Philanthropist and environmentalist Edward Hoare takes on the Random 19

14 October 2022

Edward Hoare is a philanthropist and environmentalist and direct descendant of Sir Richard Hoare, who founded Hoare’s Bank in 1672.

C. Hoare & Co. is the UK’s oldest privately-owned bank, retained continuously by the Hoare family for 12 generations, this year celebrating its 350th anniversary. In 1719, ‘Good Henry’ Hoare founded Westminster Hospital, the world’s first publicly funded hospital. In 1891, William Hoare founded the world’s first hospice, Royal Trinity Hospice. Many other hospitals, schools, churches and charitable institutions have sprung from the family’s energetic vision for society. Each year the partners donate up to 10 per cent of the bank’s profits to charity.

Travelling adventurer

Born at Stourhead, Edward was a member of the Hoare’s Bank Family Forum, which continues the Hoare family tradition of giving to good causes.

He left home as a young man, living in Rio de Janeiro where he worked in The Bank of London and South America, from 1968-71. He returned home and trained as a Chartered Accountant from 1972 to 1976.

In 1977, he embarked on a trip around the world, during which he visited the Royal Chitwan National Park in Nepal, inspiring his pioneering interests in environmental issues.

Edward finally joined the family bank as a Bankers’ Agent, a position he held for more than 30 years.

Edward now explores new ways in how to make the planet more sustainable, and has co-created an innovative mind-mapping platform called Thortspace. The main focus of attention is the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and what can be done to enable greater involvement with the most important plans for the planet.

And so, to the questions …

1. What’s your relationship with the Blackmore Vale (the loose North Dorset area, not us!)?

I’ve always looked out on the Blackmore Vale! Having been born in Stourhead, we’re just a short way away from Bourton, and Bourton is actually within the Vale. So really it has been home for the whole of my life.

2. What is your comfort meal?

Great question! Two slices of toast, a load of grated cheese, Branston pickle, all put together in a sandwich, the top slice smothered in rapeseed oil. Then put in the top of the oven til it’s really crispy and brown. Delicious!

3. What was the last film you watched?
‘Don’t Look Up’ and YES, I’d certainly recommend it. How important is that film? The fact that the climate complications that we’re looking at now are just the same as those in Don’t Look Up, where big business and political thinking get right in the way of what the whole of humanity is facing as a potential catastrophe.
And what’s lovely is that we know the world will have us. If we behave too badly, mother nature will just have us all.

4. Cats or dogs?

Dogs – I am a dog man … We have five dogs now – yes, five!

One is a weeny little pug-chiahuahua cross, and the others are all smallish labradors.

My very first dog was at Stourhead and was a dachshund called Monty.

5. What shop can you not pass without going in?

Probably connected with food. Especially really excellent food – I’ll go anywhere where there’s exceptional food. I do like Barclays in Wincanton. But I tend not to go to shops. If you go to shops, you get tempted to spend money.

6. What would you like to tell 15-year-old you?

I actually had quite a think about this one, and I think it’s four little things:

Do as you would be done by

Do things well

Take a long term view, and

Stand up for right.

(Edward changed his mind on this, his first answer was

‘Listen and listen and listen … and be kind’, which I think is also a great message for a 15 year old – Ed, the mother of a 15 year old)

7. What’s your secret superpower?

I’d say looking in the eyes and speaking the truth

8. What book did you read last year that stayed with you?

‘Red Notice’ by Bill Browder (founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country after exposing widespread corruption. In 2009 his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was murdered in Russian police custody).
It gives such an insight into stuff that happens – political things, the way the world works.

9. What would you most like to be remembered for?

Trying hard for others, looking to the future and doing it – always.

10. What’s your most annoying trait?

Persistence – I never give up!

11. What was the last gift you gave someone?

It was a clothes dryer – and it was much appreciated!

12. Your favourite quote?

“If you don’t ask, you don’t get”

I went to Eton and at the age of 17, I wanted to learn Portuguese – because Brazil was the first country I knew of where people of all backgrounds and any colour were all living together without threatening violence on each other. I thought ‘hey ho, I’d like to try that’. So I asked my parents if I could learn Portuguese and they weren’t particularly interested in my reasoning, they said: ‘Yes, get on with it yourself”. So I did.
With one other person we approached the school, and they arranged a tutor for us.
Then, a year later, with no family, friends or connections living in Brazil I got a job in the Bank of London and South America, and went to live in Rio for three years. It was absolutely fantastic. And come the end of it, aged just 22, I wrote the Brazilian rules of life. And even now, 50 years on, they make me smile. And my number one rule is ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’ (number eight is ‘Listen – if you don’t, you cannot hear.’)

