On the 3rd of May local government elections are being held. Bath and North-East Somerset council is very much up for grabs. The largest party are currently the Lib Dems who have 29 seats, while the Conservatives are a close second with 26 seats. Labour and the independents have six seats and four seats respectively.

In the previous local elections of May 2003, Labour lost a total of eleven seats, while the Liberal Democrats lost one. The overall winner was the Conservative party which gained ten seats. What’s more, many people still remember The Liberal Democrat’s completely incompetent handling of the Thermal Bath Spa project which ended being millions of pounds over budget and severely late by a good number of years, along with their farcical attempts to excuse their inadequacies.

By my estimates, the Bath Conservatives need to win an extra seven seats to have an overall majority on the Bath & North-East Somerset council – taking it out of no overall control for the first time in years.

The currently Conservative-held Bathwick two-seat ward encompasses the University of Bath meaning that almost all students will have a chance to vote in the local elections. John Bailey has been a Conservative Councillor for the ward of Bathwick since 1989. He is the Principal lecturer in Estate Management at the University of the West of England in Bristol and was Mayor of Bath from 1999 to 2000. Sir Elgar Jenkins OBE has been the other Councillor in Bathwick for the past four years.

Bath Conservative Future will be working closely with John and Elgar to ensure a strong result for the people of Bathwick against the Lib Dems.

The Lib Dem society at the University of Bath has invited us to view their showing of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ – the Rev. Al Gore’s film in which he preaches the good word about the human causes of climate change and the apparently cataclysmic events that lay ahead for humanity should we not suddenly change all our consumer habits and live in mud huts for the rest of our days.

However, as Mark Steyn observed in Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times, Al isn’t quite the self-righteous, upstanding carbon neutral kinda guy he makes himself out to be:

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the other day the Rev. Al Gore declared that ‘climate change’ was ‘the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced.’ Ever. I believe that was the same day it was revealed that George W Bush’s ranch in Texas is more environmentally friendly than the Gore mansion in Tennessee. According to the Nashville Electric Service, the Eco-Messiah’s house uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home. The average household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours.

Should you wish to question the Lib Dem leader of Bath Council on his dream vision for a carbon-neutral Bath, or alternatively, back in reality, the Bath Spa project which, due to his and the Lib Dems’ complete incompetence was delayed by over two years and on which millions of pounds was wasted – feel free to turn up.

However, of more interest (on the same night at 9pm on Channel 4) might be a programme entitled ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ which the C4 website describes as:

A polemical and thought-provoking documentary, film-maker Martin Durkin argues that the theory of man-made global warming has become such a powerful political force that other explanations for climate change are not being properly aired. The film brings together the arguments of leading scientists who disagree with the prevailing consensus that a ‘greenhouse effect’ of carbon dioxide released by human activity is the cause of rising global temperatures.

If it’s any good, I hope David Milliband will be sending a copy of this to every school in the country as he did with the Reverend Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’… Yes, unlikely I know.

Last night, Bath University Conservative Future hosted Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Chippenham, Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones as a society speaker. Around fifteen students and a local councillor attended the event – which was a welcome improvement on the last event!

Wilfred spoke at length about his background as the son of Jamaican immigrants and his experiences of growing up in inner-city Birmingham from which he eventually found his way into television and later became a successful farmer. The talk drew upon many various aspects of his life experiences and how he believed that conviction politics could reinvigorate Britain.

After this well-received speech, Mr Emmanuel-Jones took questions from the floor on various subjects, ranging from breeds of his Devon cattle to the creation of a black middle-class and the candidate’s A-list. However, the final and most contentious subject of the night unleashing over fifteen minutes of furious debate was the future direction of the National Health Service (provoked by my question, sadly.) Wilfred set about arguing that those who are directly responsible for their ill-heath such as contracting cancer through excessive smoking, should be personally accountable for their own actions and pay for treatment of those consequences rather than hoping that society should automatically foot the bill. Most people in the room did seem to agree – although two particular individuals didn’t quite seem capable of grasping that simple notion…

We at Bath Conservative Future wish Wilfred the best of luck at the next election and we hope to see Chippenham elect him as their Member of Parliament.

Last night I and four other members of Conservative Future in Bath travelled up to London in the car to attend the Tory Reform Group’s annual parliamentary social event. Conservative MP and former Chancellor Ken Clarke hosted the event and gave a very good speech on the failings of this Labour government and how a Conservative government would go about being different.

Former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan-Smith also made a brief appearance and was immediately swamped by most students in attendance. Other dignitaries and self-proclaimed important persons gracing us with their presence included John Bercow MP, Lord Hunt, and Shadow immigration minister Damien Green MP.

Around ninety Conservative Future members from all over the country attended the event. Looking around the Jubilee Room in the House of Commons (which I had expected to be larger seeing as we had to squeeze in ninety plus people,) I did recognised a few faces included Richard Jackson from University College London, Fiona Montgomerie and Christian May from Exeter University, and Arleen Ouzounian from Kings College London and 18 Doughty Street. We also spoke to the Chairman of the Tory Reform Group, Tim Barnes who kindly said that he will help in getting CF events going in the South West and Bath area. We did also manage to take a few photographs which can be found here.

After the main event and speaking had finished, most people headed to the Red Lion just off Parliament Square for a drink (those of us not driving anyway,) and then later we went for a very good curry in Brick Lane. I think that Fiona and Christian chose the smart, if slightly more expensive option by staying overnight in London, while we left very early in the morning in the car and didn’t get back home until 4am!

As you can see, the Bath Conservative Future website has been updated with a brand new design. We have also moved from Google’s Blogger to the free Wordpress software. Hopefully all the bugs in the design have been ironed out, but if you do find any please tell us. Also, hopefully in the coming weeks and months more members of Conservative Future in Bath will be posting articles on this website.