Sassy Conservative

Happy Birthday to the Queen who is celebrating her 83rd Birthday today!

I’ve finally found some time today to make a blog post after a poorly yet busy week. It wasn’t just chocolate eggs that made me smile today as I listened to Blaney’s Blarney blogtalkradio as he set out an insiteful and witty take on this weeks political incidents.  While the naughty left-wing conspirator, McBride, has been found out by the media, Obama’s brother has been denied entry into the UK. But for details on both of these stories and more listen here.

I just love festivals and celebrations of all kinds, which give families and loved one’s the chance to come together and spend precious time with each other. Given such increasingly busy and hectic lifestyles we lead, such festivals and get-togethers are really a bliss so may you enjoy the remainder of this bank holiday weekend.

Labour’s e-blunder

In an attempt to appeal to younger voters, the Labour Party has made endeavours to increase its presence on the web, and as such even John Prescott has a blog on its new Go Fourth website.

But one of the party’s humorous internet campaigns appears to have backfired spectacularly in the form of the torylogo.com site, co-sponsored by Labour, which encourages people to insert satirical swipes at the Conservatives in the style of its green and blue slogan.

However, it has been overwhelmed by retorts from David Cameron supporters, such as, “Gordon is a global problem. Vote Conservatives”, even causing the site to crash.

Despite this rather embarrassing IT mishap, Mandrake is certain that other proposed technological projects, e-borders, ID cards and Connecting for Health, will all be superb successes.

Source

Transport is increasingly an important issue for Birmingham, a growing city with ambitious carbon emission targets. Yesterday I attended the Transport Summit held in the Council House, attended by delegates from across the country. It was a fantastic opportunity for me to meet with important decision makers in Transport some of whom demonstrated a lot of interest in attending the Young People’s Transport Conference next week. The discussions during the day ranged from electric cars and the climate challenge to the New St Station regeneration project which I am really looking forward to!!!

For more information on the Young People’s Transport Conference and to register your place at the conference click here. Places are filling up fast so act quick!

Yes, blogging has been very light lately for several reasons. I have been swamped with work this term from all angles of my life. Furthermore, this week, on Tuesday, Persian New Year celebrations commenced and today at 11.45am Persians across the globe welcomed the new year. I would like to wish all those who celebrate this very elaborate festival a very happy new year! Haroozetan Nowrouz, Nowrouzetan Pirouz! - Translates to: May all your days be ‘new days’ and your ‘new days’ be victorious. It is one of those ‘lost in translation’ phrases I guess! Hehe!

The Haftsin is an important aspect of the New Year celebrations- a table consisting of 7 different symbolic items beggining with the letter 'S'. This is what our table looks like this year!

Iain Dale’s and Donal Blaney’s most recent blog posts are hot stuff! This 13 year old boy has written a book ‘Define Conservatism’ and here he is addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

I’d like to offer my condolences to David Cameron and his family who lost his older son, Ivan, this morning. May his memories bring them ever-lasting joy and keep them going during there hard times.

This morning I attended The BIG Questions on BBC One where moral and social issues are put to a panel and the audience for extensive discussion. Today the three questions included the justification of torture, whether love is about always being honest and how tough we should be on gang crime. 

On the issue of gang-related crime, there were 3 young boys as guests who from being involved in gangs were able to give us their first-hand experiences. I wanted to highlight a key point that one of the young boys raised which was that “instead of looking at labeling people we should look at them and say that you are a star regardless of where they are from and their socio-economic backgrounds”. Kudos to this young man who, like myself, has had enough of policy that sticks people in a box and labels them and recently I have been discussing the issue with Birmingham University Labour Students. You can learn more about that here. 

This is, in fact, a core Conservative principle- accepting people for their achievements, abilities and ambitions as oppose to tying them down to generalisations which have largely been constructed by the media and are no longer acceptable in 21st Century Britain. 

Myself and friends pictured with Nicky Campbell after the show.

OK so you may not have found Mr/Mrs Right in the past week or two running up to this day but that doesn’t matter, Valentines day is not meant to work miracles. Always remember that good things come to those who wait so don’t start dating someone just because you’re feeling left out. Anyway I’ll stop sounding like an Agony Aunt and instead deliver the interesting list of Britain’s most unlikely sex symbols that a dear friend of mine informed me of.   

British women voted for Britain’s 20 sexiest brains which included David Cameron at 15 followed by Boris Johnson. Gordon Brown didn’t quite reach the top 20 list at 22. Who would’ve thought he would even reach 22? So see, in love and attraction, we’ve all got hope and Brown, in this case and only in this case, should be the exceptional example.