13. The best crisps flavour?

Marmite ones!

14. And the best biscuit for dunking?

Always a McVitie’s digestive.

15. Your top three most-visited websites?

Most Important Plans
Philanthropy impact
Mere Mutters!
(a small cheat as it’s the local Facebook group)

16. Chip shop chips or home baked cake?

Can I have chips, please!

17. Tell us about one of the best evenings you’ve had?

It was my 60th birthday. I was in the middle of the Amazon region, with my wife and friends and other lovely people, next to a river … and it was dreamlike.

18. What in life is frankly a mystery to you?

I think it’s how uncaring and non-listening and cruel many of us can be.

19. You have the power to pass one law tomorrow, uncontested. What will you do?

I’d pass a law where all public money and public contracts go to recipients who are transparent, so nothing is ever allowed to be hidden.

Who is Dinah? Was Dinah’s Hollow near Shaftesbury named after a woman?

Laura

14 October 2022

Dinah’s Hollow is a holloway – a landscape feature common in Dorset, Somerset and many other parts of Britain. A holloway – literally a ‘hollow way’ or sunken lane – is defined as a road or track that is significantly lower than the land on either side: not formed by the (recent) engineering of a road cutting but possibly of much greater age. The term ‘holloway’ is thought to come from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘hola-weg’ which means ‘sunken road’; no-one knows how many of these tunnel-like lanes exist throughout Britain, but Dorset has more than its fair share.

Theories about how holloways were formed include erosion by water or traffic or digging double banks to mark the boundaries of estates. They are also found in France, Spain and the US, where these ancient routes are called “traces” – one of the best known is the Old Natchez Trace, an ancient corridor originally used by Native Americans, which starts in Mississippi and runs north-east for around 450 miles.

They are typically found in regions with soft terrain, such as the chalk and sandstone areas of southern England, rather than rocky landscapes. Essentially, they are man-made, which is why they have cultural as well as environmental significance – writers and campaigners, including Robert Macfarlane and the environmental arts charity Common Ground, have highlighted their importance. These paths were slowly etched into the landscape through repeated human activity – the passage of countless footsteps and the movement of livestock, shaping these distinctive deep lanes over time.

Shaftesbury, a major hilltop settlement, is surrounded by holloways, of which Dinah’s Hollow is the best known (partly because it has been subject to successive council plans to clear, widen or close it). Among Dorset’s other famous holloways are Shute’s Lane and Hell Lane at Symondsbury, near Bridport – if you’ve never visited it, see the BV’s spectacular walk through Hell Lane here.

No-one knows where Dinah’s Hollow originally got its name (there are also references to Diney’s Hollow and Dinas Hollow). One explanation comes from the late Bob Breach, local historian, former teacher and parish councillor, in an interview on Shaftesbury’s radio station This is Alfred, on 24th May 2021. There are two suggestions, he says – that Dinah was a local whore, or that it is Dina from Dinas, a Celtic name for a road through somewhere (in Cornwall and Wales, dinas can also mean a fort).

Whether the answer is a road or a whore, Bob Breach says: “I wouldn’t like to take a bet!”

Connecting with the wild

Editorial team

13 October 2022

Autumn is the time to delay your daily walk until the light begins to fade, suggests wildlife writer Jane Adams – there’s a whole new world at dusk

Autumn is a great time to experience wildlife, especially at dusk. A walk in the countryside when the light is fading can add a whole new dimension to the way we perceive the world.
But don’t be surprised if it feels a little scary, that’s only to be expected. We humans are programmed to mistrust the uncertainty of darkness; no doubt a throwback to when our ancestors faced genuine risks from wild wolves and enemy tribes.
Nowadays, though, tripping and stumbling into a low-growing branch are likely to be your biggest hazards!
So accept the tingle of uncertainty that trickles down your spine and pick a clear, moonlit evening, when even a torch becomes unnecessary.

