Posts Tagged ‘Highlands’
Jim Ferguson’s concern over housing in Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey
“Liberal Democrats have announced they will add VAT to new build houses. Home building industry body Homes for Scotland, whose membership provides 95% of all homes built for sale in Scotland as well as an increasingly significant proportion of affordable housing, today unsurprisingly slammed Liberal Democrat proposals to add VAT to new build homes if elected to Government and so do I.
We are in desperate need of social and “truly affordable” housing for rental with 10,000 people on the Highland Council Housing Waiting List.
Those on local average earnings have little chance of accessing mortgages since the Banking crisis.
Most work locally and need housing in the areas where they work. Spiralling petrol and diesel costs make it even more difficult for those on lower incomes who live in rural areas, hence my concern on this issue.
Members of the public have made clear their dismay over Labour Government’s failure to control immigration.
Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrat comments, recently broadcast, have incensed the electorate when stating Inverness and other areas need more migrants! Gordon Brown’s Labour “open borders” policy has been a complete failure. Massive increases in migration have resulted in overstretched Public Services. The increased cost of the Benefits System underpinning the policy could have major economic consequences.
If migrants are to be welcomed, we must ensure crucial infrastructure is in place, including jobs, education, health and housing and naturally the ability to cope with the diversity of languages involved which is particularly difficult in rural areas.
We need to develop Tourism further as it is a principal Highlands industry and vital for local economy creating crucial meaningful jobs and provide the necessary homes for these people.
We need a common sense approach to address Highlands problems.
Jim Ferguson
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Press Release 21st April 2010
Lib Dem proposal increasing cost of new homes sheer madness
Home building industry body Homes for Scotland, whose membership provides 95% of all homes built for sale in Scotland as well as an increasingly significant proportion of affordable housing, today slammed Liberal Democrat proposals to add VAT to new build homes if elected to Government.
On the day that Tavish Scott launched the party’s manifesto in Scotland, the organisation’s Chief Executive Jonathan Fair said:
“Somehow, the Liberal Democrats seem to be unaware that Scotland, not to mention the UK as a whole, is facing its worst housing crisis since the Second World War. Not only has our industry lost up to half its workforce, development is touching an all-time low and vital First Time Buyers are struggling to find deposits of up to 25%. Any measure increasing the cost of new homes, whether in the public or private sector, is sheer madness and will simply exacerbate the problems we as a country already face.”
Ends
Enquiries to:
Jennifer Kennedy, Homes for Scotland – 0131 455 8350
Notes to Editors:
Homes for Scotland (www.homesforscotland.com) represents the country’s home building industry which, prior to the onset of the credit crunch,:
- was the largest source of private investment in Scotland and the largest user of the planning system
- built 20,000 new homes, contributed £6bn to the economy and directly impacted the employment of 100,000 people (2007 figures)
Half the industry’s directly employed jobs have already been lost and Scottish new build housing output has plummeted, presenting far-reaching and long-term social and economic consequences.
Click here to read Homes for Scotland’s “building for their future” appeal to MPs as they prepare to enter the election season.
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Jim Ferguson announces launch of political campaign Inverness Nairn Badenoch and Strathspey Highlands Scotland UK
May 6th has now been officially declared as the date of the next General Election.
Over the last two years I have been a serious political Candidate and campaigned hard during this time.
Visiting every area, holding regular coffee mornings and surgeries, canvassing and leading from the front.
The people of this region deserve to be heard and the weakness shown by those currently in office, to properly represent the people of the Highlands needs to come to an end.
My main motivation for standing is to ensure that real support is brought to the Highlands and the people of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey. My desire to bring the high degree of support that a Conservative Government would bring and to do so it is imperative that this region elects me to represent them in Parliament.
Out of every other Candidate who is standing, only I will have the ability, as a member of the party in power to get the investment and infrastructure to ensure that the businesses and people of this region get the top support they deserve.
All the other Candidates will be in opposition and can only ask what they will of a Conservative Government.
I would remind everyone that I would be the MP of the party in power and it is that thought that I ask you to seriously consider.
This General Election is a clear choice. A vote for any other party will help to keen Gordon Brown in power.
Do you want Gordon Brown for another 5 years or David Cameron as Prime Minister?
I would ask that every person in this region look closely at what I can offer. It’s time to play this to your advantage and ensure this region gets the strongest support from a Conservative Government possible. If you have never voted Conservative before, you need to seriously consider doing so now.
I am not a career politican, I have worked hard all my life with a family business that I started from scratch 16 years ago.
