A MAJOR contribution to the debate on the future direction of political life in Britain has been made by a member of Bury St Edmunds Conservative Party in a book* castigating the middle class.

A MAJOR contribution to the debate on the future direction of political life in Britain has been made by a member of Bury St Edmunds Conservative Party in a book* castigating the middle class.

Alexander Deane, who is Chief of Staff to Tory leadership hopeful David Cameron, is a budding lawyer who believes the decline in Britain is the fault of a society which has abdicated its responsibilities.

"I believe that the middle class should wield a controlling influence on society's morality and conscience in a broadly conservative and judgmental way," he argues. But "Middle Britain is not pulling its weight. It is at the forefront of dismantling our traditional mores and values at the very time in which Britain needs its instinctive sanity."

And he asserts that its members are complicit in the impending destruction of the UK's core principles as the nation is led on a headlong charge of political correctness.

How and why has this happened? The truth for frustrated Tories is that millions of natural "middle Britain" voters, let down by their party, have deserted to the New Labour project, the woolly mindedness of the Liberal Democrats, or the Nationalists. Alex Deane may argue that this mass migration has caused the destruction of Britain's cultural identity, aided and abetted by a liberal media which mocks and jeers the idea of Britishness, but it is up to his generation of Conservatives to take the party by the scruff of the neck and develop policies which have meaning to the lives of today's multiracial, outward-looking society.

Alex, who was educated at County Upper School in Bury, read English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, and took a masters degree in international relations at Griffith University in Australia as a Rotary Scholar. He is a world universities' debating champion and is training to become a barrister. *The Great Abdication is published by Imprint Academic (ISBN 0 907845 975) price £8.95

MANY thanks to all who sent messages while I was recovering at home following surgery. It's good to know that my rantings and analyses are appreciated by so many people in Suffolk and Essex.

Digital channel hopping in the immediate post operative period demonstrated that even with 100 plus stations to choose from, there's a distinct paucity of entertainment on offer. I lost count of the different episodes of US crime and comedy shows to be found at the same time on Channels 4 or 5, Hallmark, Living TV, Sky One, ITV 2 or 3, and Paramount.

Then there are the channels devoted to "history," which churn out endless programmes on Hitler and his henchmen and how war was won as if nothing happened in the world before 1939.

But it was good to see that Maggi Hambling's much maligned sculpture of seashells on Aldeburgh beach received its just recognition in Sunday's edition of the David Dimbleby series on art and the British landscape. It was one in the eye for the pink paint chuckers who have tried to defile this masterpiece and should bring even more visitors to the town.