Hendon constituency deserves better than Ameet Jogia

Ameet Jogia

Over the last few weeks, I've seen an ever increasing number of communications from the Conservative candidate for Hendon, Ameet Jogia. I have a few MP's over the years. For many years, we had a sensible and rather decent Conservative in the shape of John Gorst. Gorst was pro business and a good constituency MP. He was replaced in 1997 by Labour's Andrew Dismore. Dismore was a hard working MP. I was not keen on him, as I felt he was a slippery individual, who admitted that when he campaigned to replace Gorst in 1997, promising to retain Edgware General Hospital, he knew that a Labour government would close it anyway. He was replaced in 2010 by Conservative Matthew Offord, who won by 103 votes. Offord built up a decent majority over the next few elections. Offord put a lot of work into cultivating conservative religious voters who opposed things such as same sex marriage. Whilst Gorst and Dismore were hard working MP's in the constituency, Offord is largely invisible most of the time. I was not disappointed to see him stand down. 

Ameet Jogia struck me as an odd choice. He's a councillor in Tory councillor Harrow. I'd never heard of him before he was selected. I felt he was probably the weakest of the three choices on offer. He has done nothing to dispel that view. From what I've seen, he is an uber NIMBY. He has campaigned against McDonalds opening in Mill Hill. Given that MP's have no role in planning I found this rather bizarre. Apparently McDonalds are hotbeds of crime and anti social behaviour, if you believe his leaflets. He has also campaigned heavily against the Hendon Hub and the Edgware Broadwalk redevelopment. Not having been involved in Barnet politics until he was selected, he is either unaware that both schemes were dreamed up when the Tories ran Barnet. He is putting the boot into Labour, who simply carried on the policies of the previous Tory adminstration. Either Jogia doesn't know the history of the various schemes, which is rather poor from a candidate, or he's deliberately misleading people about the policies of the local Tories. Neither is particularly good.

I had a look at Jogia's website to see what he had to say about other issues. I was not impressed. On "investment in local businesses" he says "Our investment in local businesses will also protect local businesses and jobs from rising prices and jobs from rising costs and a changing high street in an effort to ensure that our community shops in Edgware, Mill Hill, Hendon, and Burnt Oak remain on our high streets and encourage residents to shop local." This is highly misleading. The Tories announced a massive rise in the minimum wage, which will add huge costs to local businesses. Whilst I support the idea of paying decent wages, many companies are on their knees, due to high energy prices. Adding more costs to business is going to close many companies. 

Regular readers will know that this blog champions environmental policies. On these Jogia says "It is widely accepted that bad air is a huge risk to health, that’s why over the last 13 years the UK has become a world leader in becoming one of the most carbon-neutral countries in the world.

However, we mustn't push on with the net zero agenda at the risk of hard-working people who cannot afford to pay the price for other countries, such as China, polluting our planet. That’s why I am fervently against the ULEZ expansion in London." This shows a man who wants to face both ways at the same time. He accepts that poor air quality is bad for health, but refuses to do anything to address it. Whilst I was against the ULEZ expansion, it is now simply too late to reverse it. Most people have already got rid of polluting cars in London.

On the issue of policing, he demonstrates that he doesn't know our local area. He says "The Mayor has hiked up his precept this year but we are still seeing our residents in places like Brockley Hill having to pay for security because the Mayor is failing to protect our towns and suburbs." Whilst it is very touching that our candidate cares about voters in Brockley Hill, it is not in the constituency of Hendon, it isn't even in the Borough of Barnet. 

On the issue of transport, he again shows his lack of local knowledge. He claims "If we want to put people on public transport we first need to build the infrastructure to enable this. To get from Mill Hill to Chipping Barnet via car is a 15 min journey but to use public transport it is nearly an hour long." Clearly not a bus user. I regularly get the 384 bus from Mill Hill to Barnet to watch Hadley FC. It takes 10 minutes from the top of my road (Glendor Gardens stop). I will be getting that tonight. 

On education he says "We want to deliver new skills for local children to give them the best possible start in life and with a record £123,093,515 funding for Hendon schools, we are funding schools at their highest levels in history." What he doesn't say is that due to high inflation, every school in Barnet is struggling to balance their books. I am the chair of a charity that funds a local school. I see the challenges at the coalface. It is all very well talking about rebuilding schools, but if they can't afford to pay experienced teachers, then the school will be in crisis.