If you invest your trust in me, you can be certain of having an honest and hard working MP who understands what you are all going through and who acknowledges that your concerns and interests are my concerns and interests.
It’s time for change and true representation for the people who live and work in this region.
Make your vote count – there is much at stake!
Jim Ferguson
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Labour will put the boot into Britains recovery
Labour will kill the recovery
Monday, April 5 2010
The Conservatives have launched a poster as part of a wider campaign highlighting how Labour’s job tax will kill the recovery.
“Labour have confirmed today that they are going ahead with a national insurance tax rise on jobs that Britain’s business leaders say will endanger jobs”, said George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.
The Conservatives have also unveiled new research showing how National Insurance has become Labour’s favourite stealth tax:
- Total receipts from National Insurance have risen over five times faster than income tax receipts over the last decade.
- Average National Insurance Contributions (NICs) per family have risen over twelve times as much as average income tax receipts per family over the same period.
- In that time Gordon Brown cut the basic rate of income tax once (as part of the 10p tax con) but he increased National Insurance rates in three different ways – and that’s even before Labour’s new tax on jobs planned for 2011
“With Gordon Brown now finally forced to call the election, the choice is clear”, Osborne added.
“Labour’s jobs tax and debt will stamp out the green shoots and kill the recovery. Conservative plans to cut wasteful government spending and stop the jobs tax will get Britain working.”
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Alan Sugar thinks small business are moaners who live in Disney World – Appointed by Labour on April Fools Day UK
Sugar appointment criticised
Philip Hammond has criticised Labour’s announcement that Lord Alan Sugar will lead a new government task force designed to fight the corner of small businesses against the banks.
“Only Labour could announce on April Fool’s day that it had appointed the man who called credit-starved small businesses ‘moaners’ who lived in ‘Disney World’ to be the adjudicator on their applications for bank loans”, he said.
Lord Mandelson has selected Lord Sugar to sit on the task force which will set up the Small Business Credit Adjudicator. Lord Mandelson believes the people he has chosen “… understand the critical importance of new finance and credit flow to the growth of small, innovative companies”.
But Lord Sugar said last year: “The moaners are bust… they don’t need the bank, they need an insolvency practitioner”.
This comes on the same day that the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Retail Consortium and 23 business leaders attacked Labour’s planned tax on jobs.
“No wonder no-one believes Lord Mandelson’s claims to be the champion of small business when Labour would rather tax jobs and the recovery than cut government waste”, Hammond added.
Well this is news that small business can do without. Clearly Lord Alan Sugar has nothing in common with small business and is merely another puppet of Labour.
Jim Ferguson
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Captains of Industry and Business Leaders are Backing the Conservatives UK
Top Business Leaders Back Tories On Tax
9:42am UK, Thursday April 01, 2010
Ruth Barnett, Sky News Online
A group of business leaders have written a letter backing the Conservatives’ proposal to halt a planned rise in National Insurance.
David Cameron described it as a “very important moment in the election campaign”.
The executive chairman of Marks and Spencers, Sir Stuart Rose, and easyJet entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou are among the 23 people to have signed the letter, which is published in the Daily Telegraph.
The signatories employ around half a million workers between them.
They agree with shadow chancellor George Osborne that increasing NI by 1p next April, as Labour plans to do, is bad news for the economy.
“The Government’s proposal to increase national insurance, placing an additional tax on jobs, comes at exactly the wrong time in the economic cycle,” the letter says.
The Labour Party feel that the Conservatives’ plan has not been properly costed and not properly thought through.
Sky’s political correspondent Joey Jones
“In a personal capacity, we welcome George Osborne’s plan to stop the proposed increase in national insurance by cutting Government waste.”
Mr Cameron told BBC Breakfast: “These household names – people like Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Mothercare – are saying that Labour’s plans to put up National Insurance contributions are the biggest threat to the recovery.
“They are saying there is no threat to the recovery from cutting waste in 2010 but there is a threat to the recovery from putting up National Insurance contributions.
“Labour have said the whole thing is that we can secure the recovery. Well, today that plank of their whole approach has been removed.”
Chancellor Alistair Darling pledged to introduce the rise as a way of paying off some of the nation’s debts.
But Mr Osborne said he would axe the increase for people earning less than £45,000 if his party wins power at the next election. He said he would pay for this by finding efficiency savings worth £12bn.
Mr Darling counters that Mr Osborne’s policy is at odds with the Conservatives’ claim they would cut the deficit sooner and deeper than the Government plans.
Treasury Chief Secretary Liam Byrne said the Conservatives were not able to fund their promise on NI.
“No business goes to its shareholders with unfunded promises – but that’s exactly what the Tories are doing,” he said.