Look with your ears
Many wild animals relax a little as darkness falls. With less traffic and people, they become more confident when cloaked in the safety of darkness.
You might also hear sounds you don’t initially recognise. There could be a badger shuffling through the undergrowth, noisily scratching in the woodland loam for worms and slurping slugs from leaves.
Or in the distance, you might hear deer stags bellowing and groaning as they vie for the right to breed, rivals jousting like medieval knights.
In October, tawny owls will be patrolling their wooded territories. The hooo-huhuhuhoooing of the male and the female’s ker-wicking contact calls often haunt the cooling air.
Foxes will emerge, long-legged and agile, negotiating the ditches and fences, barely making a sound as they trot out to hunt over fallen leaves.

Barn owl (Tyto alba) perched on a post at dusk.

Sense it all
Take some time to listen, and breathe a little deeper. Find a tree trunk to rest against. Touch the leaves and soil beneath you, feel the texture of the velvet moss and iron-hard bark behind your head.
As summer dies, it feeds the earth, releasing the scent of autumn on the breeze. Reconnect with the natural world. Then, when the time is right, wander (carefully) home.

Green shoots at the Green Man

Editorial team

13 October 2022

Well done to successive owners of the Green Man for sticking with the King’s Stag pub’s traditional name, says Roger Guttridge

The Green Man c1908 with a line-up of early motor cars.
Picture from Roger Guttridge’s Blackmore Vale Camera.

It’s refreshing to find an historic pub that hasn’t had its name meddled with in recent decades, especially when that name is traditional and meaningful.
And the Green Man at King’s Stag is just that. According to its website, the hostelry has been in the village since the 17th century and was originally known as the Inn at King Stag. But it has been the Green Man for as long as anyone alive can remember, and in fact much longer.
I happen to have a copy of Kelly’s Directory of Dorset for 1931 and, after referring me to the entry for Lydlinch – King’s Stag being in that parish – it told me that the Green Man’s landlord 91 years ago was one Albert Percy Padfield.
The Green Man name is synonymous with forestry and rural England and a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that begins every spring.
That is especially appropriate right now, given the green shoots that are almost visibly sprouting at the pub.
After what the website itself describes as a ‘rocky few years’, the Green Man is back on its feet with an impressive new beer garden and the additional attraction of a coffee shop.
My two pictures from the early 20th century show how little the building itself has changed in more than 100 years.

Children and a mobile knife-grinder gather for the camera outside the Green Man in the early 1900s.
Picture from Barry Cuff collection, published in Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, by David Burnett

The Dorset FX
The one with the three cars appeared in my book Blackmore Vale Camera in 1991, when I was able to identify the owners of those with the Dorset FX number plate.
Far left (FX 307), seated beside his driver in the 60hp Fiat, is Sir Randolf Baker (1879-1953), owner of the Ranston Estate at Shroton and MP for North Dorset.
Sir Randolf, who was twice awarded the Distinguished Service Order while serving in the Dorset Yeomanry during the First World War, was a motoring pioneer whose first car, a 10hp Panhard, was only the second in the county.
The identity of the car (FX 387) next to the horse and wagon (far right) is in dispute.
In 1991, I had reason to think it belonged to Francis Learworth, of Hanford. But in Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, based on Barry Cuff’s collection of old Dorset postcards, author David Burnett identifies the car as a 16hp Vauxhall owned by Thomas Spiller, of Luccombe Farm at Milton Abbas.
I can’t currently resolve this except to suggest that perhaps it was owned by both gentlemen at different times!
The LC-number plate on the centre car suggests a London registration.

The Green Man at King’s Stag today
Image: Roger Guttridge

Henry III’s stag
The other early 1900s picture shows a travelling knife-grinder and another local tradesman as well as the usual gaggle of children who were attracted by the novelty of the camera just as kids today (and some attention-seeking adults!) love to linger in the background when there’s a TV camera about.
There are two stories as to how King’s Stag itself acquired its name.
It was called ‘Kingestake’ in a document dated 1337 while ‘Kingstake Bridg’ is mentioned in the 16th century.
These probably refer to a king’s stake which once marked the spot at the bridge over the River Lydden where the parishes of Lydlinch, Pulham and Hazelbury Bryan meet.
The alternative placename story is much more fun but probably untrue.
Legend has it that King Henry III was hunting in the Blackmore Vale when he saw a white hart, which he decided to spare.
When the king’s bailiff later slew the magnificent beast near the bridge over the Lydden, the king was so angry that he threw the offender in jail and fined the whole Vale.
Hence King’s Stag.

