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Laura being interviewed outside the Brighton Centre during the 2009 party conference

I got home from work today, fired up the PC, and the first thing that caught my eye on Twitter was news that Crawley’s MP, Laura Moffat, is standing down.  I have very mixed views about this.On the one hand I will be sad to see her go.  She has been a fixture on the local political scene ever since I moved out this way.  Since her predecessor was very much the invisible man in Crawley she is really the only MP I have known here.  On the other hand I am glad for her to be getting a well-deserved break after those years of hard work.

After the nerve-wracking count and multiple recounts in 2005 Laura did seem to be determined to make it her last election, so I am not totally surprised.  No doubt there will be plenty of rejoicing amongst people who have not seen just how much she does: she has really set an example to all constituency MPs over the last thirteen years.

As a colleague, friend and neighbour I have seen first-hand how much time and effort she puts into the job.  Not only does she hold regular surgeries and attend just about every local event going, but she combines this local activity with one of the best attendance records in parliament and still fits in local party meetings and leading campaign events from the front.

Whoever steps into Laura’s boots will have a tough job because she has now set the benchmark that Crawley’s population will expect them to meet.

If more MPs would show the same attention to their constituents and constituency party instead of concentrating on their property portfolios, extra jobs, and personal career arcs the country would be a much better place – but I’m sure that will not stop the gloating from political pygmies who would not manage thirteen weeks of Laura’s schedule, let alone thirteen years.

Laura Moffatt (Labour. Crawley) asked two questions in a debate, both about Children’s Centres and the need to not only protect the service but to extend it.

Francis Maude (Tory. Horsham) got answers to 50 written questions.  I didn’t read them all, but the first one was to ask whether prices in the HoP gift shop had risen when VAT returned to 17.5%.    Could have been easily answered by just popping in there and having a look I would have thought.  I know Maude does not spend as much time in parliament doing his job as most MPs do,¹ but surely he could have sent a research assistant to pop down and actually do some research instead of bunging up the parliamentary questions system with such fluff.It seems that Laura is busy doing that side of an MP’s job that takes up a lot of time and cannot be delegated (actually turning up to listen to and contribute to debates) while Frankie specialises in doing that side of an MP’s job that makes it look like he is busy but could easily be done by researchers, interns or Tory HQ staff (submitting endless written questions).

Of course, without evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that Maude actually spends hours every day thinking of loads of questions all by himself, writing them down himself, submitting them himself, and then poring over the answers later on all by himself… but Occam’s Razor springs to mind here.  Still.  Makes him look busy doesn’t it?

I have a question myself.  Are these 50 answers part of the 117 written answers the Guardian referred to in its diary last Friday or are they in addition to that?  In other words has his little habit cost us £18,018 in a week or has it cost us £25,718?

Apparently the cost of answering written questions works out to about £154 on average, so this is an expensive habit.  According to Theyworkforyou Francis Maude has received answers to 637 written questions in the last year.² I make that just over £98,000 cost to answer them.  It would have been cheaper to let him carry on claiming for his three homes!

As the Guardian said “democracy is great but it never comes cheap”

1. he has only voted in 42% of votes
2. Does that mean in the last 12 months or just since Jan 1st 2010?  I don’t think I would be surprised either way

Farnham Close, 7:30am on 18/12/09

A chap in Hobbs Road is in the local paper complaining about the lack of a gritting bin in his road.  Having had my own simlar experiences discussin grit bins with West Sussex council I have a lot of sympathy for him, but where I have to disagree is when he says it is the steepest road in Crawley.I have never been out measuring such things, but I reackon there are steeper roads and that my own road is one of them.  The picture above is not even of the steepest part of the road.   Compared to Hobbs Road it is a lot narrower with more curves – including a sharp 90-degree turn at the bottom.  With the number of parked cars it can be a nightmare at the best of times, but with compacted snow it is literally impossible.

On Friday I got Jayne to give me a lift to work – I was going on to a xams party afterwards.  When she came back home Jayne could not even get the car back up to our house and had to leave it halfway down the hill.  When it is snowy or icy, or if the forecasts say it is going to be, a lot of residents here leave their cars at the bottom of the hill in preparation.

I’m not saying Hobbs Road doesn’t need some grit, but Farnham Close could probably do with it first.  Or maybe second, because when it comes to steepness, the real winner has to be Kingswood Close.   Forget about cars and people slipping, Kingswood Close is so steep I am surprised the houses don’t slip down it when it snows!

John Prescott at the Friary, Crawley

This evening I took Chrystal into Crawley town centre for a Labour Party fund-raising dinner.  I was supposed to be taking Jayne, but her hip was playing up so Chrystal was a last-minute substitute.

The guest of honour was John Prescott.  He was full of praise for Laura Moffatt and Gordon Brown.  Not quite so full of praise for Charles Clarke and you can imagine his opinions on Cameron.

Prescott is a walking example of why you should not believe everything you read in the newspapers.  They would have you think that he cannot string two words together, but he spoke well and for a very long time.  Not only was it motivational and inspirational but also entertaining.  I can see why he is rapidly becoming our secret weapon in the extended campaign for a fourth term with his mixture of likeability and conviction.

