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Comment

TWO controversial matters are before the House now. The 42-day detention decision is in the committee stage and will come back to the House soon and the other is the abolition of the 10p income tax rate.

Both of these are wrong in most people's opinions and it is hard to see why the Government is holding to them obstinately.

The people I talk to outside Parliament agree with me that a sign of strong leadership is the ability to change one's mind if it becomes obvious that the original plan was misguided.

Mr Brown cannot agree with this and unfortunately under the aggressive and confrontational system of party politics that we have, any u-turn is seen as a sign of weakness and is leapt on as a major error rather than welcomed as a sign of common sense.

The fate of the 10p tax rate now rests on the Government's reaction to a Labour backbench amendment demanding that before the rebels will accept loss of this tax band the Government must lay before the House the measures it is going to take to ensure that no-one is worse off after the abolition of the 10p rate.

It will be very interesting to see how the Government reacts as enough rebels have signed the amendment to defeat the Government if all the opposition MPs join them.

The crucial vote will be next Monday unless the Government acts to dispel the rebels' concerns. No doubt Labour whips are even now trying to dissuade the rebels from their planned course of action - and the whips have great power and I believe are not considerate or particularly polite when faced with this sort of intransigence.

Last week I had a veritable feast of local history. I went to a meeting of the Wribbenhall History Project to hear the results of the survey of Wribbenhall's oldest buildings using the fascinating technique of dendrochronology (tree ring dating).

I was amazed to learn that one building dates from 1302 and that then there is an unexplained gap of about 300 years until the1600s from when quite a number of buildings date.

We heard about building methods from long ago and saw photographs of examples of developing practices to make more use of roof and other spaces.

At one of my meetings with representatives of our industrial heritage sites we heard from Advantage West Midlands and the County Destination Management Partnership about helpful ways of making practical our dream of an attractive Industrial Heritage Trail and we were delighted to hear that the Carpet Museum is likely to become a reality in the not too distant future thanks to the persistence and hard work of the officers of the Carpet Museum Trust.

Then I went to the AGM of the Kidderminster Civic Society and heard their report of the year's activities and the programme ahead.

The only sour note was a glimpse of the awful glass box that is the proposed new railway station even though the footbridge taking shape is a sensible brick construction, not too out of character with the excellent SVR station.

If readers wish to write to Dr Taylor, they should address correspondence to his constituency office at 137 Franche Road, Kidderminster, Worcestershire, DY11 5AP.

10:26am Wednesday 7th May 2008

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