It’s a great feeling when an idea you stood behind and were ridiculed for becomes the idea of the moment for regenerating the tourist industry and helping to tackle the country’s balance of payments deficit.
I can’t claim the origin of the idea, it predates me by decades, but I can say I was the first to resurrect the proposal of British Double Summer Time in recent years when I was given the Tourism brief for the Liberal Democrats.
I first had to persuade the Party conference to adopt the policy. The opposition, mostly from Scotland, was fierce. I then promoted it within and outside Parliament and received all sorts of negative feedback and irrational opposition for an idea that could generate over £2 billion for the leisure and hospitality industry, reduce health and insurance costs, and reduce carbon emissions by ten per cent!
I suppose you can only hold onto such a good idea for so long before everyone else wants to claim it, and that’s what has happened with both Labour’s Culture Secretary and now the Conservative Shadow Tourism spokesman supporting the idea. They can both see that such a simple change could give our region a £200 million shot in the arm at a time when every little helps.
The opposition will come overwhelmingly from Scotland, and from a few anti EU obsessive’s who will claim the UK shouldn’t share the same time zone as other European countries. But as South West Tourism expert Malcolm Bell has noted; the light evenings would last longer meaning we’d be more likely to stay out later. He said: “It’s about enjoying life a bit more, and when that happens, tourism benefits.” It's what I've been saying for years.
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Torquay hotelier Luke Tillen popped up on my Facebook page the other day asking if I could help publicise the Torbay Holiday Helpers Network. It is an honour to do so for such a brilliant idea and worthy organisation that promotes such a positive image of our area and its people.
Luke has created a network of hotels, accommodation providers, tourist attractions and businesses that are all committed to helping give away free holidays, services and experiences to families who have terminally ill, seriously ill and recently bereaved children.
Luke first got the idea to set up the Torbay Holiday Helpers Network after watching an episode of Channel 4's Secret Millionaire early last year. The episode featured multi-millionaire scrap merchant Gary Eastwood visiting the town of Blackpool to find worthy causes in need of financial help.
The THHN works in conjunction with a growing list of charities such as: NACCPO (National Alliance of Childhood Cancer Parent Organisations), Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity, Great Ormond Street Hospital, The Royal Marsden Hospital, Child Bereavement Charity, Winston's Wish, Donna's Dream House.
Holidays are only awarded by referral via a registered charity or healthcare professionals.
If you want to know more you can contact the network at: www.thhn.co.uk
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Britain faces an enormous budget deficit: £178bn of which the government estimates £80bn is structural. The Government has set out plans to eliminate this deficit in eight years, halving it in the first four, a pledge now enshrined in legislation. It has not, however, set out the full details of how this will be achieved.
Uncertainty about the deliverability of this plan, and questions over whether it would eliminate the deficit quickly enough have led to market instability that could raise the cost of government borrowing.
The next government has an enormous challenge: not only to reduce the deficit in a responsible way but also to carry the confidence of the markets, keeping down the cost of borrowing, and persuade people to accept significant cuts in public expenditure without industrial or social unrest
Even a “strong” government with an overall majority in the House of Commons will find this difficult because it will not have a majority in the country.
A government elected on 40% of the vote with a turnout of 60% has, in effect, the support of just 25% of eligible voters. No British government has been elected by a majority of electors since the introduction of universal suffrage. The current Labour government was elected by just 22% of eligible voters.
Any government that attempts to impose difficult cuts with such a slim mandate is likely to create strong and growing resentment which will, in turn, weaken market confidence.
Furthermore, it is almost certain that it is not possible to eliminate the full deficit within a single Parliament. Because this is a long-term challenge, there must be consensus between all parties that might form part of either the next or the subsequent government to sustain market confidence that the deficit will be eliminated, whatever the political future.
Agreement between the parties on the economics of deficit reduction (timing and scale) would also have the benefit of focussing inter-party debate on the political issues (what to cut and what taxes to raise).
This would improve political debate, ensuring the parties come clean about what their spending priorities would be, rather than hiding these details behind the veil of a dispute about timing.
This is why we need a Council for Financial Stability to prepare and oversee an agreed plan to deal with the deficit. It will involve representatives from all parties, the Bank of England, and the FSA.
Its remit will be limited to the economic issues: timing and scale of deficit reduction. It will not seek agreement on the essentially political questions of the balance between spending and tax rises and what specific spending items or taxes should be increased or decreased. Like double British Summer time this is another idea whose time has come.
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