The concept of fair-trade suggests ideas of equality for third world farmers, helping them escape unbearable poverty and develop sustainable frameworks for long term development. The reality however, is very different.

Firstly, the subsidies gained by the fair-trade lobby are often not given to the very poorest farmers, those most in need of it. Also, the subsidies system simply embeds the primitive farming methods used by the farmers in the third world, stopping them from developing their economy from an agrarian backwater into more profitable industries. The psychological effect of such support can also dampen the farmers’ entrepreneurial spirit to innovate and discover new ways of generating income.

The second problem concerns the meaning of the world fair. The desire of politicians on the left for equality of income leads to a moralising attitude from the fair-trade lobby where ‘greedy’ westerners are made to feel guilty for the poverty of underdeveloped nations, none of which is there fault. The fair-trade lobby know this, and use it as a marketing ploy to sell their product. In terms of equality of opportunity, the fair-trade subsidies stifle innovation and will trap many farmers in multi-generational poverty. The fact that the seasonal nature of agrarian work and the inefficient distribution of fair-trade income from retailer to producers also creates an unsustainable system. It is thus clear that fair-trade is a stop-gap policy at best, and does not solve the fundamental development of economic underdevelopment in impoverished countries.

The free market offers the solution to this. The first thing the West should do is abolish the Marxist CAP, and open up European markets to poor third world farmers. The abolition of subsidies through fair-trade will encourage innovation and will eventually reduce reliance on agriculture through broader economic development, which will help the poorest farmers the most.

** The views expressed herein are the views of one person, and not neccesarily those of the Conservative Party - Parliamentary or Constituency.**

I have just watched the BBC's Question Time in Salisbury.

From what I can gather, all three mainstream parties are clamouring to remove heredetary peers and move to a wholly elected House of Lords... needless to say I am horrified. Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and now William Hague (hopefully soon to be our Foreign Secretary) calling for the Upper House in the bicameral parliament to be made fully electable by the public.

So now we see that MP's; whilst righting the lack of checks and balances in one area (MP's Expenses) are now trying to remove the checks and balances in another.

The House of Lords exists to act as a check and a balance to the government and parliament of the day. Peerages in the past have been given as hereditary so that when the Government trys to force through legislation that is only there to "please the electorate" and not for the good of the nation in the long term, the Lords can take time to think on, reccommend changes to and if neccesary overturn this legislation without worrying that the electorate will rebel against it.

The House of Lords of twenty years ago was a righteous and respected institution. And yet, after merely twelve years of a "New" Labour government we are seeing them misusing emergency measures to push through "popular" laws (such as the Fox-Hunting ban which only really had <50% of the UK populations support) and hereditory peers are being replaced by Life Peers, and now we are apparantly considering a fully elected upper house.

I am admittedly in the minority - even within the modern Conservative Party, and I accept that the House of Lords needs to change. If I were to chose how to change it I would say that Her Majesty the Queen should chose from a list of people given to her by the Government after every General Election and that no more than 10 Lords be replaced at any one time, but an elected house will just result in more partisan and "popular" laws being passed, just one more step toward Americanisation... which I am sure we do not want. How long before everyone is calling to join a Federated States of Europe... I wonder...?

Have the likes of Douglas Carswell and the bloodthirsty mob considered what they have done by forcing the speaker to resign? Conveniently, they have found a suitably newsworthy story to take the focus of the domestic media away from the expenses scandal. Every MP who is knee deep in the proverbial must be waiting with bated breath to see what will occupy the forefront of the voter’s mind- the expenses row or this scandal. All that has been achieved here is the production of a distraction and the witch hunt for a scapegoat. By defacing the office of Speaker- the father of the Mother of all Parliaments- these MPs have defaced the Commons itself and for what? It was a disgraceful attempt to try and save their own skin.

Douglas Carswell, who I used to be a fan of, has used his prominence in this affair as a way of shamelessly promoting his views and slating the traditional methods and offices contained within our parliament. Although Douglas’s aims are a bit more palatable as he did not feature in any great expenses scandal and, probably, wishes to reform parliament for the better; a huge number of the others who signed this motion had less than honourable intentions for it. It has all resulted in an office that is supposed to be above petty party political matters being dragged through the mud.

What is worse is the modern president that they have set. They have created a system where it is quite acceptable for the players to dismiss the referee. Its implications on the day to day running of parliament are as illogical as my metaphor sounds. The very worse thing that has come from this affair though is the fact that we have opened the doors to a U.S. style majority voted Speaker and if this happens, the office of Speaker of the House of Commons will become politicised. Does that sound like a favourable future for this office to you?

