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More details have begun to emerge this week about how our councils will cope with the coalition's cuts.

has announced 3000 jobs are to go and it's got to reduce spending by £155 million over the next three years. Children's services will lose £40m and its youth service will be axed completely.

On Friday said it's planning to make savings of £26m - with a loss of 180 jobs. We already know that Hertfordshire is to shed more than 1,000 jobs, while Suffolk intends to outsource all of its services.

George Nobbs, leader of the Labour group on Norfolk County Council, thinks the spending cuts are being implemented too quickly.

"It will change the face of local government. And there are political decisions about where those cuts are made; 30%-36% of Norfolk's budget goes on adult social services but it's bearing 52% of the cuts. Vulnerable people are being affected, like sensory support services for the blind and deaf."

Matthew Lee, a Conservative councillor in Peterborough disagrees.

"I am supportive of the cuts. It is going to be difficult for councils who haven't really been engaged with making efficiencies for years now, that's going to be a sea change for them. But many will be used to cost-cutting systems by now and they can continue along the path they are already on.

"It's not easy when local government is carrying big local government pension obligations though. One way forward is not for profit organisations."

"The trouble with arms-length organisations taking over council services is that we have no control over it," adds Councillor Nobbs.

"I don't think people realise just what it's going to be like. At the moment we're just announcing the cuts. No-one's actually feeling them yet."

There will be discussions like this going on up and down the land for many months to come as our local authorities grapple with their finances.

Somewhere down the line we will all have to live with the consequences of those decisions.

If you want to have your say consultations are going on, Norfolk's is open until January.

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• - What's this?

It's that time of year again, when we start struggling out of bed in the darkness in the mornings.

Once the autumn leaves begin to fall, it's the black as much as the cold that keeps us under the duvet.

The debate over the clocks going back this weekend is gaining pace. It's hoped we could stay if parliament decides to adopt proposals put forward by Rebecca Harris. The MP for Castle Point is tabling a bill to put the clocks forward. The bill would make the government implement the time change if a full review of the evidence confirms the benefits.

Those benefits are road safety, tourism and saving energy as Tim Yeo, the South Suffolk MP and chairman of the Energy Select Committee,told us

"I have been working on this for about four years and to be honest it is going to happen. The tide of opinion in the country is now turning. People can see the advantages and they realise that, pretty much, there's no downside at all.

"I think it's very important because, first of all, it will save a lot of lives on the roads. It will cut the accident rate in the afternoon and early evening.

"Secondly, it is a huge boost to the tourism industry. Very important in East Anglia and a very important opportunity for job creation.

"Thirdly, it saves energy as well. Something that we're much more conscious of now than when the last experiment took place 40 years ago.

"We would get two extra hours of daylight in the afternoon. It even raises people's levels of happiness and reduces some of the depression associated with dark evenings," adds Mr Yeo.

Does it help with the gloomy realisation that I am old enough to remember the last experiment, that's what I want to know.

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• - What's this?

The cuts announced by Norfolk County Council should be of interest to everybody - not just those who live in Norfolk.

They give us a glimpse into the future - a future where local authorities are more slimmed down.

Every council in the region is looking to cut its budget by 25% following the Spending Review. Norfolk is the first to come out with detailed proposals but you can be sure that nearly every other other authority is thinking along the same lines.

Norfolk believes that to find cuts of 25% it can't just salami slice. It needs to completely restructure and do away with some services altogether.

It accepts that a local authority must always provide the essential services, so the roads will still be maintained and it must help the most vulnerable, so children will still be taken into care and the elderly looked after.

Everything else is up for debate.

So it's planning to pull out of providing youth services, running things like out-of-school activities and activity centres.

It'll do far less in the countryside - clear fewer footpaths and not cut back hedgerows so often.

There'll be fewer staff working in the county's museums and libraries too and their opening hours will be reduced, so less access for you and me.

There'll be fewer grants to local arts groups, fewer regular rural bus services (but more flexibuses to help the most needy get into town), no more park-and-ride subsidy and fewer school crossing patrols.

Grants to help teenage mothers set up home will probably be done away with. So too will grants to help parents with lower incomes buy school uniform.