I have taken the above quotes from his website -www.jogia.uk/ourplan

In my opinion, Hendon deserves better than this. There are many big challenges facing us locally and nationally. Having an MP who seems to have no positive policies, doesn't know the Borough and thinks the way to win is to say all things to all people is a recipe for disaster. If you want to know just how vacuous he is, if you click his "My Plan" page on his website, you don't get a plan, you get a questionaire - www.jogia.uk/form/hendonmyplan - It sums him up. His plan is to tell you anything that you want to hear, so you'll get his vote. 

Guest Blog - Hendon Election Analysis - By Stephen McKenzie

By Stephen McKenzie,

There has already been a lot written about the victory of my friend Matthew Offord in Hendon, by taking a seat where he had won just a 106 majority in 2010 and turning it into a sizable majority of 3,724 (or 7.5%), he has become one of the main talking points in the press. In 2020 he will fight his seat as a 10 year incumbent and assuming the party as a whole is not broadly unpopular then I can imagine him increasing that further. I understand that many who read this are not the biggest fans of the Conservatives in Barnet but I was asked to lay out the reasons why I think that he was able to retain his seat so clearly.

The Jewish vote. I’m going to be quite quick on this because I think it’s been absolutely done to death. Andrew Dismore (and Sarah Sackman in Finchley & Golders Green) was a fantastic supporter of Israel, something that Matthew recognised at all the hustings (of which there were six with both candidates). However the Jewish vote was cut to the core by Ed Miliband’s three line whip on Palestine, from that point there was no chance of Andrew capturing the significant chunk of that vote necessary to win in Hendon. Matthew proved himself a significant supporter of that community early on in his parliamentary career through his tireless work to secure funding for security at Jewish schools and other community locations which, while I find it very sad that we live in a society that requires this, is hugely important and incredibly popular within the community.

The Organisation. He won this game on the ground, we consistently had more volunteers out than the Labour party did in Hendon and we had them well organised. The credit for this can go to the Matthew and to the campaign manager who did a phenomenal job (and is modest enough that he’s refused to take any credit so I’m not naming him) on both using volunteers but also keeping them motivated. The message was confident but not complacent. We had fantastic help from Theresa Villiers and her team in Chipping Barnet who were incredibly supportive and put in remarkable amounts of effort to help us secure Hendon. On the day itself we had well over 250 people helping us get out the vote. In one way or another we spoke to just over 25% of the electorate on the day itself and over 65% of our target voters. Voters who were identified as swing voters would have received well 6 or more leaflets from us, some of those specifically targeted to their concerns. Voters identified as strongly against us were sent less literature, lots of this information came from the incredibly successful Conservative campaign in Hendon in last year’s borough election. Canvassing and other direct resources were aimed at our swing areas and this worked convincingly with both Hale and West Hendon wards showing significant Conservative wins on the night of the count. Our volunteers as well as the core team put in untold hours and we had more supporters actively engaging than has been seen in the history of the association which is corresponding with a rising membership over the last year.

The Liberal Democrats. I think Roger has slightly overestimated this in his previous post about the result in Hendon. He suggested that all Lib Dem votes split for Matthew in this election, some certainly did, maybe as high as 60% of those who voted for the Lib Dems in 2010 but that would be too narrow a picture. Mill Hill was the main area with significant Liberal Democrat support in 2010 and that did come out strongly for Matthew, however, from the data, I would argue that we did see a large number of traditional Labour voters who felt that Labour lacked direction and had become less supportive of the aspiration that had allowed them to own their own home also swing to Matthew and that this was masked by the drop in the Lib Dem vote. I genuinely feel for Alasdair Hill, he was a strong local candidate who believes in this area and he deserved to do better.

Community Groups. There is a fallacy complaint that Matthew has been an “absent MP” over the last five years. In the three years I’ve been involved in local politics I’ve seen him engage minority groups that have rarely any political figures take an interest, let alone Conservative ones. In the last weeks of the campaign I counted at least twenty members of the Anglo-Iranian come in and volunteer, showing their active support, it wasn’t mild but fiery and born of passion to see a strong candidate who has been committed to supporting them and their cause being re-elected. One lady who helped incredibly and who I don’t believe was able to vote told me “when you want to achieve something you have to go out and achieve it yourself”, she must have called well over a thousand residents for us. At Bhaktivedanta Manor just a few months ago, at the time of the Holi festival, I saw thousands of members of the Hindu community respond incredibly well to Matthew speak of his visit to their sister temple in India (on his own dime I might add) and his consistent and wholehearted support for their work in communities across North London and beyond. The Nepalese community of Burnt Oak must also be mentioned, without them it would have been impossible to deliver the estimated 600,000 items that went out over the last six months; although the tragic events in Nepal have quite understandably meant they have been focussed on other matters in the days before the election. I’ve touched on just some of the work Matthew has done in the community, multiple visits and work with our friends at West Hendon mosque, the large Cypriot community as well as numerous Jewish groups and Evangelical Christians have also helped to ensure that a Conservative in a very diverse area was returned to parliament.

