I never fail to be surprised by the depth of Labour's hypocrisy both locally and nationally. In the last few weeks we have had Labour running around telling us that they oppose the creation of salaries for Local Action Team Chairman in the East Riding.

You would think then that given the fact that they are so against these extra allowances they would also be against the creation of salaries of £12,000 for the Chairman of the new Parliamentary Regional Select Committees! Well apparently not, because last night Brigg and Goole Labour MP Ian Cawsey voted against an amendment to stop these Chairman been paid £12,000 extra at a total cost of £150,000!

Fortunately, thanks to the votes of Conservative MPs and 17 rebel Labour MPs the amendment was passed meaning that these MPs will not now get an extra £12,000 of public money.

Once again, we see an example of Labour saying one thing locally but then doing another at Westminster!

It's been another busy week with lots of residents contacting me on issues from the Government wanting to borrow and borrow and borrow to concerns over high hedges and broken footpaths.

One issue that came up was the proposed closure of the private Brigg Prep School. The United church Schools Trust are proposing to close the school at the end of this term and merge it with the Hull Collegiate Prep School. This is obviously causing a great deal of concern to parents, not least because the closure is scheduled a third of the way through the school year.

I believe in a strong choice in the provision of education which should include a mix of state and independent schools. I do think it would be very sad if this independent school did close and if that choice which I talked about disappeared. Like Brigg Primary School, the Prep School provides excellent education locally which is why, at the invite of parents, I attended the meeting to discuss this issue last night.

Strong opinions were expressed at the meeting and there is clearly a lot of passion to keep the school from the parents and pupils. It is hoped that a meeting between parents, governors and the trust board will take place shortly to discuss the issue.

Whatever your views on private education may be, I am sure we can all agree that disrupting pupils just a third of the way through the school year is not something we should welcome!

I am delighted that we have been able to force the Labour Council in North Lincs to abandon their proposals for up to three new traveller sites in Brigg. The decision was announced on the North Lincs website at lunch time today but oddly, some residents received notification of this by the Labour MP in a leaflet delivered this morning.

A few people have suggested that this was a cleverly orchestrated and cynically arranged announcement which aims to save the Labour Council face and sure up the position of the local Labour MP.

Whatever shenanigans may have been going on between the Labour Council and the Labour MP doesn't really matter, so long as the sites have been abandoned. Whether or not Council resources and taxpayers money have been used for party political purposes is a question for another day.

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to support our campaign and we are delighted that we have been able to force this climbdown. Of course, none of this would have been necessary where it not for the fact that Ian Cawsey MP voted in Parliament in 2004 to force Councils to identify new traveller sites!

Education seems to have been my thing in the last two weeks or so. I very much enjoy teaching in schools in our area and have fortunately had quite a bit of work in local schools in the last week or two. I'm surprised by how many of the kids keep telling me they have had my leaflets etc! I shall not say which schools or where as I prefer not to blog about my teaching as that is not really what this blog is for!

However, as schools have featured highly in my life in the last couple of weeks I thought I'd say a little about that. Last Friday I did a Question Time event with sixth form students which was really really good fun. The students asked some really tough questions and there was one in particular that I had to confess to the students that I had no idea at all! I think they appreciated the honesty.

On Wednesday I agreed to go into Hymers College in Hull to talk to the sixth form politics students. Apparently, the have Austin Mitchell coming in at some point soon as well as a Lib Dem candidate so I think they are going round all of the parties. They asked me questions about both UK and US politics but the toughest question came at the end.

A couple of the students actually live in the Brigg and Goole constituency and so the final question went to one of these students who asked me "Why should I vote for you then." I had expected questions on everything from local government to US campaign funding but I hadn't expected any potential Brigg and Goole voters to put me on the spot like that. Anyway, I hope he was happy with the response, I guess I will know the next time we go door knocking in his village.

I had never actually been into Hymers before this year despite growing up and going to school in Hull. My school was, to say the least, a little different to Hymers but I was impressed by the school's efforts to open up and reach out to the wider community beyond just those who can afford the fees. I think private schools should do more of this and there is certainly a role for them in providing support to struggling state schools.

Saturday night I went to the Brigg and District Breast Cancer Charity fundraising dinner at the Forest Pines Hotel in Broughton. The night was really good fun and the event raised over £6000 for this important charity. As you can see for the photos, the men were expected to wear pink bow ties! Trying to find one was quite a challenge, I eventually got one in Debenhams but only after visiting every other high street shop. I did worry that I wouldn't get one as we had been out campaigning all day so I didn't start looking until quite late.

Anyway, credit must go to Michelle and the committee for putting on such a good bash and for raising so much money.

We had a really successful Action Day in Snaith yesterday where we managed to get a lot of leaflets delivered in the Snaith and Rawcliffe and Pollington area We also managed to speak to lots of people on the doorstep about a number of local issues.

