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.

“The prime minister is clear that we need to strengthen public confidence in the political system and reduce the cost of politics.”
- a Downing Street spokeswoman, responding to the news that MPs will get a rise of nearly £1,000 in their basic salary from 1st April 2010, taking their pay to £65,737 a year.   The 1.5% [...]

“Met Office staff are eligible to receive performance-related pay based on achievements against specific targets agreed and monitored by the Met Office Board, which are linked to the success of the Met Office at either individual, team or organisational level.”
- the excuse given by Kevan Jones, the Defence Minister, as it emerged that staff at [...]

Dear Mark Serwotka,
As general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, you have obviously decided to fire the starting gun on the hotly anticipated battle between public sector unions and the government.  Your members have voted for industrial action next month over changes to compensation scheme for staff who are made redundant. More than a quarter [...]

“John Hirst’s salary reflected the need to bring in, and appropriately reward, skills to meet the significant opportunities and challenges in our weather and climate business.”
- a Met Office spokesman, trying to make weather forecasting sound as terrifyingly demanding as possible in order to justify John Hirst, their Chief Executive, getting a 25% pay increase this year.   [...]

“Nobody calls the BBC ‘Auntie’ any more. ‘Auntie’ was an affectionate name for someone who might have been a trifle prim and stuffy at times, but who was basically reliable and behaved herself with decorum. ‘Auntie’ was not the type of person who stayed in Las Vegas hotels, clocked up taxi rides at £200 a [...]

“When you consider the risk they are running of being killed is one in 40 on the front line and you have got more than that being injured … how many civil servants would volunteer for that?”
- Hazel Hunt, whose son recently died fighting in Afghanistan, condemning the Ministry of Defence last night for awarding its [...]

Dear Gordon Brown,
You must be wondering what hit you.  No more than a few weeks ago, you were delivering one of your better conference speeches and rallying the Labour troops.  Now every day is a firefighting exercise over the expenses scandal and it threatens to get worse still.  Both yourself and David Cameron put yourself [...]

Dear trade unions,
No sooner had you heard Alistair Darling’s announcement about a one-year pay freeze for senior civil servants, members of the judiciary, senior NHS managers, GPs and chief executives of quangos then you were up in arms about it.  Your collective reactions were, however, self-centred and short sighted.  Furthermore, George Osborne’s announcement yesterday that the [...]

2nd October 2007: Gordon Brown is accused of “cynical pre-election politics” over his visit to British forces in Iraq during the Conservative Party conference.  Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said MPs had been led to expect a statement on the withdrawal of troops from Basra in the House of Commons. “It now seems that the [...]

Dear Iqbal Wahhab,
As soon as I read that you were chair of the Ethnic Minority Advisory Group, I figured that you weren’t exactly an objective bystander on race-related issues.  Rather amusingly, you have threatened to resign after being frustrated by ministers who held “endless, fruitless meetings” to discuss race in the workplace.  Ironically your reason for stepping down [...]

Dear Mark Serwotka,
Very few people in the public sector are likely to escape totally unscathed from post-2010 election cuts in spending.  Pensions are likely to be hit seeing as the total public sector pensions liability has already topped £1 trillion and is still rising fast.  In addition, other measures are likely to be put in [...]

Dear NUT
After some ridiculous proposals over the last few weeks such as banning the military from visiting schools across the country, I thought you might be inclined to keep your head down for a while.  Clearly you disagree with me and have now threatened to go on strike for the first time in over 20 [...]