Chris Whiteside's Blog

The organisers of the Whitehaven "Marratime" festival should be congratulated on a really good event. I took the family along and we had a really good day out. There were a wide range of stalls and rides, a couple of navy patrol boats and three tall ships in the harbour, and a ferris wheel which I'm told is hte tallest in Europe. Friends who went up the ferris wheel (we decided our three-year olds would never put up with the wait) tell me that it was a superb view from the top. Policing by Cumbria Constabulary was well handled - visible without being over the top - but it was a well behaved crowd and they had little to do. Park and Ride arrangements worked really well. Can't wait til the next time in two years.

What do local hospital services in Copeland have to do with the price of freedom ? The price of both good public services in a democracy and the freedom which that democracy represents is the same - and it is the price which Ben Franklin identified more than 200 years ago. During the American revolution he said that "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance." He meant that no free society will survive unless the citizens are on guard to protect their liberties. His statement is true in another sense - once the members of society are given through the ballot box some measure of control over how that society is run, we can no longer leave the whole burden of responsiblity for what happens in our country to others, be it some King or Baron or our neighbours. Our votes, words, and actions, including any decision not to act, will affect what happens to all the members of our society and those in the rest of the world with whom that society comes into contact. The vote does not m...

To St Bees Priory this afternoon for the Mayoral Service marking the start of the year of Norman and Yvonne Clarkson as Mayor and Mayoress of Copeland. Unlike many parts of the country Copeland does not have a tradition of a majority party letting anyone else having a turn as Mayor. This year however, it has happened and Norman is the first Tory Mayor of Copeland for many years. There was a procession through St Bees, and then the church was reasonably full for the service. It was an excellent service. I think the idea of de-politicising the mayoralty to some extent and letting each party have a turn if they have candidates of good quality is a sound principle so I hope this year is a great success. I have no doubt that Norman and Yvonne will be an excellent Mayor and Mayoress, and I think the presence of many members of the public to support them today bodes well for the year, as did the fact that some people had come from the more distant part of the borough - for example, there was ...

So what else is new, may well be your response to that header. Nevertheless, the problems in Ireland - not just Northern Ireland - are a lot worse than anyone who relies for information solely on the UK mainland media is likely to realise. My in-laws were born in Ireland and subscribe to Irish newspapers. When we visit them, as someone who can rarely see any reading material without browsing it, I usually take a look. I am astonished that recent events on the other side of the Irish Sea have not received more attention on this side. During a recent attempted armed robbery in the Irish republic two of the attackers were shot dead by Irish Police. The Gardai gave warning before opening fire. One of the dead men was armed, his gun was loaded but it was not fired. Each of the dead men was killed by a single bullet through the heart. I have no reason to believe that the police officers involved in this tragic incident acted other than correctly, and I have far more sympathy with the offic...

I have been following with interest the results of the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the proposed European Union constitution. One question which surfaced in this country even before the French and Dutch votes is whether it is worth having a vote in this country given the rejection of the constitutional treaty by one or more other EU members. It is interesting that the more intelligent pro-Europeans, at least in this country, were the first people to answer "No" to that question, while the more hardline Eurosceptics have been the ones calling for a referendum in Britain to go ahead. Surprisingly, some of the most prominent pro-Europeans on the continent do not appear to realise that ploughing on as if nothing had happened is almost guaranteed to produce more "no" votes by increasingly large majorities. The "Non" voters in France and "Nee" voters in the Netherlands may have different views from Brit and Danish Eurosceptics on many issu...

For anyone reading this who is not familiar with the name, La'al Ratty is the nickname of the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. Even before we moved to West Cumbria this charming and very well run miniature steam railway was one of our favourite places to take the twins. As I understand it "La'al Ratty" means "little narrow way" in the local dialect, but the railway also has some charming promotional material which presents "La'al Ratty" as a kind of Beatrix Potter rodent stationmaster. There has been a suggestion in the local press that the nickame might be dropped on the basis that it is hard for people from outside Cumbria to follow. As incomers ourselves, who are regular visitors and travellers on the railway, my family would very much regret any such move. We think the nickname adds to the character of the railway. There was certainly no lack of vistors when we came to the railway either this weekend or last. Let's hope the idea of a na...

