Six of those MPs were Labour 10 were Tories and the others were from

Six of those MPs were Labour, 10 were Tories and the others were from minority parties.While many MPs make speeches and ask questions in the chamber, attend select committees, volunteer for service on standing committees, which give line-by-line scrutiny to legislation, and devote weekends to constituency “surgery” work, many more spend their mornings attending to their outside business interests.Mr Norman, who hopes to succeed Sir Patrick Mayhew, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who is retiring as Tunbridge Wells MP, recently joked to Tatler magazine that after working flat out for five years, he hoped that being an MP would let him, uniquely, spend more time with his family.. But with an attitude like this, it would be no surprise if Tunbridge Wells decides to express its disgust.”In fact, a significant minority treat the Commons as a part-time place of employment.A number of former ministers who are standing down from Parliament at the election have taken up time-consuming and lucrative outside jobs.But the part-time temperament is by no means confined to the Tory benches. The idea that you can also run a grocery chain is bizarre,” Mr Wilson said “Mr Norman is inheriting a handsome majority. Mr Norman told the Yorkshire Post that he hoped to stay on as part- time chairman of the Leeds-based store group for three more years. “Being a backbench MP is not a full-time occupation,” he said
That remark provoked Labour’s campaign spokesman Brian Wilson to issue a press release headed: “Tory threatens to disgust Tunbridge Wells”.”Most MPs find that constituency and parliamentary work add up to something more than a full-time job. Labour warned yesterday that the voters of Tunbridge Wells would be “short-changed” if they voted for the Tory candidate Archie Norman at the election, because the Asda store chairman believes that being an MP is not a full-time job.

However, it is quite possible that the town – the original name of which remains a mystery – was the main centre of a previously unknown independent tribal kingdom that sold goods made south of the Thames or on the Continent to tribes north of the Thames.The discoveries not only show that a British town has at least 2,600 years of continuous history, but also hints at even greater influence from Roman Gaul, a generation before the conquest, than had hitherto been suspected.. Pottery finds in Abingdon have even revealed that craftsmen in the Regnian capital, Noviomagus Regnensium (Chichester), set up a ceramic manufacturing base in Abingdon. Archaeologists estimate that it had a population of around 1, 500.When southern Britain was conquered by the Romans in 43AD, Abingdon became a major centre of native prosperity. For the first 40 years of Roman rule, Abingdon appears to have had, for an ungarrisoned native town, unusually high access to imported Roman luxury goods – notably high-quality Roman glazed pottery from France and Roman amphorae, which were brought, full of wine, from Spain.Culturally – and even politically – the town appears to have been linked to the pro-Roman Hampshire tribes of the Atrebatii and the Regni. The discoveries make Abingdon the oldest-known continuously inhabited town in Britain. Evidence unearthed so far suggests that it was founded in the sixth or seventh century BC, but underwent a massive reorganisation in the early first century AD.At that stage the traditional higgledy-piggledy layout was replaced by a grid system, with rows of house compounds and intersecting lanes, and the whole town was enclosed within a massive triple-moat and earthen rampart – almost certainly topped by a wooden town wall.

The find is casting new light on the very beginnings of urban dwelling in Britain.Excavations directed by Tim Allen of the Oxford Archaeological Unit have so far revealed that, unlike most prehistoric settlements, the town was well planned, and was laid out in a grid pattern.This suggests influence from Roman-occupied Europe, des-pite the fact that the town was built around 30 years before the Roman conquest of southern Britain. Founded around 2,600 years ago, the town, on the site of present-day Abingdon, was extensively redeveloped along a grid street pattern in the early years of the first century AD – before the Roman invasion – and defended by two miles of 40ft-wide moats.
The discovery is likely to cause intense interest among academics as it is only the third site of its kind and size – around 80 acres – ever found in this country. It is a problem, though, because long-term sustainable development isn’t particularly photogenic … For instance we do a lot of work in training economists, which isn’t all that interesting but which probably matters a great deal to countries like Uganda,” he said.. The buried remains of a long-lost prehistoric walled town have been discovered by archaeologists seven miles south of Oxford. The UK is 15th in spending, after Japan, Germany and Finland. Top is Denmark, with 0.96 per cent of GNP.A spokesman for the ODA said the past three years had been particularly demanding because of the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda.”We don’t anticipate emergency aid becoming a bigger part of our plans at all.

“There is no aid, no help, then we rush in with humanitarian aid. But figures due out in January from the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) show that while programme aid has dropped by pounds 36m to pounds 82mn over that time, emergency aid has gone up by pounds 22m to pounds 140m.”Aid is becoming a cover, a sticking plaster, a system that covers up a complete failure to have any strategy to deal with the growth of abject poverty in the world,” Ms Short said. Its Aid and Trade has trebled over four years to almost pounds 29m.Four years ago the United Kingdom used to spend the same amount on emergency aid to developing countries as it did on programme aid. Although the new figures show this has fallen over the past four years, cash is still channelled to comparatively rich countries.Indonesia, which is to be the subject of a Public Accounts Committee inquiry into links between aid and arms sales from the UK, has the fourth biggest aid budget from Britain despite having a per capita gross domestic product higher than much of Eastern Europe. Foreign bank accounts could be frozen and flights to offending countries limited to essential aid.Labour also wants to phase out the Aid and Trade provision under which money is sent to countries which can provide Britain with commercial contracts. Dictators such as General Sese Seko Mobutu of Zaire, who spends much of his time in Switzerland, could be refused travel visas.

If her party wins power she will launch a new Department of International Development and call for a move away from the Live Aid approach to helping developing countries.
Other policies which would be announced in a Labour White Paper soon after the general election include pushing for United Nations sanctions to be aimed at rich people in oppressive regimes. Labour’s overseas aid spokeswoman, Clare Short, has accused ministers of using “sticking plasters” to cover the fact that the United Kingdom is failing to provide the help needed to stop crises – such as the recent one in Zaire – happening She plans radically to change Britain’s approach. High-profile disaster relief programmes are soaking up an increasing proportion of Britain’s aid budget while preventive work is being cut, the latest official figures show. The child, who weighed six-and-a-half pounds, was suffering from hypothermia. Doctors believe he had been born less than an hour earlier.Joseph is now in an incubator, being watched by a team of nurses in the Harold Wood maternity ward, where his condition is described as stable.A Scotland Yard spokesman yesterday said: “It is too early to say whether Joseph will be going back with his mother. The medical director did not return The Independent’s call, made earlier this week.