Things are still moving forward with new developments. Late last week we had our meeting at Norfolk County Council with the County, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, railtrack and National Express represented.

National Express is doing a range of work with Railtrack over the next few weeks and months to improve things at the station. We also discussed ideas for longer-term bigger development and improvement at the station and this will continue with a new Partnership group. This was the best news of the day, we have agreed to set up a Great Yarmouth Train Station Partnership which will be made up of the stakeholders at the meeting plus representatives from the community and business so that we get all the right people around the table for a meeting n the early summer. This group can then work to plan and develop an exciting future for our station.

Importantly we now also have agreement by National Express and Railtrack on some works they will be getting on with so that we should see a much nicer station in the next few weeks and months. With a new Kiosk deal also being sorted out.

We also are looking to arrange a volunteer community day to do some work at the station and help with the improvements and once we get a date agreed by National Express and railtrack we will post details on our Facebook group, where we already have details of the big fundraising day being planned by Spencer McCormack of BWell gym, who is a superb supporter of the campaign. This is the sign of a community coming together to see improvements and together we can achieve real change and improvements.

The Unitary farce for Norwich continues. The Labour Government has wasted more time and money debating this for several hours in Parliament yesterday for it to be approved by the House of Lords.

There will now be a longer consultation process to this. The amount of tie and money spent on this issue in debate, councils researching impact, residents surveys and more is staggering at a time when the economy needs to save money not waste it. Thank you to Labour for this!

Conservatives have made it clear that if we win the General Election we will annul this and leave Norfolk as is so that money can focus on providing services for residents not re-organisation.

So at this election residents will have a clear choice, 5 more years of Gordon Brown and Labour wastage or a Conservative government who are determined to govern within our means and to stop interference in Norfolk local government organisation from London like this unitary plan.

EDP story in full: click here.

It is amazing to note that our Labour Prime Minister has been unable to step in and get the strike action stopped. Without commenting on the rights and wrongs of the reasons for the strike what is clear is that Unite and Labour have a more then small link.

Unite is a funder of the labour Party to the tune of around £11,000,000 and underwrite the Labour Party funds, in fact here in Great Yarmouth it seems (according to the Electoral Commission) that the majority of our Labour MP’s funding comes form Unite over the last few years. So locally and nationally the Labour Party is reliant on Unite and that explains why they are so unwilling to condemn the strike and the union for handling things this way and for inconveniencing so many thousands of hard working travellers who will have their holidays disrupted at best and ruined at worst. Thank you Labour!

If the Prime Minister stepped in and speak candidly with Unite and his pal Charlie Whelan surely they would stop this, if not then we have to ask ourselves if our Prime Minister cannot convince his best political friends and supporters to do something then what good can he do our country when negotiating with others???

Petrol Prices are on the rise again.

I remember the petrol strikes of 2001 and how much anger we all had at the soaring prices around that time, now seems even worse and yet we seem happier to put up with it. I wonder if it is because we have become more relaxed, or that we simply know or believe it will do little to sway this government to see sense and help us as residents.

The escalating tax system we have on fuel makes this so much worse. As with so many things, we need a General Election to give us a chance to have our say and bring change to our Country and to towns like Great Yarmouth.

The planned strike by the union at British Airways will cause a lot of disruption for a lot of people and we can all only hope that is does finally get settled, though it is looking less likely at present.

The rights and wrongs of the strike and the negotiations are for a debate outside of this Blog but one thing does seem to be very clear and odd with this situation.

The strike is being called by the UNITE union, which is run by Charlie Whelan who is a close ally of Gordon Brown and in fact was his chief spin master and it is a union that is one of those giving around 75% of the Labour Party its funding and funded Gordon Brown for his leadership.

With all of this in mind surely Brown should and could simply pick up the phone and try and get this sorted with his friends at the union? Or is he so in their pocket that he is answerable to them for money and as such cannot afford to stand up to them?

So again our Prime Minister is not anywhere to be seen when he should be forefront and centre.

Unbelievable, with all that is going on in our country and all the problems out there our government is now focused on yet another tax and this time it is a tax for dog owners.

So, we may ask what have the dog owners of Great Yarmouth done to incur the taxing wrath of our Labour government? Good question and one it is hard to answer.