This week saw the final session of the A595 public inquiry - held over from before the election. The main sessions a couple of weeks ago were largely taken up with the battle between the Highways Agency (the national roads organisation, who are promoting the barmy idea of de-trunking the A595), and the statutory objectors (which means Cumbria County Council and Copeland Borough Council. The inquiry over-ran the originally allocated time and most of the "other objectors" - such as the Neighbourhood Forum, Copeland Conservatives, the local Lib/Dems, and several other local bodies - had to come back a few weeks later. I was speaking at the inquiry as a witness for Copeland Conservatives. Like all the other local parties and organisations involved, we want to keep the A595 south of Calder Bridge, and the A5092 through to Greenodd, as trunk roads maintained by the national Highways Agency. I was very impressed by the degree of cross-party co-operation among the people who were giv...

This post was provoked by the Simon Heffer piece in the Mail but has a much wider currency. There is a lot of nonsense talked from diametrically opposite directions about the very real efforts the Conservative party has made to select a wider range of able candidates. This comes from two groups of people with mirror-image agendas. The first group, most of whom are inclined towards New Labour and therefore have a vested interest in finding a stick to beat the Conservatives with, claim that there has been no significant change in the diversity of the Conservative candidate list. The second group, of which Simon Heffer is the arch example, criticise the attempt to promote women, gay, and ethnic minority candidates and all too frequently make the inaccurate charge that this is being done in a politically correct way regardless of the ability of the candidates concerned. Obviously as someone who fought a seat for the Conservatives this time I cannot pretend to be entirely objective about th...

The grass in both my gardens has this in common with Robert Kilroy Silk - all three finally got it after the election. Winning elections is always more fun than losing them, but one consequence of losing an election is that you get a bit more time to sort your life out. The has been lawnmowing week. I was down in St Albans for a few days, during which time I set the mower to the level with the blades as far as possible off the ground and removed a vast amopunt of vegetation from the lawn. Then I came back to Cumbria, bringing the mower with me, and gave a similar nasty shock to the grass and weeds here. Now I have a lot of thank you letters to write: if anyone who helped my campaign is reading this, thanks for everything you did and the letter is on its way ! I have received many very kind messages about the 2005 election campaign, all of which were most appreciated. However, it is now time to move on. I cannot make any assumptions at all about whether the party will want me to be a ca...

Well, the campaign is over and Labour have held the Copeland seat. As I suspected was the case, the majority of polls were understating the Conservative share of the national vote and overstating Labour's. However, the result in Copeland was much more disappointing than I expected. As I wrote in previous posts, I allowed when canvassing for the possibility that many people were too polite to tell me they were not voting for me. Comparing what I was told on the doorstep with what happened on the night, I wonder if this was true to an even greater extent than I had allowed. Alternatively the people I managed to speak to and who expressed an opinion may not have been entirely representative of the constituency. However, I would like to thank all those - more than ten thousand people - who did vote for me, and all those who worked on my campaign.

At last the General and County council elections are finally coming to a close and it is time for everyone - except the 20% who have already voted by post - to make their cross. I hope everyone will use their vote, and use it positively for a better future. Once in five years we are all equal, and we all have a chance to say where this country should be going. For me, and for many people, this is an opportunity. For others it seems to be a threat. We can campaign for a positive agenda for tomorrow, or we can resort to childish scare tactics. I have lost count of the number of times the Labour campaign in Copeland have warned that a vote cast for anyone but themselves might result in my winning, and this is presented as the end of civilisation as we know it. Usually this is based on gross misrepresentation of Tory policies, sometimes it is downright silly, as when the Prime minister appeared to suggest that the Conservatives would sack every teacher, nurse, and policeman in the country....

I had just arrived back from canvassing in Ennerdale Bridge today with the local Conservative councillor. Still transferring leaflets back from his car to mine when his phone rang. He came out of the house with the cordless handset, said "Just a moment, I have someone here who will be able to help you" and handed it to me. I annnounced my name and heard "Hello, this is the Conservative Party, can we count on your support in the election on Thursday ?" "Yes, I will be voting for myself." I replied, and explained to the lady from the Conservative national call centre (known as Geneva) that her computer system had dialled a Conservative councillor who had handed the phone to the local Conservative parliamentary candidate. I doubt if the script on her machine covered that one but it gave us all a good laugh.