These are only proposals for now - although they are likely to be implemented in full.

For the next three months the council will run what it's calling "a Big Conversation". It wants people in Norfolk to tell it which services it should be providing and which can be jettisoned.

Those services which remain will be radically overhauled. There will be fewer back office staff, some services will be shared with other authorities and others will be outsourced.

Three thousand jobs will go over the next four years. The council estimates that 1,700 of them will transfer with the services to the private sector. It hopes many of the remaining 1,300 will go through natural wastage but it accepts that many real people will lose their jobs.

"Exceptional times demand an exceptional response," says Deputy Leader Ian Mackie. "Only a fundamental reform of what the county council does, and the way in which it does it, will do."

Local authorities were originally established to provide services for everyone in society. With money tighter than ever before it looks like those days are coming to an end.

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• - What's this?

How hard was it for the Lib Dem partners in the coalition to sit through a package of deficit-reducing measures that bites so hard into the welfare budget?

Not that hard, according to Norman Lamb, Lib Dem MP for North Norfolk and Nick Clegg's political advisor.

I asked him if this was what Lib Dem supporters voted for.

"Despite being in such a desperate situation because of the deficit, people need to remember that we have managed to raise the tax threshold to £10,000. We've helped the green economy, we've kept the pupil premium to support less advantaged children and we promised to reform politics. All of those pledges we have stuck to."

He acknowledged that it is going to be hard for people, particularly those who lose their jobs but he defended the welfare cuts, saying people needed to break from a dependency culture.

"Housing benefit does need reform. It has doubled in real terms, and it has been private sector landlords that have been the beneficiaries. The system is out of control.

"A girl came to my surgery. She's 21 or so and lives with her boyfriend in a private flat. They both work in Morrisons. There's no prospect of them getting a council house and they are paying much more rent than someone who is lucky enough to have council accommodation. Now is that fair?

"We are going to build 150,000 council houses, which is a lot more than the last government."

I am sure they will be very welcome but that could mean roughly 10,000 new council homes in this region, around 2500 per county.

I hope there are not too many more young women living in hope of some affordable housing, as this feels like a very small drop in a very large ocean.

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• - What's this?

It was cold in the chamber of the House of Commons and a cold wind blew through the country's finances as George Osborne got to his feet.

The plan is to cut £81 billion from the public finances, not £83 billion as previously billed because welfare cuts and departmental savings have already lowered the debt interest.

It's still a lot of money.

There are winners and losers. A cheer went up in the House when George Osborne announced that his East Anglian colleagues could celebrate at the news that the A11 would finally be dualled, after decades of campaigning.

All the Norfolk MPs, or as many as could get there on a busy day in Parliament, arrived for a photo call to celebrate the decision.

Keith Simpson, the Conservative MP for the new constituency of Broadland, told me:"It's because we all stuck together. No other group of MPs did as we did. There was no scattergun approach, just consistent cross-party campaigning."

The £122.3m scheme to dual the stretch of the A11 at Elvedon was a beneficiary of the Spending Review, but as Transport Secretary Philip Hammond explained, the £1 billion investment in the A14 would not be forthcoming at present.

The main arterial road from the ports in the east to the midlands will have to wait and so will the £1 billion worth of economic benefit it's claimed the development would bring.

And it looks like RAF Marham, whose position looked unclear in yesterday's Defence Review, will remain as an operational base.

It's the first clear indication of a positive outcome for the site that one in 12 jobs in West Norfolk depends on.

On the up side, the Sadler's Farm junction at the A130 and A13 is to be improved, the M25 is to be widened in places and Crossrail will go ahead, albeit with a year's delay.

On the down side, the Dartford Tunnel toll is to rise by up to £2 in the future and peak train fares will increase by inflation plus 3%.

Science funding will be ring-fenced, which is a plus for this region, and as we are at the forefront of offshore wind, so are the plans for a Green Investment Bank.

There's also £200m worth of development funding for port sites to support the offshore industry.

The coalition admits that it is cuts to welfare that are balancing the books. This is causing concern, even to members of the government.