Integrity. Matthew has never pretended to be anything other than who he is. He cares about the constituency but he doesn’t placate those he doesn’t agree with by pretending to agree like the average politician. That might wind some people up but it also means that he is an extraordinary advocate for causes he believes in and that people respect him. We are lucky to have one of the most outwardly focussed candidates in the country, I’ve met many MPs over the last couple of years and with the possible exception of Bob Stewart and Michael Gove, I have never met one more in tune with global affairs and how that affects our area and communities than Matthew. His background attending state schools and Nottingham Trent University has given him a passion for education and local schools that is remarkable. I know from personal experience that he’s regularly engaged with students and teachers across the borough regardless of his political views, as one of my teachers likes to claim, that despite actively campaigning against Matthew he’s bought drinks for him and his wife Claire (who also deserves immense recognition for the incredible work she’s put in to ensuring Matthew’s victory). Without his support we wouldn’t have been able to bridge the large shortfall in school places that Hendon faced, multiple schools have opened and expanded and local schools have received money for improvement work after lobbying from Matthew. Whether they agree with him or not students at Mill Hill County certainly can’t complain they don’t see enough of him, I counted at least four visits in the last year and he’s been a regular fixture since his original election.

I’d like to end this by thanking everyone who came out to help us, over the next few days and weeks Matthew will probably have to send out over a thousand messages of thanks to his active supporters and volunteers. However it was more than that, turnout rose, particularly among the young and groups mentioned above who were previously less likely to vote. So thank you to everyone who cast a ballot, regardless of whether the result went your way, democracy in Barnet won on Thursday, as local people proved they care about the representation of their area. 

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Stephen Mckenzie was the Hendon Conservatives Team 2015 coordinator. He is currently studying at at local School for his A Levels and hopes to go to University in September

Guest Blogs are always welcome at the Barnet Eye

Local Politics Special - Hendon Conservatives - Happy days are here again?

Matthew Offord MP with friends

In the second of our series on the local political scene in the London Borough of Barnet, we look at the Hendon Conservatives. Yesterday we had a look at the Labour party and the failings of the local organisation, which I believe contributed to its catastrophic failure in the local election. Today we seek to understand why the Hendon Conservatives are just so successful at the ballot box.

The success of the Hendon Conservatives is extraordinary. To truly understand this, lets not start with Hendon, lets start with Neighbouring Enfield North. In many ways, this seat is rather like Hendon. A sleepy suburb, that was Labour for the Blair years and reverted to Tory in 2010. Here are the results in 2010.

	Conservative	Nick de Bois	18,804	42.3	-0.8
	Labour	Joan Ryan	17,112	38.5	-2.3
	Liberal Democrat	Paul Smith	5,403	12.2	+0.7
	BNP	Tony Avery	1,228	2.8	+0.2
	UKIP	Madge Jones	938	2.1	+0.3
	Green	Bill Linton	489	1.1	+1.1
	Christian	Anthony Williams	161	0.4	+0.4
	English Democrats	Raquel Weald	131	0.3	+0.3
	Workers Revolutionary	Anna Athow	96	0.2	+0.2
	Independent	Gonul Daniels	91	0.2	+0.2
Majority			1,692	3.8
Turnout			44,453	67.1	+6.8

 In 2010 Tory candidate Nick deBois turned around a Labour majority of a couple of thousand to take the seat. The Lib Dems had a decent chunk of the votes, wheras UKIP & The BNP took a 3,000 odd chunk of hard right voters. With similar demographics to Hendon, we should expect a similar pattern in 2015.  Lets look what actually happened.

	Labour	Joan Ryan[6]	20,172	43.7	+5.2
	Conservative	Nick de Bois	19,086	41.4	-0.9
	UKIP	Deborah Cairns	4,133	9.0	+6.8
	Green	David Flint [7]	1,303	2.8	+1.7
	Liberal Democrat	Cara Jenkinson	1,059	2.3	-9.9
	Christian Peoples	Yemi Awolola[8]	207	0.4	N/A
	TUSC	Joe Simpson[9]	177	0.4	N/A

As you can see, Labour turned it around and Joan Ryan stormed back in. What is interesting is how the Lib Dem vote in Enfield seems to have decided to back Ryan. Perhaps rather interestingly, the hard righ vote almost doubled, with the BNP voters defecting to UKIP.


