The last couple of weeks have seen the publication of A level and GCSE results. It is extremely tense and without good results, passing onto the next level of education becomes tricky.
In the coming weeks, Hereford and Worcestershire Fire and Rescue Authority will start a consultation over proposals to rationalise the three fire stations we have in Wyre Forest into just one.
Parliament has now risen for the summer recess and the resultant vacuum of parliamentary news allows space for the traditional silly season of wider political news to dominate the headlines. To be honest, I’ve been rather disappointed by the silly season over the last few years. Journalists have been struggling to get behind one story or another so nothing has happened. But this year looks set to be a vintage year. The travails of the Labour Party leadership contest looks set to keep journalists and commentators busy until early September, when we have the results.
The petition to save Kidderminster Territorial Army Centre (TAC) has been delivered to the Defence Minister responsible, by Mark Garnier MP. The petition of almost 1,000 signatures was championed by Councillor Nigel Knowles (Franche and Habberley North) and passed on to Mark Garnier. The petition calls on the Government to reverse their plans for the closure of Kidderminster TAC.
A large amount of my time in Parliament is spent with the Treasury Select Committee. Our job is to scrutinise the work of the Treasury and to examine the performance of all the departments and bits of the government that report to it. Importantly, we examine the budget and we are hard at work looking at the recent budget announced last week.
Figures released today by the Office for National Statistics show that the number of Jobseeker's Allowance claimants in Wyre Forest in June was 706. This represents a rate of 1.5% of the economically active population aged 16 to 64.This is the lowest level ever in Wyre Forest, since records began in 1971 ,and beats the constituency record set each month for the past 4 months.
The events in Greece are dominating both the national and international news this week. No surprise, because it is not often that you see a country slide inexorably into crisis, in part at its own making. What is less understood is the fact that five years ago, Greece's economy was in better state than the UK.
The summer budget, announced by the Chancellor George Osbourne, today brought a raft of changes including the financial security of lower taxes and a new National Living Wage.
