Blog - Week Commencing Monday 7th March 2011

Our daughter Jo-Anne stayed with us over the weekend and we got a lot done in the garden, including cutting up more logs for the storage in the wood shed and laying down the route of a woodland walk that will take many more weekends (and hard work!) before it becomes a reality! It was another two days of hard physical work and my 5.00 am Monday morning alarm came much too soon for my aching body.

This week’s meetings and engagements included:

- A presentation by the Army Presentation Team.
- Briefing on Afghanistan and related issues by Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall.
- Lords and Commons Joint Better Off Out of Europe Group meeting to discuss future campaigning strategy.
- A visit to the London University Officer Training Corps to tour the centre and meet some of the (very bright) officer cadets.
- A meeting of the 8th Delegated Legislation committee to discuss data protection issues relating to CAFCAS in Wales.

The main Parliamentary business this week consisted of:

- Monday: Home Office questions; Committee stage of the Scotland Bill (1st day).
- Tuesday: Health questions; Report stage and Third Reading of the European Union Bill.
- Wednesday: Scottish questions; Prime Minister’s Questions; Second reading of the Welfare Reform Bill.
- Thursday: Transport questions; Women and Equality questions; Publication of a Select Committee Report about smaller government; UN Women (motion); Future inter-parliamentary scrutiny of EU foreign, defence and security policy (motion).

My Friday constituency day started at 8 am with a visit to my constituency office and ended 14 hours later when I got home. My engagements for the day included:

- A meeting with the Leader of Swale Borough Council to discuss various matters.
- A visit to one of my local companies, Denne Construction, to discuss skills and apprenticeships in the construction industry.
- A visit to Upchurch River Valley Golf Club to discuss a longstanding battle that the English Golf Union is having with HMRC about the different VAT rules applied to commercial golf clubs as against private members clubs.
- My monthly Sittingbourne surgery.
- An evening visit to Sittingbourne Community College for the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Swale Youth Development Fund, where I accepted a £2000 on behalf of the SYDF from county councillors Mike Whiting and Adrian Crowther. The celebrations took the form of a cabaret put on by local young people, which demonstrated once again the depth of talent we have in Sittingbourne and Sheppey.

The weekend was busy (what’s new?): Saturday I spent all day sawing up posts for use as the pathway in the woodland walk. I suppose I finished about one twentieth of the overall walk so I have loads more busy weekends ahead of me! Sunday we popped to Halfway to move more stuff from our old home. There is still so much to transfer.