Now lets compare this with Hendon. As you can see, Matthew Offord squeezed out Andrew Dismore with a tiny 106 majority.

	Conservative	Matthew Offord	19,635	42.3	+5.2
	Labour	Andrew Dismore	19,529	42.1	−3.0
	Liberal Democrat	Matthew Harris	5,734	12.4	−1.7
	UKIP	Robin Lambert	958	2.1	+0.5
	Green	Andrew Newby	518	1.1	−0.7
Majority			106	0.2
Turnout			46,374	58.8

Looking at neighbouring Enfield North, you may expect Dismore to have stormed back. What actually happened?

	Conservative	Matthew Offord	24,328	49.0	+6.7
	Labour	Andrew Dismore	20,604	41.5	-0.6
	UKIP	Raymond Shamash	2,595	5.2	+3.2
	Liberal Democrat	Alasdair Hill	1,088	2.2	-10.2
	Green	Ben Samuel	1,015	2	+0.9
Majority			3,724	7.5
Turnout			49,630	66.5

As with Enfield North, the hard right vote more than doubled. But look where the Lib Dem vote went. With the rise in turnout, none of it went to Dismore. Basically, the Tories hoovered up just about every spare vote to keep Dismore out.

So why the huge difference. If you didn't know Enfield, and were only familiar with Hendon, you may say "Well Dismore had all those problems with his expenses, so people didn't like him". In actual fact, Joan Ryan had the biggest expenses bill of any MP and a far worse record on this than Dismore.

In short, there can only be two possible explanations for the different outcome. Either Barnet Labour are particularly bad at campaigning or the Barnet Conservatives are particularly good. Well if you look at the figures, this shows that both of these propositions can be demonstrated to be true.

The turnout went up from 46,374 to 49,630. Basically if this rise had been equally distributed between the candidates, Dismore would have got 20,900 and Offord 21,013. As you can see, Dismore actually got less than this and Offord over 3,000 more. In short, whilst Dismore lost votes, Offord piled them on. However the Barnet Labour party choose to look at this, it is a monumental failure.

For this blog, we are concerned with the Tories. Perhaps the conclusion you'd have drawn was that the Hendon Tories were a super slick organisation to do so well, in the face of a London wide swing to Labour. I am friendly with maany of the local Conservative councillors and activists and I have to report that this is not the view I have formed. In the run up to the election, I was told time and time again that they expected Dismore to wipe the floor with Offord at the polls. The opinion polls also told the same story. Even Matthew Offord joked with me at the Mill Hill hustings that he'd be able to attend a few concerts for the Mill Hill Music Festival as he'd have a bit of time on his hands.

In actual fact, I think the expectation of failure was Matthews biggest assett. This may sound odd, bit in 2010 he expected to win and was rather arrogant and nasty. He would get tetchy at times and I have to admit I found him rather unpleasant on occasion. At the count, when it actually looked for a while like Dismore would win, we saw the worst of his character.

Fast forward to 2015. With no expectation of winning, we saw a different Matthew Offord. He was quite huumble and quite funny. He put a Tory rosette on his dog and he happily chatted to anyone who wanted to listen. At the Mill Hill hustings, I thought he did rather well. Having said that, being a bit more relaxed doesn't win votes.

Where I think Offord scored well was in the under the radar campaignbing he was doing. In Burnt Oak, he's made a massive effort to befriend the Gurkha/Nepalese community. I have had a few conversations with them and their organisation and they love Matthew. He has also got very close to the Evangelical Christian community. With his implacable opposition to same sex marriage, he built strong alliances, especially with the African members of this community. Whilst for liberal North Londoners, Offords stance may not be appealing, to the fundamental Christian community it is a huge vote winner. Many of the members of these congregations are typically Labour supporting people on low incomes with strong moral values. They saw Matthew as a huge ally and a very moral person. Another area where Matthews stance has gone down very well is in the religious orthodox Jewish community. Wheras in neighbouring Finchley and Golders Green, Mike Freer blew a fuse over claims that Labour canvassers were using his open gay lifestyle to turn religious Jews against him, in Hendon Matthew Offord was able to claim with pride "I voted against gay marriage" to these voters.

Whilst Matthew Offords stance may be unappealing to liberal minded voters, it certainly had a galvanising effect on those who hold strong religious views.  Even for more liberal minded members of the local Jewish community, Offord was able to display cast iron credentials for supporting Israel, a very important factor in the Hendon electoral equation. Another area where Offord scored heavily was in the Cypriot community, with his implacable support for the struggle of Greek Cypriots. There are several other groups that Matthew has courted over a long period, including the local Iranian community. Over his five years in Westminster, Matthew has built up a strong personal vote in all of these areas.