Bob Russell, Lib Dem MP for Colchester, said: "What I am concerned about is if any families become homeless as a result of the cutting of housing benefit. What we need is more social housing - it used to be called council housing. To the credit of the coalition we are going to build more than Labour built in 13 years."

We will have to see if those words come back to haunt him.

Labour's Kelvin Hopkins, MP for Luton North, was unhappy with the review: "Killing half a million public sector jobs is just plain daft," he said, warning of a double-dip recession.

He added: "Every local council will have terrible suffering; for children, social services, the elderly. The voluntary sector is also going to suffer cuts and the vulnerable will be hit."

Local authorities are facing a cut in day-to-day funding from central government of more than a quarter by the end of this review period - that's 2014/15 - even though those who freeze council tax will get extra cash.

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• - What's this?

David Ruffley, the Conservative MP for Bury St Edmunds, has had a difficult year.

He was unwell for a while before the General Election and in June was admitted to hospital after falling under a train.

He took four months off to recover and last week returned to work.

So it was very brave of him to speak openly about the pressures faced by MPs.

"All of us in this place come into politics because we want to serve," he told MPs "and that job, that calling brings with it, its own unique demands."

He went on: "I'm not suggesting we are a special case but I would suggest other jobs have a highly-developed human resources department or personnel department who individuals can go to.

"We don't have a similar support network, except the whips' office."

And that's why he was speaking. Parliament was debating the role of whips and Mr Ruffley believes they are indispensable.

"The whips office is a bit like the NHS - we hope we never need it but it's very good to know it's there if you do. That has been my experience.

"The House relies on the whips' office for the delivery of pastoral care and in my case that's resulted in my full recovery... and I have to say I'm enjoying it hugely."

The whips were quick to rally round when Mr Ruffley went into hospital. They asked the press to give the MP time to recover while two of his neighbouring colleagues, Matthew Hancock and Daniel Poulter, were assigned his constituency duties.

It was a support operation which worked.

In the past there have been instances where MPs have admitted feeling pressurised, lonely and unsupported at Westminster.

The operation to support Mr Ruffley shows that it isn't always like that.

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• - What's this?

The strategic defence review leaves more questions than answers for the region.

We know the Harrier is going to be retired, but what will that mean for the future of RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire?

The Tornadoes have been saved but some of their bases will close, so where does that leave RAF Marham in Norfolk?

And what about the plans to shed 7000 army jobs? Surely some of the many army bases in the East will be affected?

In the post announcement briefings, ministers and their staff were making it clear that nothing has been decided so far. "The details will be worked on in the weeks and months ahead," said one official.

Which means lots of uncertainty for the staff and families of the region's armed forces and their communities.

Already the MPs for RAFs Wittering and Marham - Conservatives Shailesh Vara and Elizabeth Truss - are promising to fight hard on behalf of their local bases. Both will claim over the next few months that they play a key part in the local economy. In Marham's case one in 12 jobs in West Norfolk is connected with the air base.

The future of Marham is probably more secure. It already has a big engineering base and it would make sense to move more Tornadoes there rather than close the base down. Peter Luff, a defence minister, told Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Norfolk that he was "reasonably optimistic" about Marham's future.

And then there's the return of troops from Germany. They will need to go somewhere. It is possible that Wittering may lose the Harriers but instead become an army base.

The East has always been important to the military. There will certainly be changes over the next few years, but everyone we've spoken to still expects it to play an important part in the region's life for some time to come.

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• - What's this?

Before the general election Lib Dem candidates up and down the land signed the pledge.

Not the pledge to abstain from alcohol which might, in hindsight, be easier to keep than the pledge to "vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative".

Tuition fees have been a totemic issue for the Lib Dems and following their pledges, the party won a string of seats in university towns including Cambridge, Colchester and Norwich.

That pledge was framed by the National Union of Students and the whiff of student politics pervades as the chickens come home to roost.

The Lib Dems find that they are the government now, or, at least part of it and this week the review of Higher Education by Lord Browne of Madingley recommended the cap on tuition fees be lifted, paving the way for fees to soar.

Bob Russell MP, the Colchester incumbent, has declared he will stand by his pledge and will not support the Browne Review.