People were really friendly and seemed genuinely appreciative of the work we have been doing locally on a range of issues. In particular, we have been fighting the Labour Government's River Aire Flood Catchment Plan which wants to increase flooding locally in order that Leeds can be better protected! The clear message again from residents was that they think it's time for a change of Government.

I hope to have an even bigger turnout for next Saturday's Campaign Day!

Yesterday I attended the launch of the Humber Bridge Toll Study at Westminster. The study was paid for by the four Councils in the Humber area and quite cleary shows that the region would benefit to the tune of £1.1 billion pound if the tolls were removed.

The launch event itself was a little taken over by the Labour MPs and Labour run North Lincs Council and the photos in the local press prove this. To actually get into the event you needed special permission from one of the Labour MPs which is a bit rich considering the fuss they created over David Cameron's visit to Brigg!

Anyway, cheap photo opportunities aside, the important thing is that the study shows quite clearly that the regions economy and workforce would benefit from the removal of the tolls. That's why the response of the Government to the study was a little disappointed as they basically said that it was not a matter for them but was a local matter!

We all need to keep pulling in the same direction on this issue although there will come a point if the Government keeps slamming the door in our faces when we may have to look at whether or not that approach is working. For now though we all have to keep pushing for action to remove or reduce the tolls significantly.

There will be further meetings between all the parties in the near future to try to agree our next line of attack. We need to all push in the same direction and speak with one voice and then just possibly the Department for Transport might listen to us.

Credit to the Hull and Humber Chamber of Commerce for all the work they did on this too, and also to the Humber Action Against Tolls campaign group who have been pushing on this for years now.

Photo: Me, Cllr Liz Redfern & Graham Stuart MP (Beverley)  at Westminster with the report.

So there we are, after the long long long taxpayer funded MP's holiday, Parliament finally went back to work today!

Our MP was there, poised ready to ask a question on the burning issues of the day. Could it be a question about the credit crunch, perhaps a question about the local people losing their jobs or perhaps a question seeking help for those struggling to pay their mortgages locally?

Gordon Brown's Labour MP finally got to his feet, the near empty chamber waited with baited breath for our Labour MP to deliver a powerful message  on behalf of the people of Brigg and Goole. And then, our MP rose to ask a question in the Sport and Culture Question Period on the subject of football club ownership!

As important as I am sure these issues are to many, I would have thought that after weeks of financial meltdown, our MP could have found more pressing issues to address!

I have just finished watching Gordon Brown's speech which I have to say I found very hard to follow. He kept talking about building a fair society which was surely an admission that having been in power for 11 years they have built anything but a fair society. I also thought it was insulting to describe the NHS as Labour's NHS. It's not their NHS, it belongs to the people and for a failing Prime Minister to try to claim ownership of it is an insult to the nurses and doctors who work hard day in day out looking after the nation's health.

I tried to listen to him about education but once again he never managed to explain why under this Labour Government the gap between the best performing schools and the worst performing schools is widening, why social mobility is falling and why more and more kids are leaving school without basic literacy and numeracy skills. He should come and spend time in some of the tough inner city schools I have taught in and then he will see how in the last ten years his party have actually made it harder for kids from those schools to aspire to go to University or to do well in school. Some of their policies have actually made social mobility harder and have undermined school discipline to such an extent that in many schools teachers are little more than babysitters.

There was nothing about how he plans to bring bills down for families. This compares with Tory controlled East Riding Council who have promised that next years Council Tax increase will be below inflation and less than 4%. That is despite the Government providing East Riding residents with £96 less per person in funding than the national average. That amounts to £32 million pound in 'lost' grant.

I always feel bad that I never seem to have the time to keep this blog updated as much as I should do. Although to be honest I do wonder whether or not those who do write daily blogs are really telling us that they don't actually have that much to do!   

Anyway, I have been away on my summer holiday over the weekend, on a canal boat with some friends in Warwickshire. The weather was great and I got a good break from politics and all that. The weather was great although I am not sure I did my fair share of the locks though and for some reason nobody seemed keen that I should steer the boat!

I did however buy the papers on Sunday to read an interesting marginal seats opinion poll which not only said that Brigg and Goole would easily turn blue if there was an election tomorrow but also that this area was presently seeing the biggest swing to the Conservatives of anywhere in the country and that on the current swing Scunthorpe would also turn Conservative!

Now, I never get excited about polls as they really mean nothing when you consider that we are 18 months from a probable General Election. This poll did however confirm our own polling and also confirm what we are finding on the doorstep at the moment. When you consider that at the 2007 local elections the Conservative share of the vote in Brigg and Goole (both in the East Riding and in the North Lincs parts) was higher than in 2003 and that we seem to be finding an awful lot of people on the doorstep saying they will never vote Labour again, then it does look as though local people are turning away from Labour.

I prefer not to think too much about polls as I prefer to just carry on working hard and let people make their own minds up. I was however surprised to read that it predicted a Conservative victory in Scunthorpe too. I guess only time will tell!