped to greatly reduce the number of families for whom working and paying tax will leave them worse off than on benefits
* Tax thresholds greatly increased, resulting in a tax cut for 25 million people, several million of whom were taken out of income tax altogether
* Billions removed from spending in every area except the NHS and aid, with the result that the deficit is down by a quarter.
* The audit commission, the standards board, RDAs and many other quangos axed
You can certainly argue that the government should have gone further - and in all candour I would agree with you.
You are also right to call for further spending reductions and more tax cuts, both of which I believe Britain needs.
But to say that the coalition government have done nothing about the mess they inherited is simply not correct. On the terms you were suggesting earlier, this is a matter of fact and not one of opinion.