It is also clear from the demographics that Matthew hoovered up a large number of former Lib Dem voters (whilst Dismore actually seems to have put them off). Having stood for the Lib Dems in 2010 council elections, I know many of the local supporters. Whilst Dismore was seen by many as an enemy for his ritual attacks on the party at local and national level, Offord was always extremely courteous about his coalition partners and claimed that he was very comfortable working with them in Parliament. You do not have to be a genius to work out which appoach was more likely to succeed.

And what about the local Conservative association? As I said, I was surprised at how lukewarm they seemed to be about the campaign. I cannot believe how few leaflets I've had and we didn't get a knock on the door a single time. I didn't see any Conservative street stalls at weekends in Mill Hill. I was quite disappointed by this as I always enjoy having a chat with the activists and finding out how the campaign is going. In fact the only street stall I saw was the UKIP one. It  may well be I was just out at the wrong time, but in years gone by, you couldn't miss them.

The Tories are pretty good at telephone canvassing and staging micro events to drum up support. Local activists have spent long hours cold calling people and explaining how the SNP will ruin Hendon if Dismore won. Personally I find it hard to believe that such calls would be anything more than an extreme annoyance. I hate any form of cold call, even when Laithwaites ring up to give me free wine, but I am sure the Tories have done their homework on this subject.

So where does this leave the Hendon Torys? Well I would say that they are in pretty good place right now. Offord has moved his seat from being top of the target list to a fairly comfortable majority. He has confounded his critics both in and outside the party and unlike the last election, where there was a cloud of electoral impropriety, following allegations from Andrew Dismore, this time he's won, fair and square.

That is however, not the full story. As Offord has shown time and time again, he is what might be described as hard right. At the Mill Hill Hustings, the UKIP candidate praised him for his stalwart opposition to the EU. If there is a referendum in 2017, Offord will be at odds with his leader on this issue. I do wonder how this will play with his Cypriot friends? It is all very well pulling out of the EU, but this will give the UK zero influence in regards to a future Turkish membership of the EU. I think once the local Cypriot community wake up to this fact, they may take a rather different view of Matthew and the local Tories. Then there is the issue of same sex marriage. Whilst the vote is done and dusted and most have accepted it, I do wonder whether this will eventually become an albatross around his local colleagues neck. It is no secret that many of the more liberal minded members of the local Tory associations would have nothing to do with Offord or his campaign, preferring to support the more liberal minded Freer's campaign.  I am reliably informed that Freer would have been less than gutted if Offord had lost, as the two have fallen out massively over the issue.

I am intrigued to see how Offord behaves in the new parliament. The only conclusion that he can possibly draw is that the local electorate likes his approach and behaviour. I am sure it won't have excaped Offords notice that his share of the vote went up, whilst Freer's went down in Finchley & Golders Green. I fully expect this to result in Matthew becoming even more outspoken on controversial issues. What will also be intriguing will be to see how many of Matthews friends in the various communities he's courted will start popping up in the Hendon Conservative Association as officers and council candidates.

I should imagine that Matthew probably awakes this morning with a bit of a sore head. He is a maverick and I fully expect to see more examples of his rather interesting views. I predict interesting times ahead for Matthew and his association. Whatever you may think of Matthew Offord, his achievement at the ballot box was stunning and he deserves a degree of respect for that, even if like me you have no truck with his politics.

Matthew Offord Vs Mike Freer - The split at the heart of the local Tories

We have a  rather odd situation in Barnet. Back in 2009 Mike Freer Mp was the leader of the Council and Matthew Offord was his deputy. I hadn't realised it at the time, but the two were "The Odd couple" of Barnet politics. I sort of assumed they were joined at the hip, how wrong could I have been.

 A tweet yesterday reminded me of this. Kelly Wilson tweeted a message posted by the "coalition for marriage".

Kelly Wilson ‏@KellyLL88 11h11 hours ago

No show at Hustings & now automatic support to @Andrew_Dismore and @alasdairghill. What planet is @Offord4Hendon on?