There is no doubt that the current legislation is not working in the way it should with regard to dangerous dogs, but a dog tax? We have over 100 new taxes now, I think, since Labour came to power and now they want to fix a problem like this with another clunking tax on us.

This is just wrong, all that will end up happening is that law-abiding citizens will end up buying insurance for harmless animals while the gang members, who use dangerous dogs as weapons, will just ignore the rules on insurance in the way that many criminals ignore the rules on insuring a car.

When will Labour learn and start to understand that every problem is not fixed with more legislation and taxes?

We have a number of local business people now who have been very generous in coming forward to offer support to the campaign with a range of proposals and we are all working together to develop a really positive way forward to see real improvements in our station.

I will Blog further on this tomorrow and will be posting a full update on Facebook including details of our very good meeting with ASDA who are, in principal, willing to help and support the work to see a better entrance to Great Yarmouth for us all.

We travelled and looked at the changes to the dunes and hills on the edge of the beach form Hemsby right up to Winterton. It is an area that I know well and I tend to use that stretch when I run. It was amazing a couple of weeks ago to see how the sea had taken away so much sand form the beach and already we can see where some of it has come back.

This just reminds us how little we can predict the cyclical nature of nature itself and how these things change and move and change and can then return. We must keep our eyes focused on our coastline as we are clearly seeing the coast move further and further back and some of the images at Winterton of the changes in the last 10-20 years give a very start reminder that we must work hard to find a way we can protect our coastline.

We had a great morning on Saturday with our Beach Clean up by the Britannia Pier in Great Yarmouth.

We managed to clear just over 20 bags of rubbish from the beach.

However, by doing our bit we had a chance to help keep it even cleaner and clearly there is plenty we can all be doing. It was superb to have so many people come out and join us and we will do it again so that we can hopefully get more coverage for the Keep Britain tidy campaign more generally too. We can all do our bit in our community and on our streets by not leaving rubbish and dropping wrappers etc as we go through our towns and villages.

Every little bit helps. One the people who came out to help rightly asked if this was something we would do after an election too and how does one morning clear up on the beach help the bigger picture. Both very fair questions and each deserve answers. Yes, I believe it is something we should continue to do and if end up fortunate enough to earn enough votes form Great Yarmouth voters we will definitely continue tot help with beach or community clear ups regularly.

As to part 2 of the question, I agree there are big issues and how do we stop litter initially. However though we cannot stop every single person form ever throwing litter, we have to make a start somewhere (rather like the train station campaign).

We have to lay down a marker to say this is how we should behave and what we should look for in our community and how can I encourage others to do that if I am not doing it myself? So, I do think that community action work like this, however small or large any given project may be, is important and hopefully in some small way does a little to help the community today and that is a good thing for us all to aim for.

Visiting the Newtown Youth Centre on Monday I was able to see the club in full flow, despite it still being one of our chilly winter evenings. It was good to see so many at the club having fun, both inside and despite the cold outside on the five a side football area too.

A great example of how the club works with others in the community was on display too as I was able to meet the local representatives of the Princes Trust. This is a superb charity that helps young people get businesses working on their own and gives support to help development for young people.

We are lucky that we have a great police force in Great Yarmouth and they are developing with the help of Carl and the team at the Newtown Youth Centre and centre and clubs like them across Great Yarmouth a Hive Project where we can start to see our club sand organisation across Great Yarmouth working together and spreading best practice and expertise. This can only be good for all our communities.

As always, a great visit and another chance to catch up with the two candidates for the Youth Parliament as well, with the result due on Wednesday. Since typing this we have had a winner and congratulations go to Naveen Rizvi on her win, it is great that the two competitors for the position have agreed to work together for the benefit of all young people in Great Yarmouth.

We have an office building in Great Yarmouth called Havenbridge House I have written about it before on my old Blog. It was home to several hundred staff for HMRC until recently. In the last year HMRC have announced that they will centralise all their work into Norwich.

I have not seen any evidence other tan ideology that they have a business case to back up why this is a better way to work and worse, for Great Yarmouth will cost us jobs. HMRC and the Labour Minister argued that they would offer transfers so jobs would not be lost. Of course, but would the residents be able to travel to Norwich (lets put aside carbon footprint issues even for now)?