So mushroom for sweet chestnuts

Editorial team

12 October 2022

As the summer crops hang on a little longer and the autumn season begins, October is the best month for foraging, says expert Carl Mintern

Sweet chestnut trees kindly leave the nuts at their base, ready for collecting

October is here, and it’s perhaps the most exciting time to be a forager. Most of the tender plants are still hanging on in places, offering a rich assortment of wild salads and herbs, and the nut harvest is now in full swing. To top it all there is never a greater variety or abundance of wild edible mushrooms to choose from, meaning I can sometimes return from a trip to a woodland or footpath with bags of produce collected from high and low.

Field Mushrooms
Let’s start with one such bag filler – Field Mushrooms (Agaricus Campestris).
Field Mushrooms can be found from summer to autumn, but I have found the peak season in these parts to be September and October. During this period, I can often spot them in a field as I am driving around, at which point I tend to hit the brakes and work out where I can park (after checking my mirrors, obviously)! One of the best things about this mushroom is that when you find some, you often find a lot, meaning just one harvesting session can sometimes end up with me bringing home a year’s supply! Couple this with the fact that these mushrooms are really easy to preserve through dehydrating and I think you are onto a winner.

Just making sure
The Field Mushroom is found in grassland that is not intensively used by agriculture, meaning not monocultures where the use of pesticides is prevalent, but look for them on grazing pasture for sheep and the like. It is a saprobic mushroom, meaning it survives by recycling dead and decaying organic matter under the foliage of the grass. It can be found individually or in clumps, but also in partial or full rings, sometimes many metres across.
Look for a smooth and white cap which can develop a slightly darker centre with time. The young mushroom is domed, resembling the shape of a closed cup mushroom from the supermarket, but the cap opens out to flat as it grows. The gills start off a delicate pink and turn brown then eventually black with age. The size of the cap is usually 3cm to 10cm and if handled roughly can bruise a very slight yellowish colour. The poisonous lookalike mushroom, helpfully called the Yellow Stainer, also stains yellow – but much more vividly.
Luckily for us there is also another key identifier to help us differentiate between this delicious edible and its toxic cousin – smell.
The Yellow Stainer will smell of chemicals, rather than the usual ‘mushroomy’ smell we might expect, and this smell can be exaggerated by placing in the microwave for a few seconds if further reassurance is needed. As always, never munch on a hunch and be sure you have correctly identified your prize before eating!

Your sense of smell should easily tell edible Field Mushrooms from their poisonous Yellow Stainer lookalikes.

Sweet chestnuts
Next up on my free wild food shopping list is sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa) – a delicious treat of sweet nuttiness, as the name suggests. Sweet chestnut is another wild edible that was introduced to Britain by the Romans, so we can add this nut to the list when answering that old chestnut, “what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Chestnuts can be cooked in any way imaginable; baked, roasted, boiled, or microwaved. But do ensure you score a cross in the shiny skin otherwise there is a high probability of exploding when they are cooked!
After cooking, the options continue to expand. Eat them as-is, add them to desserts or make some stuffing. You can also puree them, store them in syrup or make delicious sweets from them.
Established trees will kindly leave the nuts at their base ready for you to collect, and, with their unmistakable prickly shell, they are not easily confused with anything dangerous. Just be sure you know the difference between sweet chestnuts and conkers and you cannot go wrong … unless of course you forget to bring gloves!

Spooky insouciance instead of consensus

Editorial team

12 October 2022

The national picture feels like the beginning of the end, says North Dorset Lib Dems’ Mike Chapman, but there’s need to watch the new Investment Zone

After all the flourish and noisy braying in past weeks from the Government benches about ‘real Conservative policy’ … it all looks a bit less professional today. There are two fundamental concerns here: does this package deliver growth or does it merely deliver division? Then, does this package presage a confident, capable government for the next two years? I do try to be positive, but look, it is desperately simple: those earning the least keep less because personal allowances are frozen. And the mood music says that benefits will be pared back. Otherwise, as individuals or businesses, we are back to where we were a few months ago, except that … interest rates are rising, impacting mortgages; the weak pound and higher cost of imports are stoking inflation; and energy bills will still be going up.
I cannot see how these measures in these circumstances deliver an incentive to spend and/or invest – the drivers of growth.
The huge cost has been loaded onto the nation’s credit card in a budget lacking the other side of the equation but it was the insouciance, the devil-may-care attitude as much as the fiscal irresponsibility that spooked the markets. Added to this, we have the continuing and spreading industrial unrest and anxiety about budgets in every other area of public expenditure. Great start? It feels more like the beginning of the end.