Lots of familiar faces from Crawley and Horsham constituencies, so lots of  opportunities to catch up and the curry was good too.  Would have been a perfect evening if we had won something in the raffle.  Must have raised a lot for the election fighting fund: I was half expecting that we would be held up by the ankles on the way out to shake out any loose change, and for such a good cause I probably wouldn’t have minded it.  Anybody who could lift me up by the legs would deserve some reward anyway.

My right hon. Friend rightly focused on the issue of first-class equipment for our brave troops in Afghanistan. At the recent opening of the £100-million Thales plant in Crawley the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I saw the fantastic work being done there, and how much pride our workers feel in the fact that they are producing first-class equipment for our troops. A lot of this sort of information could be put out to our constituents without putting our troops at risk; if we did that, would that not let the public know that we have confidence in our troops and that we are giving them the very best of equipment, produced in the UK?

Gordon Brown (Prime Minister; Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Labour)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the equipment being produced for our troops, to deal with the new eventuality of the guerrilla warfare being practised by the Taliban, is of a very high quality. I am proud of the British firms that contribute to the equipment orders that are making possible greater security for our forces in Afghanistan. We will continue to upgrade the equipment available to our forces. In addition to the ordinary defence budget, several billion pounds have now been spent on new equipment-whether it be vehicles, helicopters or equipment to deal with IEDs-and some very notable firms, including some in my hon. Friend’s constituency, are responsible for the advances we are making in both technology and equipment.

Peter Mandelson at this year's party conference - still waiting for photos from his visit to Crawley

Today was the long-awaited official opening of the new site where I work.  Personally I have been in the new buildings for just over a year, but the industrial building with all the labs and test and manufacturing facilities took longer to finish, and now the company has decided that enough of our operations have moved in that it is valid to get officially opened, and it was Lord Mandelson, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade, Lord President of the Council, Politician of the Year and Professor of  the Dark Arts who came along to do the honours.

As you can imagine, this caused more than a little excitement and disruption in the workplace.The way our company is organised, there are several individual companies or divisons of the group sharing the site, so all of their managing directors were on-site, as well as the overall managing director for the UK, with HQ and divisional PR people all in a flap.  They had a carefully worked-out plan for the visit, with timings for every little thing (eg “0952-0954 – refreshments offered”) which all got scuppered from the start when the train from London got delayed by half an hour.

Part of the schedule was a meeting with the local trade union reps.  I was really glad to see that included on the itinerary: Labour ministers and MPs visiting a workplace should go out of their way to meet the unions, who are often an integral part of making a company function properly.

When everything started to to run late we fully expected our allotted time to get seriously curtailed or even bumped completely.  We had an eight-minute time slot, which does not sound like a lot, but considering the VIP schedule included a demonstration of about 8 major products in a 16-minute slot, it was quite generous.  It was also the last item on the tour so ripe for getting dropped.

In the end the VIP party did still spend some time with us.  Lord Mandelson seemed to be genuinely impressed by the range and scale of our operations.  He asked us whether industrial relations were good at our company (they are), and we took the opportunity to remind him how many local jobs are directly affected when the government moves a major project like the new aircraft carriers or T45 destroyers to the right or scales it down.

I think we were preaching to the converted though.  Hope so anyway.  Lord M was also very accommodating in posing for a few special photographs, especially when our local MP told him I am a parliamentary candidate.

The biggest surprise was when our little union delegation got to the appointed place we found a great big display sign for Unite the Union.   We didn’t even know we had one.  Must have been the work of the corporate PR people. In itself that speaks volumes about the good industrial relations we have – or have we just got them well trained?

I think it was a good day for everybody.  The senior management got their site openend and were able to remind the government about what a big player we are in government work, the union got its profile raised a little, I got some photos that might come in handy for my election campaign, our local MP got to bring yet another senior minister to the town, and Mandelson himself got to meet all us nice people and had refreshments offered for two minutes.

Bit of a bummer having to wear a suit on a Friday, but such are the small sacrifices I will make for the movement.

I don’t think we picked up any new members today, but we did find plenty of supporters who we hadn’t known about before, so a very fruitful morning.  Sometimes it is good to be out on your own delivering stuff, and catching up on a pdcast or two at the same time, but nothing beats going out as part of a big team and feeling that sort of solidarity.

I went down to Northgate straight from work today to join Geraint and a sizeable crowd of fellow members to knock on doors and deliver election addresses and had a very positive time.  Found a lot of Labour supporters we didn’t know about before and might have even picked up a new member – always a morale-boosting bonus when canvassing.

You get used to some people seeing a crowd wearing rosettes and stickers and crossing the road to avoid you or pretending to be out, but tonight we had somebody actually go out of his way to approach us in the street and ask for a leaflet.  Apparently his gran was thinking of voting Tory and he wanted some material to stage an intervention.

Altogether a fun evening. I do feel a bit bad about one thing though.  I know the Lib Dem candidate, Darren Wise.  In fact I would go so far as to call him a friend – I sat with him at the recording of Question Time earlier in the year and it was his wheelchair that got us to the front of the queue and into the front row, so I feel a little guilty campaigning against him – although, to be fair, I was campaigning for Geraint rather than against him.  I would be more than happy to see Darren come a close second, but not too close eh?  I think we have had more than enough nail-biting results in Crawley in recent years.