My day today can best be summarised as frost and snakes. I was delighted today to have been invited to the one year anniversary of the Swinefleet Play Group which is held in the Community Hall in the village. Little did I know that the invitation also included a number of animals and reptiles provided by a group who demonstrate animals to children. I held the snake but was more than happy to hand it back very quickly. The Play Group are doing a great job and the mums and kids present seemed to really enjoy themselves. Lets hope the group goes from strength to strength.

The frost I referred to earlier can be seen in the photo to the left which I took on my way back to Airmyn for lunch. I'm no David Bailey but I'm not too unhappy about this effort, the fog was really eerie!

We have received hundreds of responses to our petitions against the Environment Agency's River Trent Flood Plan which proposes increasing flood risk in the Isle of Axholme, Burringham and Gunness areas. Hundreds of local people have returned our petitions and many of them have thanked us for informing them about this plan.

The plan would reduce flood risk management locally by ruling out any improvements to the River Trent bank (such as at Owston Ferry where I am pictured) or maintenance of the local pumping stations. I recently attended the Axholme Drainage Board meeting who have made a very strong objection to these proposals.

Sadly, Labour locally have tried to politicise this issue by launching a series of very nasty attacks on those who are opposing plan. We have come to expect this sort of behaviour which in this case is a bit odd as these plans are being drawn up at the behest of the Labour Government.

This is an issue we all need to work together on; that's why we will ignore Labour's negative tactics which local people have come to expect. We must all work together for the interests of our area and that is what we will continue to do.

I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has signed the petition and showed their support for our local area. Anyone who wants to add their name to the petition can do so by e-mailing me on brigg.goole@gmail.com or by calling our local office.

Just read an amusing story on our current Labour MP's website which tries to cleverly spin his way out of his support for the Government's Post Office policies which have closed thousands of Post Offices, including many locally. We must remember that our MP is Vice Chairman of the Labour Party in London and was paid public money as a whip to force the Government's policies through Parliament! He must think local people are thoroughly stupid if he believes local people are going to think he had nothing to do with these policies.

It reminded me of one of my pupils at school, "Sir, it wasn't me, honest." I'm not sure if he was too busy filling in an expense claim to notice, but under the Government he has loyally supported since 1997, almost unquestioningly,  a quarter of the Post Office network has been closed and a further 2,500 are set to be closed. No wonder he had to get his staff to write to the paper to try and dig him out of the Post Office closure hole. You couldn't make it up!

With action like this its no wonder so many former Labour voters (and some former Labour members) locally keep writing and e-mailing me to say they will be supporting me at the next election.

It just proves we need a local MP who will stand up for the area no matter who is in power, not one who will loyally support unpopular policies at Westminster while hoping local people wont notice.