Nicholas Rogers: Why this Conservative is a libertarian

Nicholas Rogers is a member of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and Deputy Chairman of Tunbridge Wells Conservative Association. He writes in a personal capacity.

When Tim Montgomerie called on "all Tories to drop the libertarian language" the other day, he undoubtedly knew he would rattle a few cages. Libertarians of one form or another make up a sizeable and growing section of the Conservative Party, especially among its younger members. Libertarian organisations such as the Adam Smith Institute and The Freedom Association enjoy significant levels of support from the young Conservatives who are the future of our party. In this article, I hope to take readers on a whistle-stop tour of my own personal libertarianism and to explain why I believe libertarian ideas can help the Conservative Party achieve electoral success.

What is libertarianism? Whole books have been written to answer that question and in truth it differs from person to person. I think it’s possible to sum it up in five words: "do no harm to others". David Boaz of the Cato Institute is more precise: "libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others." Libertarians seek to achieve this goal through maximising the role of the individual and minismising the role of the state, through free-market economics, property rights and liberal social policies.

Nicholas Rogers: Trust, direction, integrity - what we will need from elected Police Commissioners

Nicholas Rogers is a member of Tunbridge Wells Borough Council. He is Deputy Chairman of Tunbridge Wells Conservatives and a former Special Constable with the Metropolitan Police. He writes in a personal capacity.

Let me be clear: this is not a pitch for the job. I am not running for Kent Police and Crime Commissioner. But I feel that the debate needs to be invigorated. So far declared candidates of all parties have talked only in vague terms about what they want to achieve and some have already managed to contradict themselves. This should be a passionate debate, full of different opinions and ideas that reflect the importance of the subject.

A recent BBC article describes police leaders as being "profoundly uneasy" about Commissioners, quoting Sara Thornton of ACPO as saying that Chief Constables are "cautious". To some, this is an argument against elected Commissioners. To me, it is a very strong argument in their favour. Democratic accountability should not be cosy. It should not be easy or seamless. There should be conflict and upsets. There should be robust differences of opinion. The police will find the reality of a good Commissioner, one who is always on their case, uncomfortable. Anything else and the job won’t be worth doing and the Commissioner will become simply a highly paid spokesman.

The new Commissioners must focus on three areas; Restoring public trust in the police, bringing clear focus and direction to policing and setting high standards of personal and force integrity.

Nicholas J Rogers: Funding special interest groups is not a legitimate activity for a responsible government

Nicholas J Rogers is a Conservative candidate for Lambeth Borough Council.

I recently became involved in a spat on Facebook. Someone had posted an article from the Bristol Evening Post reporting on the allocation of Lottery funding to projects in the city of Bristol. Of £700,000 available, a community theatre group received £170,000 and the local scouts £130,000. The remaining £400,000 – almost 60% – went to a charity called Educational Action Challenging Homophobia, which promised to use the cash to help LGBT people "become the best person they can be".

Leaving aside the laughably patronising nature of the group’s mission (I have never needed a penny of taxpayer cash to help me become "the best person I can be" nor has any other gay person I know), I was amazed that there could not have been more worthy projects in Bristol, a city of half a million people, which could benefit more than a tiny handful of the community. Bristol, for example, is the guardian of several of the greatest engineering achievements of my hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, such as the Clifton Suspension Bridge and SS Great Britain. Surely money spent on safeguarding our national heritage would have been a wiser use for the £400,000? Richard Eddy, leader of the Conservative Group on the Council, called it a "mistaken and misguided, outrageous waste of money". I rather think he is correct, given what the money could have gone towards.

The lady who had posted this on her Facebook profile posited that the Conservatives’ opposition to the grant was proof of the party’s rampant homophobia and yet another reason why she would not be voting "Tory" – have you noticed how leftists love to spit out the word "Tory"? – at the next election. In chimed the usual voices of support for such a view.

I piped up, saying that the Conservative Party I knew was tolerant and friendly, and run by open-minded and pleasant people like David Cameron and Michael Gove, and also quite disproportionately gay in its activist base. I finished by saying that the country needed a change of government and that all people, gay or otherwise, would benefit from such a change.

The Case for a Conservative Policy on Airships

Nicholas J. Rogers runs Rogers Airship Company, a business specialising in operating indoor airships for advertising purposes, and is a Conservative candidate for Lambeth Borough Council.

There was a time when the airship was seen by the world as the natural and undisputed future of transcontinental travel. The Zeppelin Company in Germany led the field in the development of airship technology, building a succession of successful, ocean-hopping rigid airships such as the famous Graf Zeppelin.

These aircraft were operated as a means of transporting passengers efficiently over long distances – a capability not offered by the aeroplanes of the era. The received wisdom was that over short distances, the aeroplane would suffice but that for journeys between continents the only way to travel was by airship – quicker and cheaper than ocean liners, and just as luxurious.

We all know how the airship dream of the 1920s and 30s ended – the horrific pictures of the Hindenburg disaster, caused by hydrogen lifting gas, became photographic icons of the 20th Century. Since that time, the airship has struggled to regain any sort of prominence and their use has been relegated to that of flying billboard or aerial sightseeing platform.

The fall of the airship is one of the only incidences in mankind’s history where a highly-developed technology has been expunged without anything taking its place (Concorde is another example), for although the aeroplane appears to be the master of the skies, there are many tasks which airships can perform that simply cannot be done by other aircraft.