Well, it has certainly been a busy few weeks, and will continue to be hectic for another three days. I have been enjoying the election immensely but whichever way the result goes it will be a relief in the early hours of Friday morning when the returning officer announces who has won and we all know where we stand. I have particularly enjoyed the debates. BBC Radio Cumbria last Monday with all six candidates: Whitehaven School last Wedneday afternoon with everyone except Independent candidate Brian Early: Churches in Whitehaven the same evening with all six: and St Bees School this afternoon with myself, the Lib/Dem and a county councillor standing in for the Labour candidate. (They also had a Green party speaker - there is no Green candidate in Copeland this time, but there may have been some green candidates in the school mock elections.) I felt that all these opportunities for people to see and hear the people who are putting themselves up for election in an unscripted environment w...

Opinion polls are a useful tool, but they are not perfect. In 1992 they got the result wrong: in 1997 and 2001 they predicted that Labour's percentage lead in votes would be much larger than it actually was. Pollsters in the US have similar problems. (Remember when we all went to bed under the impression that Kerry was winning and woke up to find that Dubya had the last laugh.) All the pollsters are trying to correct for the bias which understated Conservative (and Lib/Dem) support in the last three elections; they are using different methods to do this, and that's one of the reasons different polls are all over the place. We will only find out whether any of them have got it more or less right on election night. I very much doubt that those polls suggesting a Labour landslide of the same order as 1997 and 2001 can be right. For one thing, in those two years Tony Blair was still popular and most people accepted his self-evaluation as a "pretty straight kind of guy". I...

During the planning for the election campaign I was told that we could expect three Conservative font bench visits to the Copeland constituency, and asked who we would like and where in the constituency we should take them. Top of the list in my reply was for a Shadow health spokesman to visit West Cumberland Hospital in Whitehaven, and I was delighted when the Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, took up this request and came to WCH on Friday. It was an interesting and useful visit, and I am grateful both to Andrew for coming to support our local hospital and to the management and staff who took time to meet us and show us round. One of the key Conservative policies in this election is cleaner hospitals to reduce the threat of MRSA and other hospital acquired infections. West Cumberland has one of the better records in this area, and is one of the hospitals where the number of hospital acquired infections is falling: as we went round we saw some of the policies we hop...

A gap in posts for a week due to technical difficulties - the site was down for maintenance when I tried to post. Normal service will now be resumed. Time and again the same issues which people are most concerned about in West Cumbria keep coming up on the doorstep. Some are national issues which do not directly affect us here in Copeland. But there are a four particular issues which especially affect the lives of the people I meet or have the potential to do so. These four main issues are my top priorities for Copeland, and they are 1) JOBS West Cumbria has lost large numbers of jobs in recent years, and we are likely to lose many more due to changes in the nuclear industry. It has been estimated that 17,000 jobs, including those which may be hit by "knock on" effects following from decommissioning, are dependent on Sellafield and Drigg. And even if there is a new generation of nuclear plants including one in West Cumbria, which I strongly support, it is unlikely that there ...

Going straight from being a senior councillor to being a parliamentary candidate has given me one insight into why this country has such a centralised political system - the attitude of national pressure groups, lobbies, and charities. To be fair to them, they behave in the way they do partly because we have developed such a centralised political culture. But while everyone talks the language of localism, far too many people are practicising the politics of centralism - perhaps without even realising it. Between 2001 and 2004 I was the Portfolio holder for Planning and Conservation in the cabinet of a council dealing with a very heavy load of planning applications. And one of my motivations for standing for election to the House of Commons is to try to get central government off the backs of local government, because over those three years I become fed up to the back teeth with blinkered, incompetent micromanagement and interference from London. So it was an eye-opener on standing down...

I believe this country needs a balanced energy policy, which should make full use of nuclear power, renewable energy, and reducing waste of energy from all sources. I was very pleased when Tim Yeo promised that if the Conservatives win the election, a decision will be made on whether to commission a new generation of nuclear power stations within a year of the election. If Britain is to continue have a nuclear industry, we do need a decision in the near future, or we will have abandoned nuclear power by default. And for areas like West Cumbria the uncertainty is very damaging. I would like to see one of those new power stations at Sellafield. Obviously we have to take account of the limitations of the existing national grid and what can economically be done to improve it. I am advised that it would be difficult to upgrade the grid sufficiently to deliver the output from a 1000 MW reactor such as the AP1000, but many people connected with the industry consider that it would be economic...

Have been canvassing in Millom and Gosforth today: have also canvassed this week in Whitehaven, Seascale, Egremont, and Ravenglass. As always happens, the reception was better in some streets than others, but overall I am reasonably pleased. We have lost very few of those who had indicated that they would vote Conservative last time. Every day we find some more people who voted Labour in the past but will be voting Conservative this time. And I keep finding people right across the political spectrum who have had enough of Tony Blair. This is the seventh general election campaign in which I have been actively involved - I started in 1979 at the age of 18 - and it is the only election in all that time in which the number of negative comments I have heard on the doorstep about the Labour leader have greatly outnumbered those made about the Conservative leader. That even applies in 1983 when I had to take on the chin more criticisms of Margaret Thatcher than were made about Michael Foot - ...

For weeks the Labour party has been accusing the Conservatives of planning to slash spending on public services. One version of their scare story has misrepresented Conservative proposals to reduce administration and bureaucracy as a cut in front-line services. The Prime Minister even appeared to suggest that the Conservatives might sack every policeman and teacher in the country. (In fact we have no plans to cut front-line services.) The other version of the scare story compares projected spending by Labour or Conservative governments five years into the future; both parties are planning to spend more on public services but the Conservative proposals for a smaller increase is described by Labour as "a cut". (Confusingly the amount under discussion in both stories is £35 billion.) But today the Labour party has suggested exactly the opposite - instead of destroying the public services by spending less than Labour they are now accusing us of planning to spend £15 billion a ...

The situation on postal votes becomes more and more alarming. There are plenty of people who really need them - I took a postal vote application form to a rural area today for someone who had a good reason why she would not be able to get to the polling station. But we have to protect the integrity of the poll, and it is clear from the Birmingham judgement that the present system does not. Today it is alleged in a Sunday newspaper that a committee of ministers considered the problem, initially wanted to legislate to increase the security of postal votes, but then took no action after being advised that the proposed measures, including those supported by the Electoral Commission and the police, would reduce takeup of votes among groups which were believed to favour Labour. There need to be some hard questions asked about these allegations. If they are true then the ministers involved should be impeached.

I have campaigned in Millom, Haverigg and Gilgarran this weekend. Quite pleased with the results. Almost all those who had previously been canvassed as Conservative still are, and a chunk of those who had previously been against or doubtful now say they will vote Conservative. I am still meeting a significant proportion of voters who say they have not made their minds up. Some of those will be Labour supporters who are too polite to tell me they are not going to vote for me. So will many of those who say things like "Yes, I'll consider it" or "Yes, I'll be there." However, I have been canvassing for twenty six years and you do develop a sense for when people really are still thinking about it and when they're just being polite. If someone says to me something specific like "I'll be voting Conservative this time" or "Yes, I'll vote for you", then nine times out of ten they really will. If someone says they are not voting for me...

Because of the pope's funeral it was agreed not to carry out intrusive campaigning such as canvassing today, but we were advised that it is acceptable to deliver leaflets so I and my team have been doing that. While out delivering leaflets I had a call from Radio Cumbria. Apparently the tourist board, presumably as a joke, are running an advertising campaign advising people to come on holiday in Cumbria as an "election free zone." Well, there certainly are elections here and they are being fiercely contested. Anyone who comes here expecting not to see election posters is likely to be disappointed. People complain when they think politicians are being less than truthful in their campaigning. In the real world anyone campaigning to win an election is bound to present the facts in the way most favourable to their own case, but the voters and are perfectly entitled to expect political candidates not to make false statements. In my opinion that expectation has already been dis...

On a vist to Cumbria the Conservative shadow Environment Secretary, Tim Yeo, has made some very helpful comments about the future of the nuclear industry. He promised that that a Conservative government would make a decision about a new generation of nuclear power plants within a year being elected. One of the worst problems for West Cumbria has been uncertaintly about the future so this promise was very welcome. I was also very pleased to hear the positive tone of Tim's comments about the nuclear industry. "It's for the nuclear industry to show that it can be cost competitive" he said. "If it can, and can show that understandable concerns about waste can be met, then nuclear power has a role to play. It already produces a fifth of our energy and has the advantage of not producing carbon dioxide emissions." This was the most positive statement yet made about the future of the nuclear industry by the relevant parliamentary spokesman of either of the two mai...

