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Jobs, Cars, Houses and The Weather

This morning I met with the accountants investigating the saga of MG Rover. That was an interesting discussion and I will be interested to find out what their conclusions are in months to come. Clearly manufacturing is suffering we have 1,300 redundancies at Lode Lane and also in phone canvassing in Dunfermline there are issues with redundancies there.

I am not sure that the government fully recognise the damage they have done to the British Economy. We are turning into an economy dependent on oil finance at the same time as starting to import oil. This is not a sustainable position.

After PMQ where I missed being called by a hairsbreadth I went to the Housing lobby at Methodist Central Hall. I met up with the Housing Team from Birmingham who have explained how we are working on housing issues.

Housing remains a substantial problem with an underlying shortage of properties available that are affordable. I think the government are wrong to assume that everyone can buy a property. Some people will need to rent.

Issues like fuel poverty (defined as fuel costs over 10% of income) and housing affordability (defined in a very complex manner) hit very hard people on lower incomes. Certain basic demands for a place to live which is warm enough to live in swallow up a high proportion of some people's disposable income. Labour are not delivering for such people.

In the mean time it does appear that Dan Morris MP has reported me to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for asking about the Weather. I always thought it was a British Pasttime to talk about the weather.

Comments

John Hemming said…
I had planned to meet Steve Foster from the TGWU, but he had to stay in Birmingham. I phoned Harry, but got no response.

I did meet up with the Councillors John Lines, Viv Barton and Frank Coyne.

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