Julian Huppert, the new Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, tells us he has campaigned against any rise in fees since he was an undergraduate. Last week he re-signed the Student Pledge, reaffirming his promise.

"Young people should be able to go to university based on their ability and not on their ability to pay," he said.

The same can't be said of Norman Lamb, MP for North Norfolk, who has told us he needs to "fess up" that he is likely to support the package, although its final form has yet to be decided.

He believes that it provides a progressive alternative to what we have at the moment as 30% of the poorest graduates will pay less than they do at present, while the wealthiest graduates will pay significantly more.

"It is very, very difficult with the pledge but essentially I have to accept that I got it wrong. I think it is much better to be straightforward about that, rather than trying to beat around the bush."

So what about the fourth Lib Dem MP in the eastern region? Simon Wright signed the pledge at the University of East Anglia in Norwich before he took the seat of Norwich South with a majority of 300 votes from Labour's Charles Clarke, who introduced top up fees in the first place.

Well, the former maths teacher has yet to make up his mind.

He won't have too long to make his calculation though, if the new legislation is, as is hoped, to stand a chance of getting onto the statute book in time for the next academic year.

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• - What's this?

We know that the eastern region's police forces are preparing for big cuts. It seems they're looking everywhere for savings.

Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú East Home Affairs Correspondent Sally Chidzoy tells us that she's uncovered various schemes for savings money - from turning off computers at night to doing away with Blackberrys.

Cambridgeshire police are delaying turning on the heating to save money. The force says it's saving £1,100 a week. A spokesman said that if boilers were off for the first two weeks of October at all its sites, the force could save more than £20,000. It's also looking at its newspaper bill.

Norfolk police are cutting down on issuing mobile phones and Blackberrys. They say they're taking them back from staff who don't need them. And they have removed all desktop printers to save money, opting instead to use single multi-purpose machines.

At Hertfordshire police HQ they're saving £20,000 a year by switching off computers at night. The Northamptonshire force is saving £33,000 doing the same.

Bedfordshire police say the issuing of penalty notices for "appropriate crimes" such as disorder has saved money by cutting officer time booking in and handling paperwork. They're also saving £3,000 a year by replacing pay-slips with online information.

Many private companies and households have been doing this sort of thing for some time.

It's interesting that the public sector is now following suit. One wonders why it has taken so long.

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• - What's this?

Is this a victory for people power?

Two-and-a-half years ago (NATS) published plans to change approach routes into Luton and Stansted Airports.

The proposals would have moved the "holding stacks" into the countryside over Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, taking aircraft low over Newmarket.

There were petitions, there were marches, MPs were outraged. There were 15,600 responses to the public consultation and nearly all of them were against the idea.

NATS launched a second consultation and then postponed a decision for a year.

Now it has effectively scrapped the plans, saying it won't be launching any further consultations over changes to the region's air space.

"The downturn in air traffic levels since the 2008 consultation means there is less urgency on capacity grounds to achieve the changes. Current forecasts show that air traffic levels are not expected to return to the peak levels of 2007 until at least 2013/14," says a spokesman.

"Instead any (future changes) will be incorporated into a wider review of air space over southern England."

Among the proposed changes are plans to keep aircraft higher for longer and make them fly closer together.

At some stage in the future there will be changes to the UK's air space as the problem of overcrowding which first necessitated the changes will return.

But for now NATS can take a back seat.

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• - What's this?

We all know that the Spending Review will be dominated by cuts. But there may just be some good news for our region too.

As well as deciding where to wield the axe, the government will also announce where it's going to spend what little money it has left. And that's providing a glimmer of hope for the region's MPs and business leaders, who have a whole list of infrastructure projects which could do with funding.

The (EEDA) has just brought out a report which concludes that the East of England currently receives the second lowest levels of public spending per head in England.

And it says we also suffer from significant under spending, when compared to economic need, in a number of areas like housing, transport and education.

"The East of England contributes around £6bn a year to the UK exchequer," says Will Pope, of EEDA.

"We are one of only three regions to contribute more to the public purse than we receive back in public spending. If you apply the national average to our population, the East of England would have an additional £5.5 billion a year to spend, which is staggering.

