Advertiser Column 21st July 2009  

The national media are having a field day, as they do every year, in encouraging people to believe that the twelve week parliamentary recess is little more than an incredibly extended holiday. I'll tell you how I'm using this period. I'm not really into holidays, and when I do go it's normally somewhere I can further my research. My wife is incredibly tolerant! By the time you read this I'll be preparing for the “holiday” of a lifetime leading a Parliamentary delegation to Rwanda in central Africa. Fifteen years ago Rwanda witnessed the wholesale butchery of an estimated one million people in what was one of the largest genocides of the twentieth century. The country is recovering and Britain is assisting in that recovery by being the single largest donor. I'm leading another similar delegation in September to Senegal in West Africa. In between...