Havenbridge House has capacity and is (I understand) DDA approved, so why not centralise (if they must stick to Labour’s big brother knows best control policies) in Great Yarmouth, where we need the jobs? Despite an FOI and a mountain, it sees, of letters I am still waiting for a true answer to that one.

Now we have heard this week that they are even reneging on their promise to transfer workers and are making Great Yarmouth staff redundant and not offering transfers. How much more damage to Great Yarmouth do Labour want to do?

There is an Early day motion at the House now on this issue and I would call on our Labour MP in Great Yarmouth to sig it, amazingly (at this time) he appears not have to have done). If you read this please go and sign that motion to support our Great Yarmouth workers.

I have also written tot eh Chairman of the treasury select committee asking him to review the HMRC decision to close the office; the process and procedure used and why not keep Great Yarmouth open.

I will keep you posted.

The Blog is back, in a new home and ready to go….

Having had the Blog I held at BlogSpot/Blogger hacked into far too much in the space of just a week I decided that enough was enough. So now this Blog is based within my own website, so security should be fine.

We are also now able to link to Twitter so my Blog will update there automatically and comments are possible so please feel free to use the form below to leave a comment on this or any future entry.

We did actually have my Blog here a long time ago and it is probably easier to keep it here now as part of the main website. The only problem is that the archives of my Blog entries over the last few years at the old site are now, possibly, lost. We are working on trying to retrieve the archive to post it here, will keep you posted on that.

It is nice to have the ability again to comment on a regular basis on issues that are going on both in Great Yarmouth and the wider community without having to do formal press releases. I like the ease and accessibility of the Blog to get a message over and for others to be able to comment and communicate with me.

So…. welcome, back!

A huge, frightening, amount of money will be spent and a very very complicated system will be used to decide who the final two challengers will be. The Democratic race seems a 2 horse one too many but there is always the dark horse and the Republican race seem fairly open at present and as a result may actually be a more interesting process to watch form here.

I have friends in the States who have always voted the same way, a fair number, but who now really are not sure. It all depends on who the 2 eventually are. A clear indication of how the US system does still differ from ours. I cannot deny that many of us will vote in an election (especially a General Election) for the person they want (such as David Cameron) but generally people tend to vote for a Party here. In the US it is far more personality based, at most levels in fact.

I will give my thoughts and views as the races develop Comments from you on your thoughts as matte ogress are welcome and it all starts tonight in the US with the big one of the early deciders in New Hampshire.

For BBC coverage of US Elections click here.

Work for Benefits:

I also note that Gordon Brown and Labour, who have overseen the lost data, ID cards fiasco and cost, the crash of northern Rock money and shares and a loss of nerve over a General Election now claims that he will do more for those out of work and he will do more to ensure those can work and should work, do work. Yet he likes to try and criticise ours. David Cameron has outlined a progressive policy to develop a better way forward; this will release more money in our economy for individuals and help the simplification of taxes eventually. It will also ensure that those who need help and support get it quicker. More details are on www.bbc.co.uk.

I fully support these fair and strong proposals, they will help many get their dignity back and everyone also get the help they need. Getting to work at any level is a step on the economic and social ladder for many. Whether it is a step towards a first car, a first home, supporting oneself or one’s family, it is an important step. We should do all we can to help people get onto the ladder and to ensure that ladder gives us more choice and dignity over what we can do with and in our own lives. An economy based on and overly reliant on government welfare support is never going to grow as large as one with a free and low tax economy with people having the chance to improve their own lives and that of their families.

I have spoken to a large number of teachers over the years who have continually said that we test too often, too young and don’t leave teachers enough time to teach.

There is, as in so much of our public services, so much paperwork and red tape that it prevents the professionals spending the time they would like actually delivering the front line service they are trained to.

It appears that the man who supposedly was part of the on/off election is behind the update. So did Labour fail since 1997 and do they accept that? Will they get it right this time? Is there nay evidence from the past to let us think they will succeed?

If millions are being spent on new playgrounds and other facilities that would on the surface seem a good thing. I only hope that the money really does go into the schools and facilities and that many thousands or millions do not get wasted through paperwork and management costs, as so often seems to happen.