 Now I hadn't really heard of the coalition for marriage and when I saw the tweet, I assumed that they were disgusted at Offords stance against Same Sex Marriage. However it turns out that the Coalition for Marriage are not a Coalition for Marriage. They are actually a coalition against marriage, where people are of the same sex. They do not like it when two people of the same sex decide to tie the knot.  Now I am married to someone who is not the same sex as me. That was my choice, which I was completely free to make. We didn't seek anyone elses approval and what we do in private is our business. Whether we go to our bedroom and play tiddly winks, watch football on the telly or other things which are none of your business, well that is our business. We've had our moments, but I think for both of us marriage has been good. We've supported each other when our parents died, in illness and through other disappointments. I can't, in all honesty see what right I've got to deny another human being the right to do the same. Of course there are biblical objections to same sex relationships. There are also biblical objections to eating shellfish, on pain of death. We've moved on. Right wing Christian organisations are militantly against same sex marriage, but Jesus said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" on matters of morality. So I keep all my stones in my pocket when I see someone who makes different choices to me.

As for Mike Freer, another tweet shows he takes a completely different stand on the subject to his former deputy.

PinkNews ‏@pinknews Jan 22

Congrats! Tory MP @mikefreermp and partner Angelo convert their civil partnership to marriage http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/01/22/congratulations-tory-mp-mike-freer-and-partner-angelo-convert-their-civil-partnership-to-marriage/ …







Apparently Offords stance has caused major tensions in their relationship and the two campaigns have virtually no cooperation at all in local matters. Word reaches the Barnet Eye that privately Freer thinks Offord is a complete idiot and has little to do with him, although publicly hios view is that Offord is entitled to his opinion. Either way "The Odd Couple" have not had an amicable parting of the ways.

I must confess I feel a little bit of sympathy for Freer in this matter. He was supportive of Offord, who was not a spectacularly successful deputy and he feels that Offord has not exactly repaid this in the nicest way. We assume that when Offord was working with Freer and Freer was his boss, he kept his views rather quiet on the matter.

The Conservative Party is a broad church and clearly it does accomodate people with all manner of views. I would rather hope that whatever happens with Mike Freer, no one uses his private life as a reason not to vote for him. I do however take a slightly different view with Matthew Offord. A man who clearly keeps his mouth shut when it's convenient and is keen to discriminate against a sizeable portion of the electorate and even his colleagues and friends, in my mind is a man who really doesn't deserve to be sent back to Westminster.

Lazy Tory MP update

On Sunday we revealed that my lazy local MP, Matthew Offord hadn't bothered to sign a single early day motion. I was contacted by a expert on transport who pointed out that Hendon constituency has a large population of commuters. In the past few years there have been huge issues with both Thameslink and the Northern Line. These local services have been under huge strain. There has been a proposal to alleviate the strain by building the Brent Cross Light Railway. The heart of this service would be in Hendon, it would add a station for the RAF museum and the large development there, linking it to Brent Cross. It would also connect the East and West branches of the Northern Line and give a huge boost to the local community.

My correspondent says that Mr Offord has offered no support on this matter and has no interest in the project. He has had nothing at all to say on the issue of the Brent Cross redevelopment and the transport issues surrounding this. Surely we need an MP who cares about the issues that affect his constituency and the real issues that affect the lives of his constituents?

Matthew Offord MP reselected by the Conservatives in Hendon

Many congratulations to Matthew Offord MP on his reselection as MP for Hendon. As the constituencies leading political blogger, I can honestly say Matthew has been a delight to work with. He has brough the people of Hendon endless minutes of fun with his "interesting" views on human rights for dogs, serving up soup to David Cameron, his "late night" encounter with the Tory chief whip, his efforts to wind his old boss Mike Freer MP up about Gay marriage and all of the other things he's done in the last three years which for some reason a have completely slipped my mind.

When he was Deputy Leader of Barnet Council, the Barnet Eye christened Matthew "Captain Useless". We have to concede that he has totally exceeded our expectations in this department. He is no Captain Useless, he is a Field Marshall ! I actually quite like Matthew and hope he really enjoys the next year and a half at Parliament. I would advise him to put his feet up, chill out and relax, but he needs no lecture from me on that matter.

The Saturday List #35 - Ten achievements of Hendon MP Matthew Offord

As ever on Saturday we have our list of interesting things. This week we have the spotlight on our local MP Matthew Offord. We list his top ten achievements since becoming an MP in 2012.  Mr Offord has achieved widespread fame for has absolutely, completely sane, rational and reasonable behaviour.

1. He got on news at ten for opposing gay marriage, suggesting that if it was allowed we'd all become polygamists.

2. He made the politics show with Andrew Neil campaigning for human rights for dogs, when the House of Commons told him he couldn't bring his pooch to work.

3. He achieved an honourable mention in the press for apparently being completely sober in the bar at 1am in the morning at the Tory party conference and indulging in handbags with the Tory chief whip.