"Despite being seen as a prosperous part of the world, the East of England suffers from some very real challenges; parts of our infrastructure are creaking and we have considerable skills shortages and issues with housing availability."

Government MPs are attaching a lot of importance to the new Regional Growth Fund which will back projects with strong economic benefit. They argue that the dualling of the A11 in Suffolk and the improvements to the A14 in Cambridge should be allowed to go ahead under this criteria.

And campaigners point out that even after the cuts, the Transport Department is still going to have 60% or so of its budget left. Will it spend any of it on the East?

We have drawn up our own list of the key infrastructure projects in our region which need funding. Do you agree?

A14 The road around Cambridge is in desperate need of widening and upgrading. Ninety thousand vehicles use it every day. It is the main link road from the East coast ports to the Midlands and a quarter of the traffic is freight. Improving the road comes with a price tag of just over £1 billion. A public inquiry was about to be held into the plans but it was put on hold pending the outcome of the spending review.

A11 Campaigners say that Norwich is the only City in England not be linked by a completely dualled road. Just one 11-mile stretch on the Norfolk/Suffolk border remains single lane. Completing the road would cost in the region of £134m. A public inquiry was held last year - the inspector's report is still to be published.

East/West Rail Link For many years the business community has called for a more reliable and faster service from the east of the region to the far west and onto Oxford. Campaigners say the project would require laying new track in parts of Bedfordshire but more carriages and better scheduling would improve things.

The Essex Rail Line The main line from Colchester to London Liverpool Street is used by thousands of commuters every day - yet in many places there is just a single track in each direction. Travellers complain about delays and overcrowding. Laying extra track would be the ideal solution but given how built up the area is, it would be very expensive. Campaigners say new rolling stock and a better signalling system would improve things considerably.

Third Road Crossings For the A12 at Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Local businesses regularly complain about congestion which they say costs them dearly.

Port Funding Both Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft ports have expressed interest in a £60 million fund set up by Labour to help ports develop to accommodate wind farm traffic. If they were to get it, hundreds of new jobs would be created.

A new junction for Harlow Harlow currently has just one exit from the M11 yet the town is one of the big growth towns in the region. A second junction would ease congestion.

New schools for Luton The town is due to run out of secondary school places by 2014 after the Building Schools for the Future project was stopped. Funding for more new schools is urgently needed.

Dunstable Northern bypass The A5 provides a route from Milton Keynes to the M1 at Junction 9, passing through the built-up area of Dunstable, which often experiences traffic congestion. The plans for a dual carriageway have also been put on hold pending the Spending Review.

So, what do you think?

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• - What's this?

A manic month of conferences has seen us travelling from Torquay in the south to Liverpool up north.

There have been lots of speeches, quite a few debates, a handful of controversies - but has anything really changed after this year's round of party conferences?

Quite often the answer is "No". But this year's gatherings of the party faithful have been landmark occasions.

Labour has a new leader - the wrong leader in the eyes of most from our region - but that aside, after four months without any clear sense of direction, Britain's main opposition party can now get on with the job of opposing the government. And we now know that Ed Miliband is very firmly in the "cut more slowly" camp.

The Liberal Democrats always like to flex their muscles at conference but this year they realised that in coalition, people take more notice of them.

That may embolden a few more of their MPs to speak out over issues like academies, free schools and spending cuts. They won't bring down the coalition but they know that if they speak out it may just persuade the coalition to go a little easy on a policy.

The Lib Dem leadership also did a good job of selling the coalition to those in the party with lingering doubts. It appears the party is firmly behind the idea - for now at least.

And then there are the Tories. The proposed child benefit changes shocked many delegates and brought home that the forthcoming cuts will be nasty and affect everyone - even them.

As the week wore on there appeared to be a new sense of realism in Birmingham and a sense that the next few years could be harder for them than they thought.

By the end of the conference some delegates were even talking about losing seats and losing lots of them in the east at next year's local elections. So the Lib Dems are not worrying alone.

Labour probably went home the happiest because they feel they'll be the main beneficiaries in our region of the coalition's unpopularity. The Lib Dems and Tories had a good time celebrating being in government but left their conferences knowing that the next few years will be hard.