The captains of industry and top business leaders are fully aware of the failure of this Labour Government. They are giving their full backing to the Conservatives, because they know we have the experience and common sense, to get rid of Labour’s crippling debt, but not at the expense of putting more businesses out of action, or risking the creation of new jobs.
Members of the public whose jobs are hanging by a thread need to take note and ensure their vote is for the Conservatives. Another term of Labour could spell disaster for them and everyone else in the United Kingdom.
Jim Ferguson
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Brown caught misleading people again with wrong immigration data UK
The figures Gordon Brown gave in a podcast about immigration were wrong, the statistics watchdog has told the Prime Minister in an open letter.
The PM’s speech was correct but his podcast was not, the letter says
Mr Brown “did not use comparable” sets of data when he discussed the number of people who had come to Britain in recent years, the note the chair of the UK Statistics Authority said.
A statement from Downing Street said it accepted some of the numbers used were unclear and not strictly comparable.
The Prime Minister used the podcast to talk about his points system and reassure working families that the system is fair.
“Some people talk as if net inward migration is rising. In fact, it is falling – down from 237,000 in 2007, to 163,000 in 2008, to provisional figures of 147,000 last year,” he said.
“Some people talk as if all immigrants stay here forever. In fact, most come for short periods and then return to their own country.”
But the chair of the statistics authority, Sir Michael Scholar, said the figure for 2007 should have been lower – the official number was 233,000, not 237,000.
It means the scale of the fall is less dramatic than Mr Brown implied.
There is an urgent need for immediate steps to properly control immigration instead of the free for all flood of migrants some with no skills and many who cant even speak English.
Labour systematically ignored the warnings just to rub the rights nose in it and in the hope of getting more votes. They betrayed the interests of Britain and the British people and now growing pressure mounts on all major frontline services with education, healthcare and the prisons bursting under the strain of an endless flood of people invited into the UK by Labour.
Labour lied to us all.
Jim Ferguson
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Conservatives to offer real help for small business UK
I am pleased to see some real help being promised for small business. Its encouraging that small business is being recognised for the part it plays by the Conservatives who understand the importance of the fact that we are a nation of traders and that small business accounts for 80% of the revenue raised.
Jim Ferguson
Conservative tax reform to aid self employed
Wednesday, March 31 2010
Mark Prisk, the Shadow Business Minister, has announced that a Conservative Government would undertake a full and fundamental review of small business taxation, including IR35.
The aim will be to provide a simpler, clearer and lasting tax regime, so businesses can plan with confidence.
“For the last 13 years, Labour have constantly meddled with the tax rules for freelancers and self-employed, Prisk said. “IR35 has especially proved to over-complex, uncertain and often unfair”.
IR35 has cost business £73 million over 10 years but it has barely raised revenue for the Treasury. Prisk criticised Gordon Brown for making it harder to be self-employed at a time when Britain should be open for business.
“This is why a Conservative Government would mandate the independent Office of Tax Simplification to undertake a fundamental review of current arrangements with the aim of providing a clearer, lasting and fairer tax regime”.
This announcement is in addition to previous plesges to simplify the tax system, cut Corporation Tax for small firms, and make small business rate relief automatic.
“Small businesses cannot afford 5 more years of Gordon Brown”, Prisk added. “Only the Conservatives have the energy and the ideas to get Britain working by boosting enterprise”.
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‘Special Relationship’ With the U.S. Is Dead, Say British MPs UK
The UK should be “more willing to say no” to America.
There is no special relationship between the United States and Britain, a House of Commons select committee said March 28. The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee concluded that the term is “potentially misleading, and we recommend that its use should be avoided.”
“The UK must continue to position itself closely alongside the U.S. but there is a need to be less deferential and more willing to say no where our interests diverge,” said the committee’s chairman, Mike Gapes.
The committee said it was simply mirroring the attitude U.S. President Barack Obama had taken since coming into power.
“The UK’s relationship should be principally driven by the UK’s national interests within individual policy areas,” it said. “It needs to be characterized by a hard-headed political approach to the relationship and a realistic sense of the UK’s limits. The foreign-policy approach we are advocating is in many ways similar to the more pragmatic tone President Obama has adopted towards the UK.”
In the future the UK needs to be “more willing to say no,” it concluded.
Britain has been a staunch ally of the U.S. for decades. However, repeated snubs from the new administration led the committee to conclude that Britain is considered just one of many U.S. allies—with nothing special in the relationship at all.