I have been out and about in Whitehaven today, while teams of my supporters have been delivering leaflets in a number of areas including Millom. First indications from my first election canvassing session today confirms the impression from our local surveys over the past few months that the Conservative vote is reasonably firm and the Labour vote rather less so. A lot of voters are very concerned about the rundown of local industry, the management of local health services, and the economic future of West Cumbria. Many Copeland residents say they have not yet decided how to vote. I think the election here in Copeland is likely to be very close indeed.

It is eight months since I was selected to fight the Copeland seat but it seems like years. And the unofficial pre-campaign has run on so long that it must seem to most members of the public that we have already been fighting an election campaign for months. But today at last the "phoney war" came to an end as the PM finally went to Buckingham Palace to request a dissolution of parliament. And we finally know officially what everyone involved in politics has been convinced of for some time - the general election will be on 5th May. The news coincided with a clutch of opinion polls, one showing the Conservatives five points ahead and the others showing reduced Labour leads, which suggest that the election is not a foregone conclusion. I think there is everything to play for. Anyone who spends time on the doorstep knows that many voters are fed up with politicians of all parties, large numbers say they have yet to decide how to vote, and that the Labour vote in particular is qu...

Like all political candidates I have suspended political campaigning yesterday and today as a mark of respect for Pope John Paul II. I was still at school when he was elected, following his predecessor's tragic death after just a month in office. He was a towering presence for nearly three decades and a man who will be remembered as one of the strongest popes in history. I did not agree with all of his views - on some issues he made me look like a soggy liberal, while on other issues, despite his reputation as an arch-conservative, he could be quite left-wing. But whether you agreed with him or not, you had to respect his integrity. Despite the trappings of power there was something about Pope John Paul which held to the simplicity, modesty, and sincerity which I associate with the early church and with Jesus himself. I myself am an anglican, my wife is a catholic, although we both think of ourselves as Christians. I was pleased that yesterday's service at my local anglican chu...

I become more and more convinced that the damage they are doing to the country's pension provision is on its own sufficient grounds why Britain absolutely cannot afford the re-election of the Labour government. It is bad enough that in his first budget Gordon Brown made pension funds liable to Advanced Corporation Tax, a form of double taxation which effectively takes £ 5 billion a year from pension funds. This was the first and worst "stealth tax" - Mr Brown hoped that people would not realise that a change to something with a remote-sounding name like "Advanced Corporation Tax" meant that their pensions were being taken away. Then Mr Brown introduced an atrociously complicated "pensions credit" system which destroys incentives to save because anyone who does invest for their future loses 40 pence of pensions credit for each pound of income he or she provides. Surprise surprise - as incentives to save have been destroyed by Gordon Brown, the level of ...

Well, I managed it. Of the twelve times I have now completed the Swimathon, today was the hardest, because I have been out of action for the past two weeks with a nasty chest infection, and have not 100% recovered. I had decided beforehand that if I found myself in real difficulty I would abandon the swim rather than risk making myself ill. The pool at the Cockermouth swimming centre is 25 metres long, so to complete the 5000 metres challenge I had to swim 200 lengths. In the past when in better shape I have swum the full 5,000 using front crawl, and completed it in under an hour and a half. However, I knew that would not be possible this year and I would need to conserve my strength to finish at all. So I mainly used breast stroke, mixing in one length of front crawl with nine lengths of breast stroke so as to use a different set of muscles. It took me two hours, which is the longest time it has ever taken me, but I'm quite pleased just to have finished. Sponsorship money from the...

This weekend I have been canvassing in the Holmrook area. I was not surprised to find strong opposition to the idea of De-Trunking the A595. This road is the only effective way to reach a large area of Cumbria. It is the only road access to an important national facility - the Nuclear Waster repository at Drigg. It is the main route from a large part of Copeland to the most accessible District General Hospital, currently at Whitehaven. (That argument will be even stronger if the hospital is moved.) The relevant Health And Safety authorities have also advised that we need evacuation routes to both North and South from Sellafield. The only possible evacuation route to the South is the A595. In my view, and that of every local resident with whom I have discussed it, the arguments to keep trunk status for this road and indeed improve it are overwhelming. I will be attending the Public Inquiru next month with local County Councillor Sue Brown to make this point.