Confrontation politics
Closer to home, we have Dorset Council looking to turn parts of the county into an Investment Zone, with all the regulatory relaxation that implies.
To suggest that some of the motivation might be to help dig themselves out of the hole they are in with the Local Plan might be unkind. We shall all need to watch, though, how the Zone idea develops; especially when seen in conjunction with the mooted relaxation of the planning system. With Dorset and Somerset both involved, there must also be a danger of a race to the bottom as each competes to attract bigger business investment.
Our democracy, so deeply attached to its polarities and its confrontational ways, struggles to find consensus of the kind many of the more successful nations seem to manage. Risky shifts in policy, ignoring the experts, have rarely served us well. Consensus may be hard to achieve but it is the soundest basis for public policy.

Stur’s Nexus
Enough philosophy. Back to our local world. There are exciting prospects for Sturminster Newton’s ‘Nexus’ business incubator project, whose launch happens on the evening of 10th October upstairs in The Emporium. It brings together many parts of the community, including local business organisations, philanthropists and volunteers, to create a mentoring environment for start-ups and fledgling businesses. Backed up by seasoned professional advice and support, including the potential for investment, it looks to be an excellent example of what can be achieved by working together toward a highest common denominator.
Three words that trump any race to the bottom, methinks.

The rich just keep on getting richer

Editorial team

12 October 2022

Infighting and infantile economics set the table for a fairly disastrous first course from our new prime minister, says Labour’s Pat Osborne

Few can deny that it was a disastrous first Conservative Party Conference for Liz Truss. Her tax cut U-turn has been a total humiliation for the new prime minister and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, prompting an infighting free-for-all amongst the Tories, reminiscent of the bunfight scene from Bugsy Malone.
But it’s hard to find any amusement in a political pie-in-the-face when it’s rooted in a collective blunder that will continue to do so much damage to those who can least afford it.
According to the Resolution Foundation, despite scrapping the abolition of the 45p tax rate, the measures announced in the now-infamous ‘mini-budget’ will deliberately widen the inequality gap further. The richest five per cent will gain an average of £3,500 next year, while the poorest 20 per cent of households will gain around £90. In fact, the richest five per cent still stand to gain more than the poorest half of the income distribution combined, with any real term benefit for most of us being swallowed up by the spiralling cost of living crisis made worse by rocketing interest rates driven by the Government’s economic incompetence.

GCSE Economics
While Truss and Kwarteng’s £18 billion corporation tax cut remains standing, the Chancellor has announced £18 billion in cuts to our already creaking public services.
Meanwhile, our schools and our hospitals require intensive care themselves, after 12 years of Tory austerity – and the hard-working people who work in them (and whom we clapped during lockdown) desperately deserve a pay rise, not another real term pay cut.
But as most of us are finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet, Liz Truss’s instinct is to stand firmly by a mini-budget which is designed to line the pockets of the rich and wealthy, and has all the substance of a GCSE economics assignment copied from the Chuckle Brothers on the bus to school.

We’re not the only ones facing a challenging winter

Editorial team

12 October 2022

The squirrel in your back garden really can benefit from where you choose to spend your weekly shop, says North Dorset Green Party’s Ken Huggins