4. He famously got mistaken for a soup waiter by David Cameron, when he first appeared in the Commons restaurant. Cameron asked him what soup he'd recommend.

5. Mr Offord has been widely praised for his scheme to bring a cheese shop to Mill Hill Broadway. Despite hoardes of hungry fromagarists eagerly awaiting the opening, this has yet to happen, despite it being one of his 2010 election campaign themes.

6. Mr Offord is also widely known for his appreciation of a good party in a Jacuzzi. If you have a jacuzzi in your back garden and you are having a party, ask him along. He really enjoys it.

7. Mr Offord has also been a member of the Parliamentary Armed forces scheme, which has allowed him to fly with the Army to South America and personally close down several major international drugs cartels (Well that was the impression he gave).

8. Mr Offord also received widespread acclaim for his attack on his former best mate and local party activist Adrian Murray Leonard. After the 2010 election, when Mr Offord no longer needed teams of willing doorknockers, he publicly attacked Mr Murray Leonard, accusing him of all manner of bad behaviour (which Mr Murray Leonard denies). It seems that having secured the job of MP, he apparently found a conscience.

9. On the subject of falling out with mates, apparently relations are somewhat strained between himself and his former best mate, ardent supporter and boss, Mike Freer MP. The two have fallen out as Mr Freer is an impassioned supporter of gay marriage, which Offord opposes.

10. Matthew is a very bright chap. He recently became a Doctor receiving a PhD for his work. ‘Rural Governance and Economic Development: The Changing Landscape of Rural Local Government’. It is an academic examination that considers whether changes introduced through the Local Government Act 2000 has introduced a measure of uniformity in the way rural councils work.Clearly this work has massively assisted him in his inderstanding of how to help his more deprived constituents in Burnt Oak, Grahame Park and Colindale.

Matthew is a tireless campaigner (yes he has absolutely no tires at all) and has built a reputation based on all of the work he has done for his constituents. Click here to see his busy calendar of events where you can meet him and tell him what a marvellous job he's doing

http://www.matthewofford.co.uk/events

Matthew is also an extremely honest MP as can be seen by the analysis of the One Barnet program on his website

http://www.matthewofford.co.uk/local-issues-one-barnet

As you can see that Matthew is convinced this is a fantastic idea. To quote his website

"The proposal has been established on a proper business case evidenced by the agreement of the Council’s own Section 151 Monitoring Officer."

Matthew is clearly impressed that a part time consultant, who is clearly clever enough to sort out rather beneficial tax arrangements, has told him that there is a proper business case !!!!

Lets hope Matthew gets hold of this and publishes it on his website. He is also rather impressed that the press reported that the council were considering changes way back 2009. It is marvellous that he has taken so much interest in the program. Strangely he doesn't mention he was one of the architects of it as Deputy Leader of Barnet Council? I wonder why that could be? Maybe he doesn't want it to become number eleven on the list.

Sir John Gorst - RIP

It's Gorst of Course

The first election I can remember was the 1974 General Election. Mill Hill was then in the constituency of Hendon North. It had been a Tory stronghold for a long, long time. My house was split between my Mum who always voted either Labour or Liberal, depending on who she thought was most likely to beat the Tories and my Dad who was a lifelong Tory. I sided with my mum on this one. Her arguments were more persuasive. She associated Labour with the NHS which had recently saved her life when she developed cancer. She associated Tories with exploitation, suppression of the working man and inequality. My Dad was a businessman and felt that Labour was the party of the Unions, which were ruining the country and the Conservatives were the party of stability and security. My road, Millway was awash with blue posters, proclaiming "It's Gorst of Course" (at later elections I'd take great delight at pulling up the staked garden posters - of course I've long since grown out of such behaviour).

With regards to politics, there was only one thing on which they agreed. This was that Sir John Gorst was a decent man and a fine MP for his constituents. Sir John Gorst was the MP and he had helped several people we knew. My Father used to give reasonable amounts of cash to the Tories. He would often point people with issues with bureaucracy at Gorst and tell them with "He will sort it out". He invariably did, apart from one case, which I still remember. Our next door neighbour was an Asian guy and he was being deported. He told my father that a great injustice had been done to him and his family. There was a "mix up" and he was being persecuted. My father told him to get in touch with Gorst and say he was a personal friend. He assurred him Gorst would sort it out. A couple of weeks later may father saw the neighbour, who informed him Gorst was useless and a racist. My father was quite shocked. He called John Gorst and asked why. Gorst asked if my father was aware of the details of the case. My father said he was. Gorst then asked if he was aware that my neighbour was an illegal immigrant, who had been prosecuted for mistreating a maid of the family who was living the life of a virtual slave and suffering appalling abuse. Gorst said he would have helped the man if he had been genuine, but it was open and shut case and the guy was a scumbag. My father was suitably embarrassed.

