With 2009 drawing to a close, it's time to reflect on year and welcome in 2010:

From the personal perspective, 2009 has been a good year:

Follow up:

• My campaign to become the next Ealing Southall MP was launched by the opening of my campaign office;
• Bill boards were put up in strategic places to raise awareness amongst our constituents; and
• The campaign team distributed more than 200,000 leaflets all paid for from local voluntary contributions and delivered by the Conservative Party volunteers and at no cost to the tax payer (in direct contrast to the Labour MP who paid for his leaflets from his tax payer funded communication allowance).

I had been very busy in campaigning to keep the Stroke Unit open at Ealing NHS hospital. My colleagues and I organized a petition which was signed by more than 1800 residents of Ealing Southall. A number of GPs, Pharmacists and other voluntary organisationa also put their weight behind this campaign. Unfortunately, our Labour MP neither organised any petition nor wrote to Health Care for London in defence of our Stroke Unit and to my utter regret and sadness, we all failed in this and the Stroke Unit is now due to close in the new year.

One of my other activities has been to closely monitor the progress of the new Library and Health Centre at Jubilee Gardens which was bitterly opposed by Labour Councillors led by Cllr. Dheer. I am pleased to say that building is near completion and is scheduled to open in the early New Year.

For national politicians, the situation has been very grim -as we all know, a number of MPs have been caught in the expenses scandal and a number of these MPs were made to pay back the expenses. They all let down their constituents and mired their profession.

Economically, we are in dire state. The national debts now stand at £178billion -the highest ever. It means that every child born today is born with £23,000 debt. "Thanks Gordon".

The General Election will be held in 2010 at a time of Gordon Brown’s choosing. I simply urge him to call the day sooner rather than later to give the people a chance to make a choice.

Locally, the Conservatives have been running Ealing Council very well. It has bagged many prizes including the Best Achieving Council. Council tax was frozen in 2009 and will again be frozen in 2010 on top of this, each eligible Council Tax-payer was refunded £50 in December. Well done Jason Stacey, the Leader of the Conservative Council.

Finally, I am eternally grateful to a number of people who have helped me over the year in my endeavours to serve the residents of Ealing Southall. While it is difficult to name all, I would like to highlight explicitly Cllrs. Mark Reen, David Millican, Phil Taylor, Manjit Singh, Jagdish Gupta and Jarnail Singh Jandu for their advice which has enabled me a great deal in performing my public duties. I also welcome former Mayor and Councillor and the Chairman of Hindu Trust, Umesh Chander Sharma who has just joined our campaign.

With this I wish every one of you and your loved ones an extremely happy, prosperous and peaceful New Year.

Warm wishes,

Cllr Gurcharan Singh
Parliamentary Candidate for Ealing Southall