Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Welcome to ‘Letters From A Tory’, covering British politics from a conservative perspective. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about today’s letter, and don’t forget that you can CLICK HERE to get my letters sent to you by RSS every morning. Dear Bridget Gilderdale,
I find it deeply depressing that assisted suicide only [...]

Dear David Willetts,
Nice to have you back on the front pages after assuming a relatively quiet role over the past year or so.  As the Conservative Party is about to release a Green Paper on the family, now is a good time to raise two questions: have the Conservatives got the right policies on families, [...]

Dear Clegg, Brown and Cameron,
There is something that I’ve been following throughout conference season this year and it’s not something that many people may have noticed: references to your families during party conference speeches.  Interestingly, all three of you took different approaches to this controversial topic.
Let us begin with David Cameron, who made his conference speech [...]

“I’ve fallen on hard times. I am having to pay 20 million to a woman who I believe is the special love child of Bernie Madoff and Heather Mills”
- John Cleese on his divorce settlement problems.

From the Independent:
Until a few weeks before they were arrested, the boys lived with their mother and other siblings in a tatty semi on a quiet council estate. They lived there for eight years until they were moved into foster care about a month before they committed GBH by beating, burning and sexually abusing two [...]

“If you want to protect your money from the powers of the court, don’t get married.”
- Nicholas Mostyn QC, known as “Mr Payout” for the generous sums he has won for ex-wives.  John Cleese hit the news earlier this week after his wife waltzed away from their 16-year marriage with £8 million in cash and [...]

Dear John Bercow,
It’s not proving to be an easy ride, is it?  First you get caught refurbishing your grace-and-favour Westminster apartment at a cost of £20,000, including more than £7,000 on a “sofa suite”, and now plans have emerged to use taxpayers’ money to subsidise emergency childcare for MPs.  You certainly aren’t going about your business quietly….
According [...]

Dear Grant Schapps,
It looks like you’ve got some decent media coverage for your investigation into IVF.  You found that more than 80% of NHS primary care trusts in England fail to offer the recommended three free cycles of IVF to infertile couples, with a ‘postcode lottery’ in operation with regard to rules on age, relationships and [...]

Dear Miriam Saleh,
Thank you so much for being brave enough to speak about what has happened to you.  Too often, religious communities do not speak about their internal dealings, which can sometimes lead to great injustices going unnoticed.  The appallingly anti-women bias held in some sections of the Jewish community is almost as disturbing as [...]

Dear Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT),
Your propoganda mission in support of sharia courts in Britain continues unabated.  Today, The Times reports on your claims that 5% of Sharia court cases involved non-Muslims who were using the courts because they were less cumbersome and more informal than the English legal system.  While you seem to take some pride from [...]

“We don’t really want to be the place where people list photos of their mums in their underwear.”
- Jon Macdonald, a spokesman for the ‘Trade Me’ internet auction site, commenting on the story that a New Zealand teenager tried to sell some sexy photographs of his mother after the pair had an argument.  The 18-year-old student [...]

Dear David Cameron,
While I take no issue with your liberal views on homosexuality that have been rightly welcomed by many people, your apparent change of heart on the now infamous ‘Section 28′ is not something that I can subscribe to.  Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which stated that a local authority “shall [...]

“We want to transform the most intimate and private relations between women and men. We want to change not just who holds power in international conglomerations, but who controls the household budget. We want to change not just what childcare the state provides, but who changes the nappies at home. …It is only when men [...]

Dear Colleen Hauser,
To say that I am disheartened to read about your behaviour would be a huge understatement.  An alert has gone out to police forces across the US to search for you after you left home with your cancer-stricken teenage son to avoid him receiving chemotherapy.  Sadly, your decision is likely to end with your son dying  [...]

Dear Dawn Primarolo,
As Health Minister you tend to only crop up in the media when announcements are less than glamorous, and today is no exception.  You are claiming success from new figures that have shown the number of abortions, including for those under-18 and under-16, has fallen since 2007 and fell by 4.5% in the [...]

Dear Harriet Harman,
Having received numerous letters from me over the course of this year discussing your poorly judged interpretations of equality and discrimination, it was wonderful to see the BBC making a programme that leaves you looking rather stupid.  Much as the BBC website trailer for last night’s show on equality and parenting (which can be [...]

Dear Elizabeth Adeney,
At 66 years of age, you are set to become Britain’s oldest first-time mother in about a month or so from now.  Having undergone IVF treatment in the Ukraine, there has been criticism of your actions on the basis of your age, but you have robustly defended yourself by telling the Sunday Mirror [...]

Dear Professor Le Grand,
As an architect of some novel policies in the past, perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised at your latest offering.  Your plan is to make couples who have children outside wedlock become automatically married by the State, even in the absence of a ceremony or taking any vows.  I know that you like [...]

Dear Ed Balls,
There is something unbelievably cheeky about yesterday’s release of a government report by Sir Alan Steer into the appalling standards of behaviour in our schools, seeing as Labour have ignored the issue for a decade.  The number of children excluded more than 10 times in a single year went up from 310 in [...]

“It’s not really 100% perfect, but compared to the earlier drafts it’s a huge improvement.”
- Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament in Afghanistan, giving his verdict on the new law supported by President Hamid Karzai.  Human rights activists are furious, as they say it means that women no longer have the right to refuse their husbands sex [...]

“We’re all feeling the effects of the economy and, especially for families seeking reproductive options, every dollar counts.”
- Danielle Moores, spokeswoman for Xytex international - a sperm bank who are now rolling out their very own ’stimulus package’ by offering up to $200 off a vial of sperm to clients wishing to start or add to [...]

Dear Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Health Board,
Thank you for standing your ground.  It’s wonderful to see that in this day and age where people throw around lawsuits like they’re going out of fashion, you have decided that you’ve done nothing wrong by refusing fertility treatment to a lesbian couple.  Not only are you operating [...]

I don’t know whether to feel anger or sympathy – angry that Alfie Patten, age 12, and Chantelle Steadman, age 15, are so stupid that they think it’s appropriate for them to raise a child, angry that their parents haven’t bothered to explain to them why they shouldn’t do something so irresponsible, or sympathy for the child who [...]

“If he wanted to have a family he should have thought of that before he robbed my family of a much-loved man.”
- Peter Askins, 53-year-old brother of George Askins who was kicked to death by Kirk Dickson and a friend in 1994 because he refused to hand over a cigarette.  Kirk Dickson and five other [...]

Dear Andrew Lansley,
Today’s verdict that England is ‘the sick man of Europe’ must have really stung Alan Johnson.  Labour have been in power for over ten years and despite countless initiatives, hundreds of millions of pounds in investment and numerous ministers having a crack at the problem, England is still in dire straits.  The figures [...]