Brandon Lewis, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Great Yarmouth, has this week offered advice to Great Yarmouth residents who fear they may be at risk following the loss of Child Benefit data by HM Revenue & Customs.

Brandon said:

“As a result of the Government’s catastrophic mistake - the names, the addresses and the dates of birth of every child in the country are sitting on two computers discs that are lost in the post. The bank account details and national insurance numbers of 10 million parents, guardians and carers have gone missing.

“Local people here in Yarmouth are quite rightly worried by the scale of this data loss and the ensuing risk of bank fraud and identity theft.

“I hope that the following information may be of use to local people and help to ease some of their concerns.”

Questions & Answers

Where can I go for more advice?

The HMRC has set up a Child Benefit helpline: 0845 302 1444

Should I close my account or change my security details?

No. There is no reason to close your account. There is no evidence of an increase in suspicious activity on any customer account involved since the data was mislaid. The details lost are not in themselves sufficient for an ID fraudster to access your bank account - additional security information and passwords are always required.

HMRC is advising customers that if they use any personal data, like child’s name or date of birth in their password, they may wish to consider changing their password.

What do I need to do to protect my account and prevent my details being used by a fraudster?

As always, you should be vigilant and follow existing security advice to help you spot and stop ID fraud being committed using your details. This includes always checking your statements, opening post and checking bills, and if you spot an unfamiliar transaction you should contact your bank, building society or service provider immediately.

If you are the innocent victim of banking fraud as a result of this incident, as a UK customer, you are protected by The Banking Code, which means you should not suffer any financial loss as a consequence. 

What details of mine have been lost?

The HMRC has confirmed that the missing data contained sort code and bank account details, national insurance numbers, dates of birth, names and address details of all families in receipt of child benefit, as well as the names and dates of birth of those children for whom child benefit is payable. These details are not enough in themselves for an ID fraudster to access your bank account - additional security information and passwords are always required. No other details – for example passwords or card details - were contained within the missing data.

Do I need to contact my bank or building society?

No, not unless you spot a transaction on your bank account that you didn’t authorise.

What happens if I am a victim?

If you are the innocent victim of banking fraud as a result of this incident, as a UK customer, you are protected by The Banking Code, which means you should not suffer any financial loss as a consequence. 

What can an ID fraudster do with this data?

No password, security details or card details have been compromised, so a fraudster cannot access your bank, building society or card account. However, HMRC is advising customers that if they use any personal data, like child’s name or date of birth in their password, they may wish to consider changing their password.

If this data were in the hands of a fraudster – and at present there is no evidence that it is – this type of information might help them to commit account takeover fraud, although additional information would be needed. There is also a risk of a fraudster using those details to set up other credit or financial agreements, e.g. mobile phone accounts.

If I notice something unusual – if an account has been opened with a bank or business with whom I have no relationship - do I contact them or do I contact the police?

Contact the bank or business concerned and contact the police.   

Top Tips

Customers can help protect their bank account and prevent their ID being stolen by taking the following steps: 

Check bank statements, and check receipts against your statements regularly and thoroughly. If you find an unfamiliar transaction, contact your bank immediately.

Some warning signs of ID theft and fraud:

• Your regular bank or credit card statements fail to appear.
• You notice that some of your mail is missing.
• You receive a bill or statement for a service or items you have not authorised, purchased or ordered.
• A debt collection agency contacts you about goods you have not ordered or an account you have never opened.
• You receive a telephone call or letter saying you have been approved or denied credit for accounts you know nothing about.

What to do if you have been a victim of ID fraud:

·         Contact your bank or the financial organisation concerned and keep a record of all communication.

·         Contact CIFAS on 0870 010 2091.  They can earmark your name and address with 'Protective Registration' so that anyone applying for credit in your name will automatically be double-checked, such as by requests for further proof of identification.

·         Check with the credit reference agencies detailed below.  If applications           for credit have been made in your name you can ask to have any incorrect information removed:

Experian:  0870 241 6212 (www.experian.co.uk)

Equifax:  0870 010 0583  (www.equifax.co.uk)

Call Credit:  0870 060 1414 (www.callcredit.co.uk)