The last week has been an overwhelmingly good one for the Conservative Party.

It all started with the outstanding local election results last Friday, which saw the Conservatives winning right across the country. But the icing on the cake was, of course, Boris Johnson's victory over Ken Livingstone in the race to be the next London Mayor.

We did not have elections in North Norfolk, but to be wining in places like Bury and Southampton shows that the Conservatives really are back and that people can see that it is the Conservatives who offer a positive and optimistic vision for the future of our country.

In North Norfolk the need for a Conservative Government could not be clearer. The closure of Post Offices, the plans to flood six villages and the abolition of the 10p tax rate have all hit local people hard. People have realised that Labour are not listening to us in North Norfolk and that the Lib Dems cannot bring about the change in Government policy that we so desperately need, but they also like what the Conservative Party offers. Action on climate change, support for post offices, real reform of the NHS to get politicians out of the running of our hospitals and GP surgeries and a criminal justice system that focuses on the priorities of local people, not politicians in Whitehall.

So now attention turns to the by-election in Crewe and Nantwich. The seat, which was held by Gwyneth Dunwoody until her recent death, will be a tough challenge. What ever Gordon Brown's troubles, Mrs Dunwoody was a remarkable woman whose independence and determination appealed to people from across the political spectrum and the people of Crewe and Nantwich will miss her. Such a safe Labour seat would have been an unthinkable prospect just a few months ago, but if Boris can beat Ken - there is nothing that we cannot do.

Last week was a busy one for me.

On Monday night I attended the annual meeting of Hickling Parish Council where the biggest item on the agenda was, unsurprisingly, the proposal by Natural England to flood Hickling and five other villages. You can read more about the meeting here. I am delighted to say that the new group that is being set up to fight for the village has already swung into action and a petition has been launched on the Downing Street website. If you have not yet signed it, please do so here.

Then on Tuesday it was off to the annual meeting of the Runtons Parish Council and a packed meeting furious at the announcement that East Runton Post Office is amongst the nine to be closed in North Norfolk as part of Gordon Brown's latest wave of closures across the network. The strength of feeling at the meeting was understandably high and the frustration that the Government has stacked the "consultation" against local communities was palpable. If you have not yet signed my petition to save the Post Office, please do so here.

Then on Thursday I had a meeting with some of the Parish Councils for the areas affected by the future of RAF Coltishall. The topic of conversation was the future of the airbase in view of the plans for a prison and now an eco-town on the base.

This evening I have been at the annual parish meeting in Hickling. Unsurprisingly given the recent proposal to wipe the village out by abandoning the sea defences, the turnout was very good.

There was overwhelming hostility to the proposals and a real sense that the village has been totally ignored by Natural England and its Government paymasters. But there was also some pretty inspiring evidence of the traditional British resolve. There was no suggestion whatsoever that the village was going to sit down and accept its fate. Instead, the village has pulled together to set up its own action group to make sure that Hickling's voice is heard in the debate about the funding of sea defences.

Hickling deserves all of our support as it prepares to stand up and take the Government on over this issue.

It has been interesting to watch the pressure mounting on Alistair Darling this weekend to back-down from the proposal to scrap the 10p tax band. It seems that Labour MPs are finally waking up to the fact that this vicious tax rise hits the poorest hardest. I am surprised that it has taken them so long to work this out though given that it was not Mr Darling who announced it - it was Gordon Brown in his last budget back in 2007. It has taken a year for Labour backbenchers to work out what the rest of us could see then (or perhaps they just see Darling as less scary than Brown was).

If Darling's interviews on TV this weekend are anything to go by, he has no intention of backing down and is plowing on regardless of the protests from his own MPs. Presumably he is being bullied into this by the Prime Minister. This will not be the first time that Gordon Brown and this Labour Government have shown themselves to be deaf to appeals for social justice.

A great example of this Government's determination to listen to absolutely no-one can be seen closer to home here in North Norfolk - coastal defences.

A large part of the North Norfolk coast has already been abandoned by the Government and whole villages are literally falling into the sea. Even worse is the fact that the Government has consistently hidden behind the Coastal Protection Act 1949 and refused to pay compensation to people whose homes have been lost.

And now the Government has gone one step further; allowing its own quango, Natural England, to propose that the the defences that defend 6,500 hectares of Norfolk (about 1% of the total landmass of the county) should no longer be maintained. This area includes at least six villages and a large part of the precious Norfolk Broads, not to mention a large amount of agricultural land. But again, there is no suggestion of any compensation to the thousands of people who will be affected.

