David Cameron: Good discipline is the key to sucessful schools
I'm
grateful to Policy Exchange for hosting today's event. In the 1970s your predecessors
- the Centre for Policy Studies, the Institute for Economic Affairs, the Adam
Smith Institute - played a central role in planning the policies of the Conservative
government of the 1980s. There's an important lesson from those days. Thinktanks
can tell you what you should do, but they can't tell you what to think. In the
case of Mrs Thatcher, the grocer's daughter knew, before any economist told her,
that you earn before you spend, and you save before you borrow. She had instincts,
born of experience, to guide her.
If the challenges in the 1980s were primarily
economic, the challenges for our time are primarily social. Not runaway inflation,
but runaway fathers. Not an uncontrolled money supply, but an uncontrolled drugs
supply. Not business failure, but family failure. So I am pleased that Policy
Exchange and other think tanks and academics on the right are now turning their
attention to social breakdown. For too long we have neglected this subject and
allowed the Left to monopolise it.
David Cameron:
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Blueprint for a green economy
The Quality of Life Policy Group, chaired by John Gummer and vice-chaired by Zac Goldsmith, released their final report on Thursday morning. Having spent 18 months looking into ways to make Britain a world leader on green growth, the Group have set out a series of proposals to reduce pollution and improve the wider environment and quality of life.
Launching the report, Zac Goldsmith said, "This is the most thorough review of environmental policies ever conducted by a political Party."
Green Economy: Read the full Story >>
It's time for change
This year our Party conference has a simple message: It's time for change. It's time for change because Britain is a great country that could be doing much, much better. We have huge potential, and a future of huge opportunity if only we had a government that was on our side instead of a government that's holding Britain back with old policies and the old politics.
New Labour had its chance. But New Labour failed. The country gave Tony Blair and Gordon Brown a massive majority and with it the chance to deliver massive positive change.
But instead, and after all the stealth taxes and initiatives, there are NHS cuts across the country, kids are leaving school without the skills they need to get on in life, violent crime has doubled, and Gordon Brown's Pensions Tax has cost pension funds ?5 billion a year.