Amongst the mud throwing of the entire media, it is easy to lose track of the facts in the expenses row. Now it is true that if this were an exclusively Labour phenomenon I would be very audible in my distain but as this goes across the board there is little to be gained and, hence, I will be quiet.
I have always been of the opinion that the basic rate MPs are paid (£64,766) is far too small an amount for those in the highest echelons of power in this country. MPs spend an average of 66 hours a week on Westminster work and, hence, this equates to a wage less than the legal minimum. Added to this is the amount it costs to stand as a PPC. I won’t harp on about the numbers but, without expenses, it all equates to quite a bad deal for our elected representatives. The underlying problem here is one that is common amongst the people of this country: we want lower taxes but higher public spending provision; everything for nothing.
The other facet of the argument the media fail to observe is that money pays for talent. I presume that we, as a people, want the very best leaders we can possible have, those who have been educated to a high level and truly bring something to the job. Without a good salary, what is left to captivate young minds? What entices our young talent towards political aspirations? If not money, there is only the possibility of holding the reins of power and, with the increasing shift of power towards Brussels that, again, is something that is less and less desirable. Then, if we are not attracting the best what do we attract? To keep this entry short it is as simple as this: we either double the salaries of every MP and PPS and significantly increase the salaries of all ministers or we condemn this country to decades of a poorly staffed back bench- a group of yes men. One day something will hit the Commons that could dramatically change this country and- guess what- you get what you pay for.

October 2007 was a key turning point of David Cameron's leadership. Brown's bottling of an autumn election and adoption of conservative policies on inheritance tax and taxation of non-doms dismissed the myth prominent in the summer of Brown as a strong leader. This change, "from Stalin to Mr. Bean," as Vince Cable put it led to a return to the Tory poll leads prevlant a year before.

The next nail in the coffin for Labour was the Budget of March 2008. The stealth taxes introduced by Alistair Darling and the 10p 'tax con' led to a discrediting of the government's commitment to the poor. With credit to Mr. Cameron, he took advantage of these Labour weaknesses, and the election of Spring 2008 would be the most successful for the party since the 1980's. A good yield of seats at the local elections, the election of Boris Johnson as London Mayor, and the later by-election victory at Crewe and Nantwich, the first from Labour since 1978, showed a considerable Tory resurgance.

The next challenge for Cameron was the financial crisis of Autumn 2008. Gordon Brown, despite being buffeted by leadership speculation over the summer, was promoting himself as a 'world economic spokesman,' saving the world from economic meltdown. This produced a moderate second 'Brown Bounce' in the Autumn. The centre-piece of this period was the pre-budget report in November where th government launched a 'fiscal stimulus,' including a 2.5% temporary cut in VAT. Cameron's opposition to the cut in the face of worldwide public opinion, choosing to focus on the impending debt crisis, set the tone for the future debate over the economy.

The decline of the second 'Brown Bounce' in the New Year 2009 amid the background of soaring budget deficits and national debt, vindicated Cameron's position taken the previous November. The spectre of public spending cuts, previously unthinkable a few years previous, now became necessary. This new 'Age of Austerity,' as Cameron put it, fundementally changed the political climate. Labour's attempt to spend and borrow their way out of the recession now became more discredited than it was the previous November. This, accompanied with the 'McBride' affair and the general unravelling of Brown's authority, makes the election of a Conservative government extremely likely whenever the next General Election is.

On the day that we mark the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's arrival in Number 10, we seem to be just a year away from the first ousting by the Conservatives of a Labour government since that day in 1979. In the face of a government now in moral, political and economic disgrace, this is a unique chance for Mr. Cameron to form a sound narrative of political, economic and social renewal which the electorate could embrace. If anyone can do it, based on his previous record, Mr. Cameron can.

I have noticed that recently this blog has taken a distinctly Thatcherite tone, thus I have decided to focus on one of the party's more moderate members for this blog, namely our leader David Cameron. Obviously a detailed appraisal of his leadership so far would overwhelm the length of one entry, so I will spread the account over 2 posts,and just focus on what I believe have been his main achievements to date, and how his leadership has evolved since 2005.

Firstly however, lets take a look at the party he inherited. The party in the autumn of 2005 was not in the best shape. Although it had been united and given purpose under Michael Howard, the word 'Conservative'was still derided by significant sections of the public. The May 2005 General Election showed this. Despite a weak government, our share of the vote never got over a third, and a modest increase in seats still did not take us over the 200 mark. The campaign itself had not been inspiring, lacking variety and optimism in equal measure. In short, the party focused on immigration, crime, tax and not a lot else, the electorates verdict was saddening, but inevitable.

