I must confess to some disbelief when I read we had a minister in Cameron’s government called Tracey; in fact Tracey Crouch. I suppose it demonstrates an inclusivity among Conservative ranks where Jeremy, Hilary, Lucy or Vernon might have been expected among the Cameron ranks but are, in fact, all names of Labour MPs!

I was still less impressed to learn that this lady is the Minister for Sport and an opponent of hunting. She seems to support football which is well enough if you like this game but to oppose hunting is, in my view, unforgivable and should have disbarred her from membership of the Conservative Party and certainly from standing as a Conservative MP.

However, my opinion of this lady has moderated slightly having heard her views on the proper approach to the welfare tax credit cuts. She said people facing a cut should cut down on luxuries such as premium TV channels. Dead right. We have created a culture in which inability to buy expensive trainers for people’s kids or to enjoy a day at the dogs or in the bookies or their fags is seen as the fault of government. Well it is not.  I think our Tracey is far from out of touch in her views. I suspect she has listened to many of her constituents who pay their taxes and who resent seeing them funding the extravagant lifestyles  of others who cannot differentiate a luxury from an essential and who are happy for others to subsidise their lifestyle choice.

Cameron should be pleased he has a minister willing to tell the public the truth about welfare dependency even if she has chronic views about hunting. If our Tracey had been in charge of funding the Kids Company run by the cranky Camilla Batmanghelidjh and the ex-BBC luvvie, Alan Yentob, the government might not have wasted £41 million pounds of our money paid to Kids Company that handed out wads of cash to youngsters in inner city areas who promptly spent it on what they chose and which I suspect we can guess pretty accurately