The next time I had dealings with Sir John Gorst was at a rally in Montrose Park to protest against the closure of Edgware General Hospital in 1996. Sir John had broken ranks with the Tory Government and was defying a three line whip, to do the right thing by his constituents. He spoke at the rally with conviction and passion. He was by far the best public speaker. His oration was far superior to his then Labour challenger Andrew Dismore. I was quite amazed by just how good he was. I respected his morals and principles and although I was extremely pleased to see Andrew Dismore elected, I was sorry to see a genuinely decent man lose heavily, on an issue where he was on the right side.

Gorst paid the price for the closure of Edgware General Hospital by the then Tory Government, despite being a vocal opponent of the scheme. It strikes me that in politics, there really is no justice at all. I wonder what Sir John made of the current crop of Barnet politicians. I wonder what his views of the Allowancegate scandal were? Whilst there were many policies with which I disagreed with Sir John Gorst, I can honestly say that this blog would not cover politics if all of the current crop of Barnet politicians had the morals, courage and principles of Sir John Gorst.

The Daily Telegraph writes a fine obituary. I hadn't realised just how independently minded he was and for that I salute him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/7927026/Sir-John-Gorst.html

Matthew Offord wins Hendon but it's not all bad news

I bumped into a friend who is a Labour activist in Mill Hill yesterday. She was devastated. She told me how she felt that as the margin had been 106 votes, she felt personally responsible for not working harder on the campaign. Well for her and all of the other people who feel rather sad, here's a blog which might bring a little cheer to you. I've closely watched Matthew Offords career and there are many people who his lifestyle and his policies will make a big difference to. These are the people Andrew Dismore ignored.

Sports  -  Andrew Dismore was not known for his sporting prowess. Unlike Andrew, Offord is a keen sportsman. For a while, he wrote a fascinating blog on the Hendon Times detailing his love of racing fast yatchs in races around the coast such as the Fastnet. This is clearly going to lead to a massive boost for the large yatch industry in Hendon. Maybe Matthew will propose to tranform Burnt Oak, Graham Park and Colindale into a huge boating lake. It could become the St Tropez of London. I'm sure Matthew would be more than keen to see all of the residents of the decent social housing in Burnt Oak happily rehoused elsewhere in the Borough.

Wine Merchants - Andrew Dismore was not known for his support of fine wine merchants. Matthew on the other hand knows his Merlots from his Chardonnays. I expect a huge boom for the sellers of better quality plonk.

Cheese Merchants - Andrew Dismore made many interventions in the house of commons during his career. None of these supported the sellers of High quality cheese. Matthew Offord on the other hand is extremely fond of high quality cheese. He has commented on many occasions that it is a shame that Mill Hill Broadway doesn't have a decent cheese shop. I expect this to be rectified forthwith.

Building Contractors - Unlike Andrew Dismore who had no interest in the building contracting industry, Matthew Offord singlehandedly has done more for this sector than anyone else in Barnet. He masterminded the Aerodrome Road Bridge replacement contract. Whilst stingy old Barnet Council only wanted to pay the poor contractors £12 million, Matthew oversaw the deals with the contractors. Luckily for the builders, they were able to extract another £11 million with Matthews help.

Stingy bosses - Andrew Dismore never stood up for the rights of stingy bosses who wanted to pay bad wages. Matthew Offord on the other hand was a keen architect of the Future Shape Outsourcing program in Barnet. This will mean Barnet can get rid of lots of council employees and give the contracts to stingy contractors who will pay their staff a pittance. It is good that after 13 years of Labour, these bosses now have someone in Parliament who understands them and will stick up for them.

Jacuzzi party hosts - Whilst Andrew Dismore has never ever made a single public statement about Jacuzzi Parties, all of my friends who are local Tories, tell me that Matthew is rather partial to Jacuzzi Parties (sadly I've not been invited to any of these). They tell me many stories of the happy times Matthew has had at these parties.

So there you go, it's not all bad news. With Matthew in charge we'll all be living in the St Tropez of London (apart from those of us rehoused in rabbit hutch flats). We'll be drinking red wine and eating cheese at our Jacuzzi parties, whilst being entertained by stingy bosses and building contractors who are flush with cash. Roll on Camelot !!!!