The conservativehome.com blog

I believe...

Do you remember Michael Howard’s January 2004 statement of beliefs? They were criticised at the time for their motherhood-and-apple-pie character but they did amount to an aborted CCO attempt to embrace positive politics. I recently came across a Canadian ex-blogger’s beliefs statement and I thought I’d try one of my own. I’ve outlined at least one belief for each of conservativehome.com’s main ten themes:

Conservatives should stop Tesco killing Sunday

First Tesco bit chunks out of Sainsburys. More recently it gobbled up Cullens, Europa Foods and a host of other small retail chains. But Tesco is still hungry for more growth. It now fancies a bigger helping of Sunday.

Our materialistic, consumer-driven culture doesn’t like the fact that large shops can only open for six hours on Sundays and Britain’s dominant supermarket chain wants to be the champion of that culture.

Tesco is a hugely successful retailer and it’s doing what any dynamic business should do – its eyeing bigger profits. But that does not mean that they should be allowed to destroy the last vestige of the British Sunday. A real Conservative Party would stand in Tesco’s way. A little history explains why…

Blair shows no r-e-s-p-e-c-t to parents

We've heard a lot about respect from Tony Blair of late but our Prime Minister doesn't show much respect to Britain's parents.

Although his condom compassionate government has thrown more and more resources into safe-sex education, the latest data show that teen pregancies are actually up. The proliferation of safe sex education and contraception has also done nothing to stop the explosion of sexually-transmitted disease. But this does nothing to stop New Labour and, sadly, Andrew Lansley from recommending even more of the same at an earlier and earlier age. Why don't these people ever ask if the sexualisation of children - encouraged by ever more sex education - is part of the problem, rather than the solution?

Marriage is good. Marriage is good. Marriage is good.

Driving fast or under the influence of alcohol is dangerous, often deadly. A whole system of highway laws, traffic policing and driver education has been devised to reduce the social costs of bad driving. Professor Bob Rowthorne of Cambridge University wonders why, when it comes to marriage, politicians adopt a completely contrary and laissez-faire approach. So much evidence points to the benefits of marriage for children and married couples themselves. Jill Kirby’s ’Broken Hearts’ research offers a landmark account of these benefits.

In the last few days three journalists - Fraser Nelson in Scotland on Sunday, Kay Hymovitz in the Wall Street Journal and Ferdinand Mount in The Daily Telegraph - have turned their attention to the benefits of marriage.

Fraser Nelson posed the questions that have stumped the left-wing poverty industry: