Who could have failed to feel a surge of pride and gratitude at the sight of 120 soldiers from 4 Mechanised Brigade led by the band of the Scots Guards marching through Parliament’s Carriage Gates last Monday on their return from a tough deployment to Iraq? It was we in the Commons who sent them off to war, and it was only right that – for the first time since Cromwell marched on Parliament - we should welcome home a symbolic column of men and women still in their desert combats. Mr Speaker, the Serjeant at Arms and I (as Chairman of the All Party Group for the Army) met them at the North door of Westminster Hall, posed for photographs with them in that magnificent room which has seen every Monarch since Edward the Confessor and witnessed so many of the most important events in the history of England, including the first ever Parliament, and then it was down to the Terrace for a few beers.

 

These men and women, some of them from Wiltshire, including Corsham’s 10 Signals Regiment who do a brilliant job electronically defusing roadside bombs, have had a simply outstanding six month tour of duty in Basra, taking part amongst other things in the romantically named, but actually very tough operation  The Charge of the Knights. What a fine job they do, and how lucky we are to have them!

 

The Government made two important announcements in the last week, perhaps even spurred on by the 4 Mech Brigade parade. The PM announced that, as progress is made, the number of troops in Iraq will continue to reduce, which I very much welcome. I was opposed to the war in the first place, and believe that we have now done pretty much all we can to enable the Iraqis to take back control of their own country. And second they produced a so-called Command Paper on the support given to our armed forces, very much of which I broadly support, despite my disappointment that they have taken so long to produce it, and my worries that economic circumstances may well make much of it quite difficult to deliver.

 

For example, I thoroughly approve of the doubling of the financial compensation for the most seriously injured, two of whom were proudly parading in wheelchairs at last Monday’s event. But wouldn’t it be better if we had fewer soft-skinned “snatch” landrovers which cause so many of the injuries in the first place because of their vulnerability to Improvised Explosive Devices? How can it be that we are only now getting around to addressing the way in which so many veterans are still ending up in homeless shelters because social and mental health services have failed them? How it can be that the families, whose support to their loved ones fighting abroad is so essential, still have to make do with cramped and decaying housing? And why is it that many of our wounded troops are still landing up in civilian wards in Birmingham?

 

We are asking our troops to do a job which most of us cannot even imagine. The least we can do in return is to give them the equipment (and the troop numbers) they require in the front line, and the housing, education, social services, health for themselves and their families at home as well as a decent wage for their efforts.   

 

A recent survey of 24,000 service men and women found that nearly 50 per cent regularly considered leaving. I hope that the superb parade in Parliament last week will at least remind MPs of the duty we have to them and their families.

So David Davis has had his moment of glory, and a great victory it was too. A 15,000 majority on a low turnout, even granted that there was no serious opposition. He has his mandate. He has struck a blow for freedom. He is a politician who has resigned on principle on a matter of policy; Labour’s 42 days detention without trial, their increasing bossiness and interference in every aspect of our liberties has been exposed; the people have shown their longing for freedom.

 

(Or was it a kind of Reggie Perrin moment - an illogical suicide after years of frustration with his Hippo-like Mother-in-Law [so ably represented by our very own Heathcliff]. Only time will tell whether it was all worth it, whether he has committed political hari kiri, or perhaps established himself as a bastion of the libertarian, tax-cutting, Euro-sceptic, small government right wing of the Conservative Party.)

 

I share his frustration. This last week I have suffered from the pro-gypsy lobby trying to imply that the evidence I gave into the illegal encampment at Minety was somehow or another racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. I detest racism in any form, as I hope for example Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, my colleague the Prospective MP for the new Chippenham seat will attest. My stance is actively anti-racist. I believe that all human beings – black, white, male, female, gay, gypsy or settled should be treated exactly equally in the eyes of the law – for example with regard to planning. A national newspaper was contacted by someone who suggested that my Gazette Column a couple of weeks back lampooning Harriet Harman’s ludicrous Equality Act, which will positively discriminate in favour of racial minorities and women was somehow or another racist or sexist. Fortunately the newspaper rang me and gave me the opportunity of replying to this ridiculous allegation.