Fast forward 7 months, David Cameron has just been elected leader, promising change and a new direction for the party. He initiated a lengthy policy review and started the first stage of his leadership, the task: decontaminate the Tory brand. For the first 18 months of his leadership, Cameron did just that. A new logo, talk about climate change and the NHS, trips to glaciers and Rwanda, and the promise of the politics of hope over the politics of fear. The polls rose: the Conservative party was being listened to again. Indeed, this new approach could be summed up when Cameron said to the 2006 party conference, "let me bring you sunshine."

It all seemed to be going so well, then Gordon arrived. The polls collapsed, criticism began to surface from some MP's, and the project looked vulnerable. For a few months in summer 2007, the party looked lost, then came the party conference 2007. The announcements on stamp duty and inheritance tax were cheered by delegates, and welcomed by the country at large. The mood of the party lifted, Gordon Brown cancelled the General election, and the 'Brown Bounce' collapsed overnight. The momentum was now with the Tories, and the Labour Government started its descent into ridicule and popular derision.

More to follow...

This blog will be posted as two parts as the issues contained would make a single post unreasonably lengthy. Upon publication of the second part I'll post a link to the first part and vice-versa. This first part explains the situation that brought me to write this piece, whilst the second will explore the question expressed in the title.

On Sunday I watched a documentary on BBC called "18 Pregnant Schoolgirls" (You can find it on iPlayer here) which covered the story of how 18 girls at a school in the Catholic town of Gloucester, Massachusetts became pregnant in 2007, and explored the possibility that there may have been a pact between the girls to have children at the same time. The girls in question were all 15 or 16 years old (In Massachusetts the age of consent is 16 - It varies from state to state), however the ages of the boys involved have been disputed as only a few have come forward due to the risk of conviction for rape.

The programme was so focussed on the possibility that these girls had conspired to get pregnant at the same time that it completely overlooked the issue on which they should have focussed - what on earth possessed these children (and lets face it, these are just children!) to conclude that having a child was in any way a responsible choice? Whilst a grand conspiracy makes fantastic copy for a tabloid it is not the real issue at hand, we should really be concerning ourselves with the fact that 18 young girls (either individually or collectively) chose to become pregnant.

Teenage pregnancy normally results from a failure to practice safer sex (Only abstinence is truly safe sex!), though admittedly some pregnancies do arise from the 3% failure rate that contraceptive methods suffer from. Gloucester High School had a health centre where two practitioners resigned after the school board refused to allow them to distribute condoms to the student body, instead preferring to follow an abstinence only sex education program. Whilst the promotion of abstinence is worthy we have to accept the reality that teenagers will have sex, and therefore it is the duty of the school system to promote the use of contraception. Despite the schools stance on abstinence they actually provide a day care centre for the children of students, not only does this effectively legitimise teenage mothers, to me it also screams "Don't have sex, but if you do then you should be having children".

The decision to have a child brings forward a huge amount of responsibility, and I cannot even begin to comprehend the true expanse of them having not fathered a child myself. Whilst there are no specific criteria for potential parents (and I would never suggest we should have) I'm sure we can all agree that financial independence and security absolute necessity - how can someone expect to provide for their child if they struggle to get by at present?

Hullo SUCA,

The association recently held its annual general meeting, where the following people were elected onto the committee for the next year:

• Chairman                    Chris Rowland

• VC Campaigns              Michael Dowsett

• VC Events                   John King

• Secretary                   Michael Shields

• Treasurer                   Jennifer S. Hemmers

• Print Media Officer      Sam Lewis

• Online Media Officer    Benjamin D. Brooks

Full minutes of the recent AGM will be posted shortly under the (currently disabled) 2009 AGM & Elections Tab above.

Yours Sincerely
Ben Brooks
Online Media

Hullo All SUCA Members,

As you can see the Website is back online and now the Information for the 2009 AGM and Committeee Elections has now been uploaded and can be viewed here

However, the deadline for getting your nominations has now passed. All the best of luck to all the candidates and I hope to see you all on March 10th.

Secondly, in line with a widely held view on the current committee, starting now and hopefully continuing once the new committee is in place, Blog Entries will be encouraged and are going to be posted to the home page every now and again, no formal structure is yet in place and we currently only have one active Blogger... so get your creative writing caps on!

Ben Brooks
SUCA Webmaster