Whilst this crazy proposal would not happen until twenty-five to fifty years time, the effects have been immediate and I have been inundated with calls from people whose house sales have fallen through or who have been advised that the value of their home has been reduced as a result of the uncertainty. In short, the whole area has been blighted until the Government rules the proposal out completely.

But the Government has been deaf to appeals for social justice on the issue of compensation. They simply allow peoples' lives to be ruined for the sake of a little investment in defences that have been funded for decades and in some cases centuries.

I oppose both the scrapping of the 10p tax band and the neglect of Norfolk's coastal defences and will fight to make the Government see sense. I suspect, however, that the only way of making this Government listen is to get rid of them at the next election and replace them with a Conservative Government that will deliver social justice and most importantly, will listen to us.

Lisa and I have flow out to Milan for a couple of days. It is our first holiday without Alex since he was born but I think Lisa is getting used to the idea. Several calls to her parents have persuaded her that he is having a great time camping in the snow with his grandparents. (We are having an equally great time, although far from snow we have beautiful Italian spring weather.) 

Milan is an interesting city, although I still have not worked out were real people shop - surely not everyone in Milan can afford Gucci, D&G and Luis Vitton?!? I have had to confiscate Lisa's credit card and keep reminding her that we are in the middle of an international credit crisis!

The only downside so far has been British Airways. I flew out here Friday morning and whilst I sailed through Terminal 5 at Heathrow, I then spent an hour in the plane waiting for it to take off because it was not working. Lisa flew out yesterday and had a similar problem. Worse though, Lisa's suitcase did not make it on to her plane and when she got to Milan she was told that it would be on the next plane and would be couriered straight to our hotel.

That was about twenty-four hours ago and by my calculations there have been about five more BA flights from Heathrow to Milan since then but guess what? Yep, no luggage.

I have tried to call the number on the information sheet that BA gave to Lisa twice and keep having to hang up because there is no response. I have also left a message on the answerphone but as yet I have not had a call back.

I understand that T5 is having some teething problems, that was probably inevitable and it it a great terminal. What I do not appreciate though is the dishonesty and lack of information from BA.

The other really irritating thing about the whole situation is the form that BA gave to Lisa. It actually includes the line "This report does not involve any acknowledgment of liability." I am sorry, we checked our luggage in at the BA baggage check, we then boarded a BA plane that we had bought tickets for only to find that our luggage did not make it on. If BA are not prepared to accept liability who exactly do they think is at fault?

These things happen, but a bit more responsibility from British Airways would make the situation a little less frustrating. 

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which will shortly come before Parliament, is controversial to say the least. The reason for the controversy is the moral dilemma that stem cell research poses for people of many faiths, although it is the Catholic Church that has spoken out most forcefully against the current proposals.

Traditionally and for very good reasons, all parties have given their MPs free votes on matters of conscience like this. There has always been a recognition that moral questions such as whether to restore the death penalty and whether to permit stem cell research are not party political issues - they are questions on which individual MPs must follow their own conscience. Gordon Brown's decision to whip the Bill flies in the face of this sensible convention and puts his MPs firmly between a rock and a hard place - or in this case between the desire to follow the party line and their personal faith. The partial climbdown announced yesterday seems to me to be nothing but a farce and if individual Labour MPs and Ministers accept it they will do themselves a great disservice.

More importantly, they will be doing their constituents an even greater disservice. I certainly do not vote for an MP to blindly follow what his or her party tells them is the line to take and if my MP is not prepared to stand up and be counted on an issue where his or her party line is at odds with his or her faith, then it is difficult to see what, if anything, they would be prepared to stand-up to their political masters over.

I am not actually against the principles of this Bill, although I would have to read it in a lot more detail than I have done before deciding whether or not I could support it. But my point is that I would almost feel compelled if I were a Labour MP to vote against it simply to remind Gordon Brown that I was not simply his puppet. The House of Commons is not just another Government department for Brown and his Ministers to manage, it is the ultimate authority in this country and the Prime Minister should show it more respect.

Unfortunately, Labour MPs and Ministers do not have a good track record recently in respect of these matters. The staunchly Catholic Ruth Kelly recently felt able to continue to support the Government when it voted to force the Catholic Adoption Agency to place children with gay couples, contrary to the teachings of her faith and now she is indicating that she is happy with Brown's "compromise". Whether the Government is right or wrong on these issues is not the point - the point is whether Ms Kelly and her colleagues have the moral conviction to ever put their faith over their position in the Government?