 

The Prime Minister’s stipulation that we should all waste less food, with which I wholly agree, was rather ruined by his having to interrupt a ten course dinner in Tokyo to tell us all about it! Elsewhere we are told whether and where to smoke or not, that we can’t hunt with dogs although its OK with guns; The EU pokes its nose into every nook and cranny of our everyday lives; our schools and hospitals, farms and businesses are buried under needless regulation and bureaucracy all of it directed from Whitehall; our Post Offices closing, our GP’s surgeries amalgamating into polyclinics, our beloved armed services overstretched and under-resourced, our railways shambolic and overpriced, our roads clogged with polluting congestion as a result; our pension funds broke, the stock exchange collapsing, house prices in turmoil, unemployment and inflation rising inexorably. Overseas Israel and Iran are squaring up to each other, Afghanistan and Pakistan are a shambles. Chaos, crisis everywhere. And our own personal Mr Heathcliff fiddling while Britain burns.

 

So I think that David Davis, did exactly the right thing. He used a personal mechanism to signal his huge alarm at the way the Nation is going, and the very significant vote which he achieved is witness to the fact that the electorate agree with him. Now it must be up to all of us to do what we can to reverse the trend – even prior to a General Election which may well be some time acoming.

 

There is something cloyingly distasteful about the way Harriet Harman introduced her Equality Bill to the House of Commons last Thursday. If it became law (which is probably unlikely since it’s not in this year’s Queen’s Speech, and this Government may just be running out of useful life thereafter), it would require transparency with regard to male and female wages to ensure equality, which is probably not a bad idea in principle, if a nightmare to enforce. But it would also require positive discrimination in favour of women, people from ethnic minorities, disabled people, gay and lesbian people and the like. Presumably black disabled gay people will get quadruple positive discrimination, making them four times more likely to get a job than an equally qualified person who has the great misfortune to be white, male, middle class and heterosexual. No doubt if you throw private education and Oxbridge into the melting pot, you wouldn’t stand a chance of getting a job at all. An oppressed minority indeed!

 

It seems to me that positive discrimination of this kind is as obnoxious as negative discrimination. I am firmly of the view that all human beings, white, black, male female, gay, straight disabled or not should be treated equally. If there is discrimination against people then it must be rooted out. Racism, sexism, ageism – all are equally unacceptable. But positive discrimination of this kind is just as bad.

 

But even more than the content, I found the method of Harriet Harman’s announcement irritating. It seemed to me that she wasn’t actually all that concerned about inequality; it was more that she wanted to be SEEN to be doing something about it. It wasn’t about unfair discrimination, it was about Harriet Harman and what a wonderfully caring person she was. Perhaps that’s why all political correctness of this sort is infuriating – it is so often fundamentally insincere.

 

La Harman’s outspoken support for Scotland’s Wendy Alexander when she was forced to resign because of undeclared donations was similar - she made it sound as if she did not truly care about Ms Alexander’s career, but as if she was determined to try to make it look as if she did. I wonder if she would have been so supportive of a male colleague in similar difficulties?

 

Locally I was struck by how many female students won the agriculture prizes at the annual awards ceremony at Lackham which I attended on Friday. No sexual discrimination in what would traditionally have been a pretty masculine sort of profession. And I was glad that the District Council concluded that there should be no unfair discrimination in favour of gypsies and travellers. I hope that the Inspector who considers the case of the Minety gypsies in a public enquiry at Monkton Park in Chippenham next week will come to the same conclusion – I certainly hope to give evidence to try to persuade him not to.

 

Why can’t people just treat each other with decency, dignity, respect. Politeness and courtesy amongst people of all sorts, classes, creeds and types would go a lot further to make a better society than daft and mildly irritating bills like that proposed by Ms Harman.