Martin Tod

On Friday, we found out that we had won 6 out of 7 seats in the new Winchester constituency.

Across the new constituency, the Lib Dem team got 48% of the vote. The Conservative vote slumped to 38%. Labour collapsed to 4%. UKIP got 6% of the vote and the Greens 3%.

These are better results than we achieved at the County Council elections on the same day as we won the 2005 General Election. Compared to 2005, the Lib Dem vote is up. The Conservative vote is down.

Overall, we saw a 4.4% swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats compared to our vote last year and a clear swing in our favour compared to the results on General Election day in 2005.

Many congratulations to Jackie Porter, Charlotte Bailey, Brian Collin, Phryn Dickens, Peter Mason and Alan Broadhurst on their victories and many thanks to Terry Holden-Brown for his commitment and hard work on the campaign in Chandler’s Ford.

A big thank you to the voters who decided to back our candidates. We also owe a huge debt to the staff and volunteers who worked so incredibly hard over the preceding months, and to our exceptional candidates for their incredible commitment and hard work over the last few months and years. There’s no doubt that their personal work played a pivotal part in our success on Thursday.

It still hasn’t fully sunk in, but these results put us in very good spirits for the General Election campaign – whenever it may come.

Thank you to everyone who gave so generously to members of the Lib Dem Sleep Out team (or anyone else!) as part of the Big Sleep Out.

Thanks to your generosity the Lib Dem team has so far raised more than £3,800 towards the Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre!  

We almost all got rather heavily rained on and didn’t sleep too well from around 3 a.m. onwards, but it was great to be part of such a well-organised and successful fundraising event for such a good cause. And, after all, no matter how wet we got, sleeping out on one damp night in May is nothing like having to do it through the winter or for weeks or months on end. We all knew we had dry homes and beds to go home to afterwards. The important thing was that we raised as much money as possible to help people who don’t have that choice.

Earlier in the evening, there were an excellent series of talks and speeches moderated by Debbie Thrower, who also read a very thought-provoking text on her own account (which I unfortunately didn’t note the source down for).  It was particularly moving hearing from people like Ed Mitchell who had been rough sleepers, how charities like the Winchester Churches Nightshelter and the Trinity Centre had helped them get their lives back on track.  (You can buy Ed Mitchell’s book here if you would like to know more).

There are some good pictures and reports on the Sleep Out at the main Big Sleep Out website.  If you’re interested, you can also read the live Twitter reports of the evening.

Even though the evening is over, it remains an urgent cause and both charities are very stretched by high demand. 60 people a month are turned away by the Night Shelter due to lack of space. On average, 20 of the 50 people who use the Trinity Centre report that they slept rough the night before.

If you’d like to donate to the Big Sleep Out by sponsoring the Lib Dem team, you can do so at http://www.justgiving.com/martintod. You can also give directly without sponsoring anyone. Either way, every penny you give (plus Gift Aid) goes straight to the two charities and will help make a real difference.

A few nights ago, I was watching the BBC’s “This Week” and getting more and more annoyed about the comparison that was being made between state and private education and their respective A-level results.

In the end, it doesn’t do justice to any school to reduce their results to a single measure, and A/AS-level results can never be the only measure of a good secondary education.

But if that’s the game we’re playing, here is another ’single measure’ from Hampshire.

Our local state 6th form college, Peter Symonds, helps more young people get through A/AS-levels with a higher average A/AS points score than every single independent school in Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight combined.

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A short excerpt from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (with thanks to a Private Eye, a Private Eye reader called Colin Knox – and an unnamed chronicler):

A.D. 1125.

In this year sent the King Henry, before Christmas, from Normandy to England, and bade that all the mint-men that were in England should be mutilated in their limbs; that was, that they should lose each of them the right hand, and their testicles beneath. This was because the man that had a pound could not lay out a penny at a market. And the Bishop Roger of Salisbury sent over all England, and bade them all that they should come to Winchester at Christmas. When they came thither, then were they taken one by one, and deprived each of the right hand and the testicles beneath. All this was done within the twelfth-night. And that was all in perfect justice, because that they had undone all the land with the great quantity of base coin that they all bought.

A quick update on some more environmental links:

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Just over a week ago, I took a break from our one week holiday and went to the ITV Millbank studios to record an episode of ‘The Last Word’ for ITV Meridian.  The whole thing was shot in half an hour – we discussed Damian Green, the economy and the Queen’s Speech – and the attached is the result!

Further to my earlier blog post on British Gas, BBC Radio 4’s FileOn4 has reported on some of the other shenanigans the gas companies are getting up to.

According to the show:

Former Energywatch chief executive Allan Asher told BBC File On 4 that annual bills of around £1,200 could be cut by a third or more.

You can listen again and read more via the FileOn4 website or read a transcript of the programme here.

Updated on July 1, 2009 – podcast link no longer available

There’s been a lot of media interest in the problem of British Gas’s direct debit hikes.

Almost all the people who responded to my email survey were facing increases far above both the 35% reported in the press and the 42% increase for direct debit customers reported by the Telegraph. The average figure was 81%.

The dramatic increase in interest income from British Gas parent, Centrica plc, suggests this is a deliberate strategy – building up cash balances to make money on interest. Since 2006, the interest income declared in their accounts has gone through the roof – doubling from £40 million in 2006 to £83 million in 2007. Interest in their interim accounts for first six months of 2008 (£43 million) is 54% higher than the £28 million interest income reported for the first six months of 2007.

I’d be amazed if it was just a Winchester problem and am interested in finding out who else has the same problem. Please feel free to email me with details at martin [at] martintod [dot] org [dot] uk or use the form below.

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After being contacted by several local residents, I’ve been reading the 50 page summary of the Ombudsman’s report into the Equitable Life scandal – and the summary of the EU report (for which, incidentally, the investigation was led by a Lib Dem MEP – Diana Wallis) and they both make very disturbing reading.

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There’s been an alarming increase in mortgage repossession claims at Winchester Crown Court.

The Ministry of Justice published figures on August 15, 2008 showing that the number of mortgage possession claims between January and June 2008 at Winchester Crown Court were 68% higher than a year earlier. Possession orders were 15% higher.

The 60% year-on-year growth in mortgage repossession orders from April-June at Winchester Crown Court is the 8th highest increase in the country.

It’s an extremely worrying trend. We look set to see the highest level of repossessions at Winchester Crown Court for at least 10 years.

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