Right at the start of his presidency, Obama insulted Britain by sending back a bust of Winston Churchill, and giving Prime Minister Gordon Brown a gift of 100 dvds that don’t even play on British dvd players.
The latest snub is America’s refusal to back Britain’s right to the Falkland Islands, instead backing Argentina’s calls for negotiation at the United Nations. This is despite the fact that Argentina’s claim on the Falklands is about as strong as Russia’s claim to Alaska. The Falkland Islands never had an indigenous population. Its currant inhabitants came from Britain. The last thing they want is to be ruled by Argentina. Argentina’s only claim is that it had a colony on the island a few hundred years ago.
No wonder Britain has concluded that there is no special relationship. This is a trend the Trumpet has been predicting for years. For more information on the future of this relationship, see our article “The Tie That Binds America, Britain and Israel.” •
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Obama rudely snubs Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu
For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.
After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.
“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.
Left to talk among themselves Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.
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Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.
The Likud leader has to try to square the rigorous demands of the Obama Administration with his nationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, who want him to stand up to Washington even though Israel needs US backing in confronting the threat of a nuclear Iran.
“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said.
In their meeting Mr Obama set out expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the ten-month deadline next September, an end to building projects in east Jerusalem and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions held before the second intifada in September 2000.
Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” when he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known that the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built would be made when Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.
Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay at the White House to consider his proposals so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. “I’m still around,” the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted Mr Obama as saying. “Let me know if there is anything new.”
With the atmosphere so soured by the end of the evening, the Israelis decided that they could not trust the telephone line they had been lent for their consultations. Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, his Defence Minister, went to the Israeli Embassy to ensure that the Americans were not listening in.
The meeting came barely a day after Mr Obama’s health reform victory. Israel had calculated that he would be too tied up with domestic issues to focus seriously on the Middle East.
Its a pity that Obama is taking such a line with a country that has been a sure ally all these years. Perhaps he thinks America will be safer without Israel. Either way its a betrayal of a close friend. Then again Obama is a liberal so what do we expect.
Jim Ferguson
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Empty promises and an empty Budget from an empty Labour Government UK
David Cameron responds to Labour’s empty Budget
Wednesday, March 24 2010
David Cameron has responded in the House of Commons to the Chancellor’s presentation of the last Budget before the general election.
He said Labour “have made a complete mess of the British economy and they are totally failing to clean it up”.
Cameron set out the big argument in British politics: Labour say “don’t do anything before the election, let’s just sit tight and keep our fingers crossed”, and the Conservatives say “we need real action to get our economy moving – and urgently”.
Highlighting new policies that copied existing Conservative proposals, such as the stamp duty cut and new university places, he said the “only new ideas in British politics are coming from this side of the House” and that “the only thing Labour bring are debt, waste and taxes”.
The figures that stands out above any other, he said, was that Labour have “doubled the national debt, and they’re going to double it again”.
Outlining the Government’s failure Cameron criticised “all those schemes that they launched with great fanfare” for failing to help enough people. He also drew comparisons on the state of the economy when Labour came to power to the present – including the huge increase in the debt and deficit, and a falling down the global league tables in terms of competitiveness, tax and regulation.
We need a credible plan to deal with Britain’s record debts”, he said, criticising the Chancellor’s repeated hope to halve the deficit by 2014 as giving us a deficit “almost as big as when Denis Healey went to the IMF in the 1970s”.
Moving on to the delay in dealing with the deficit, he said “the risk to recovery is not in dealing with the deficit now, it’s in not dealing with the deficit now”. Cameron said that “every family knows that when your debts mount up, you need to start paying them off or things will only get worse”, and that it is time for the Government to learn the same lessons”.
“The Prime Minister and Chancellor faced a choice – between bold action in an election year or playing politics. Once again, they chose politics.”
Cameron also emphasised the need “to show the world that we are back open for business”, saying that because Labour “flunked the difficult decisions on spending, they are raising tax after tax after tax – all after the election”. “These are the ticking tax bombshells timed to go off the day after the election and that will destroy our recovery.”
He said that the greatest risk to Britain’s economic recovery was another Labour government. “No one has yet thought of a question to which the answer is five more years of this Prime Minister”, he said.
“We need a credible plan to cut the deficit. We need an unleashing of enterprise across the nation. We need a plan to boost employment through radical welfare and school reform. If ever there was a time when this country needed a radical change of direction it is now.”
He concluded that Britain needs a Conservative government “to clean up the mess made by this Labour Government”.
“Britain needs new energy, leadership and values to get this country moving again. That’s the argument we’ll take to the country the moment the Prime Minister has been forced by the law of the land to call the election he has avoided for so long.”
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