Two years ago we enjoyed our best hazelnut harvest ever, with hundreds of nuts to enjoy through Christmas. Last year was very different, with just a handful left. The culprit appeared this summer; a squirrel digging furiously in the garden and every now and then emerging triumphantly with a hazelnut. I was a bit miffed.
But we need to share our harvest with other creatures and I appreciated the hazelnut saplings that sprang up where the squirrel had missed some of its buried treasure.
This summer’s harvest is looking very different, though. In the heat and drought our hazelnut tree lost half its leaves mid summer, and then the nuts began to drop. They were empty. Nothing for us, or the squirrel.
On the nearby Alners Gorse butterfly reserve the wild blackberries are small and dry, the sloes are tiny, and the elderberries are almost non existent. Slim pickings for those who like to forage treats from nature’s bounty, but we can buy food elsewhere. Some wildlife will undoubtedly fail to survive this winter for lack of food.
The UK is rated as one of the most nature-deprived countries in the world, largely due to intensive industrialised farming. Since 1950 we have lost 118,000 miles of hedgerow habitat, and 97% of wildflower meadows. Unsustainable use of artificial fertilizers & pesticides is destroying our soils, polluting our waters, and crashing the insect populations that pollinate our crops. Of course, these devastating environmental costs are never included in the price of the supermarket’s cheap food.
We as consumers are not powerless. What we choose to buy – and not to buy – makes a real difference. We can choose to eat more seasonal and less highly processed food. And, those who can, to support organic producers whenever possible.
Do spare a thought for the wildlife that will inevitably struggle during this post-drought winter. Put food out for the birds, and perhaps let some of your garden grow wild to provide a habitat for the insects and other creatures that life depends on. Perhaps join the River of Flowers project and grow pollinator friendly wildflowers, or join groups working to restore our wildlife. You have the power!

Same party, different views

Editorial team

12 October 2022

There’ll not be a general election until 2024 – but that doesn’t mean the fight for practical, pragmatic politics ends, argues Simon Hoare MP

The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes tells us: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” As the hand of autumn firmly settles over our landscape, we are more than aware of the ending of one season and a passing to the next.
And so, perhaps, we might be seeing this on our political landscape too. I fought my first Parliamentary election in 1997. Not a great year for the Tory party and an election that heralded 13 years of Labour Government. Slowly the Tory Party, in the words of the song, got itself up, dusted itself off and started all over again. We should expect a General Election in 2024; I know that many want that to be earlier. I can understand their argument but I do not share it. With all of the recent turmoil and sadness, COVID, Ukraine, the death of The Queen, interest rates and inflation, I really do not believe that it would be in the interests of the UK to take six weeks for a General Election campaign.

Side with commonsense
I am firmly of the view that most people want the Government to focus – and focus on solving today’s problems in a practical and pragmatic way. I will work tirelessly, as I have done since first elected, to ensure that the interests of North Dorset are taken into account when policy evolves. I want to make sure that Government is doing all it can to help and support people locally. In so doing, I appreciate that sometimes puts me out of step with Government – but I have usually found that the commonsense side of the argument, that I am inclined to be on, usually wins through in the end. Let me give you some recent examples.
I have made clear, both publicly and privately, that I will not support a resurrection of fracking. I will continue with this campaign and hope that Government listens. Fracking is bad news for Dorset’s environment. I hope Government listens to the public mood.

It is the dragon of inflation that must be slayed, not our pledge to protect the vulnerable
Simon Hoare

Likewise, I could not fathom any economic, social or political merit in removing the 45p income tax band. The Government listened to many voices making the same point and has changed direction. I welcome that.
I have also made clear that I believe that benefits across the board should rise with the rate of inflation this year. You cannot build a successful economy by making the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society more difficult.
It is the dragon of inflation that must be slayed, not our pledge to protect the vulnerable of our country.
During the summer I made clear that helping households with fuel bills was not a ‘handout’ but a vital measure of support due to unforeseen and arguably unforeseeable events. I therefore welcome the package of measures that the Government has announced for both domestic and business customers. I continue to advocate for a Windfall Tax (as, incidentally, does Shell).

Being poorly educated, feeling unsafe or being unhealthy does not economy contributors make.
simon hoare

As a Conservative I of course welcome competitive and realistic levels of tax (both personal and corporate). Reducing the tax burden is important and is a noble enterprise, but it should only be delivered when it is affordable. I remain distinctly uncomfortable with the strategy of borrowing to fund tax cuts, and wait to see what the Office for Budget Responsibility has to say on that matter before the Treasury proceeds. I remain implacably opposed to delivering tax cuts funded by reducing investment in vital public services that the vast vast majority of our fellow citizens use, be it local government, health or education.
High quality public services produce results which play a key role in levelling up. Being poorly educated, feeling unsafe or being unhealthy does not economy contributors make.
So, whatever the season, I shall continue, to the best of my abilities, to advocate for North Dorset in the ‘corridors of power’.
To try to secure the best deal I can for you.
I share Churchill’s old view (not one shared by any party’s Whips’ Office) that it’s constituency, country then party that should dictate and shape an MP’s action.
Simon Hoare MP

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