Have a good summer!

However more serious business now… Firstly, several UMCF members attended the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham last week which was a complete success, and we would just like to say thank you to all those who attended from UMCF, highlights included the Northern England Reception and a certain Will Stobart making it on to TV many times during DC’s brilliant speech!

Over the next couple of weeks we hope to fit in a couple of days volunteering for the British Legion selling poppies. And in the coming weeks we have a few campaign days coming and the Manchester Federation annual dinner (3rd December).

Also a quick reminder to all members… KEEP TEARING DOWN THE SOCIALISTS ILLEGAL FLYPOSTED POSTERS!

Keep checking the Facebook page for regular info and don’t forget to attend this week’s meeting; Thursday 6PM Friendship Inn Fallowfield.

Many Thanks

Also I would to proudly announce the return of our Clean up Our Campus campaign in which we shall go around and rid the university and its surrounding areas of the socialist’s and anarchist’s posters which are illegal and are creating a mess on campus.

Lastly, our weekly meetings on Thursdays at 6PM return this week, with a meeting at the Friendship Inn, Fallowfield. Please have a look at the Facebook page and check it for all information regarding UMCF.

Many Thanks

UMCF

The contact information is still correct though and will be updated.

Meanwhile, you can find us (more active) on facebook

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5278518231

Last week Universities of Manchester Conservative Future once again embarked upon the rough seas that is political campaigning at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. Over the three days of freshers’ fairs at both universities, around 20 different activists from the University and all over Manchester came down to help out at our three stalls, outgunning the Labour and the LibDems, who struggled to keep even one stall afloat.

UMCF at Manchester University on Tuesday morning

This time, despite the usual trend of student extremism, and the trend of students to join the Hard Left, the Conservative Future branch was the only political movement to measure a significant improvement. Labour struggled to recruit, hampered by a lack of interesting freshers items, while students flocked to relieve us of bottle openers and wall planners, seemingly oblivious that they were accepting gifts from the ‘”evil Tories”.

Manchester, perhaps like many northern cities, has always been a difficult place for Conservative Future to make progress, yet this year the doubling of memberships at Manchester Metropolitan, as well as the doubling of interest in the party at both Universities, shows that the CF brand is alive and well in the North West.

UMCF's Stall at Manchester Metropolitan University

Highlights of the week included the Liberals being forced to make John Leech MP to stand at their stall, and the ‘occupation’ of the Labour stall at Manchester Metropolitan when their members decided they had more important things to deal with. In many a university, freshers might have been surprised to see a blue rosette behind a stall decked out in red, but in Manchester, it’s unforgivable.

Thanks to everyone who came out. It showed just how much progress we’ve made, when we’ve come from just a handful of active members last year.

I will however pen a few of my thoughts concerning MPs expenses. I’ll make no excuses, it’s been a bloody disaster. Some MPs will have to resign and in a way they will deserve it. In another way they do not. Don’t get me wrong, they’re out of order, but humans are inherently imperfect and when faced with temptation few out of any group of people will be able to resist. But there is another aspect to this, let me set out the argument:

Imagine you’re an MP in the 1980s. You’re coming into the job, you’ve got a salary roughly equivalent to that of a GP or other well paid public sector employees. Now run it forward a few years. Your pay is not being increased. Your pay isn’t increased for years and years on end. However, now there’s these expenses. You’re not given pay rises, you’re given additional ways to claim for things. This continues for 25-30 years. Expenses rise, pay stays the same. Would you not eventually begin to see these expenses as a form of pay?

It has struck me throughout this scandal just how high the proportion of older (Conservative) MPs claiming ‘bad’ expenses has been when compared to the younger (Conservative) MPs. Is it the Westminster village attitude or is it the lack of any pay-rises that have lead to these views? I wouldn’t want to speculate.

However one thing I would make absolutely clear: Electing MPs from protest parties won’t make a difference to this. It will put a different person in parliament, but in the end human nature will stay the same. If individuals decide to stand on an ‘anti-sleaze’ ticket it might work, but the moment you get some form of movement or party standing for protest you also get the inherent dirtiness of human nature. Such are humans, and we would have to be raving socialists to think that human nature can be changed.

In the end parliament will be cleared up, this crisis has made it inevitable. Politics will be cleaner and will hopefully attract more people as a result. Hopefully some of the people sniping from the sidelines will now see the light and decide to do something about the issues they care about and get involved in politics. Politics will always involve the same people unless the public decides to do something about it. It’s why I got involved, it’s why you should.

• Deputy Chair – Gaz Morris

• Treasurer – Rob Manning

• Social Secretary – Nick Kling

 
Minutes of the meeting will be made available in the near future.

Cheers
Will

Alastair Darling’s Budget has destroyed our Generation’s future Prosperity

I listened to Wednesday’s budget announcement with a mixture of boredom, fury and impending doom. We can excuse the chancellor for being boring, given his job he can be excused for not sounding particularly enthusiastic about what he had to announce. But what none of us should want to excuse is the horrible fate that awaits us when we finally step out into the real world and join the workforce.

It’s not that I don’t believe that the chancellor has some good intentions. Nobody goes into politics in order to deliberately do harm to their country. But given the almost systematic manner in which the infrastructure and the public services in this country have been mishandled, we could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. There’s the government debt, rising for the next four years to 79% of GDP; that’s 1.4 Trillion Pounds. Over the next two years the treasury will be borrowing more money than all governments put together since the bank of England was founded more than 300 years ago. It’s a staggering amount of money and it’s us who will be paying this money back.

I feel sorry for those among us who will be leaving university this year. The jobs will be scarce, the competition harsh. And even if jobs can be found, they may be on a part-time or short-term basis. Those of us who have another one or more years to go will find ourselves in equally unenviable positions. Don’t kid yourself; the next few years will be tough. We will undoubtedly have to pay back more out of our wages in taxes and we will receive fewer benefits in return. The last ten years have seen people live above their means; the next ten years will see people suffer as a result. This single matter constitutes the greatest failing of this government, and is probably one of the greatest failings in governmental oversight in our nation’s history.

So what would I want to see changed? I would like to see some realism and some honesty from the government. All this budget did was push the pain further away, like someone taking out a new credit card to avoid paying off their current debts.

We needed the budget to give us the truth, to tell us that yes, there will be pain, but that there’s a way to get through it. This budget didn’t do that, the government closed its eyes and pretended the problem didn’t exist. Life will go on and the public finances will be restored. But it will be a long and painful journey for us all.

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Apologies for the lack of blogging, but exams are upon us. Expect little between now and the AGM.

The Leaflet (courtesy of ConHome and The Young Conservative)