And let's not forget UKIP and the Greens who kicked off the conference season. The Greens celebrated another win on Norwich City Council but know they will have to work hard not to be squeezed by any Labour surge. Meanwhile UKIP is now going through what appears to be, if their conference is anything to go by, a bitter leadership campaign.

The two main candidates, eastern region MEP David Campbell-Bannerman and former leader and South MEP Nigel Farage, offer very different styles of leadership. The outcome will determine what sort of a future the party has.

Yes, this party conference season has been a landmark year and will cast a long shadow.

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• - What's this?

There are two interesting things I notice as I walk around the Birmingham Conference Centre.

The first is just how many people from the Eastern region are here. Every few minutes you come across a councillor or an MP you know. The party dominates the Eastern counties' politics and now it's back in power, its activists are here en masse to celebrate and savour the experience.

Many at the well-attended Eastern Region reception admitted to being at Conference for the first time in many years.

"I wouldn't have missed this for the world," said one councillor from Great Yarmouth. "We've worked hard for ages to get our party here."

Another, from Norwich, had a different take: "We might as well celebrate now before we become unpopular. Next year we're going to probably get a stuffing in the local elections."

They're also here to rub shoulders with those who now make the decisions.

Many delegates are seizing the opportunity of being back in government to lobby for their local causes.

As ministers and their advisers walk through the conference centre they are bombarded with appeals.

"We ran into Philip Hammond (the Transport Secretary) as he came out of his speech and shouted at him, 'Don't forget to dual the A11'," said Ann Steward, a Norfolk county councillor.

In fact, the A11 cause has been so heavily pushed here that ministers insist they've got the message.

Mr Hammond was walking through the Hyatt Hotel the other day when he was confronted by Elizabeth Truss and Matthew Hancock - two of the main advocates for dualling: "Please don't say anything else about the A11," he pleaded.

The upgrade of the A14 through Cambridgeshire has also been flagged up this week while the leader of Fenland Council said he'd had a useful conversation with Housing Minister Grant Shapps about plans to build more social housing in the district.

And there are many other local issues being dropped into these chance encounters.

The Eastern Region probably has the ear of ministers on a scale not seen for the last 13 years. The government would never make a policy decision based soley on lobbying from its own people - but it certainly does no harm and keeps the issue alive in the mind of the minister.

And that might just pay dividends in the future.

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• - What's this?

The Conference Hall may look big on the telly but its balconies are not very deep so space is tight.

After standing for half an hour listening to the messages from the stage, we spotted a couple of spare seats on the floor. Creeping forward we were disappointed to find they had 'reserved' labels on them.

"Is there anyone using this seat?", I ask. "Oh yes," comes the reply and we sling back to stand in the shadows.

The next time we look, David Cameron is smiling from the very seats we were trying to pinch.

The mantra this Conference, like the last, is 'don't get caught drinking champagne'.

We are in times of austerity and newspaper pictures of toffs quaffing fizz won't go down well.

I haven't seen any corks popping myself, although the bars are more than busy. The overspill on the pavement outside the conference hotel, The Hyatt, is running into the hundreds.

But one MP told us in the hotel bar that the rule only held for Ministers - mere members didn't matter. No one's offered me a flute yet though.

George Osborne announced to the nation yesterday that he is to end the universal benefit of family allowance, one of the cornerstones of the welfare state established in 1945.

It seems that the last to know of these momentous plans was the deputy leader of the coalition, Nick Clegg.

While being interviewed on radio yesterday he decided he was not well briefed enough to make a comment.

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• - What's this?

The East elected six new women MPs in May. All of them are Conservatives.

Before the election the only female Tory MP in the region was Nadine Dorries, who represents Mid Bedfordshire. Now she's got company.

Many of those women feel that they owe their election win in part to a little-known group called , and many of them turned up to the reception held at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

The driving force behind the movement is Anne Jenkin, wife of Bernard Jenkin, the MP for North Essex.

"For years and years I looked over my shoulder and said - 'when are we going to do something about the women'?" Now she has.

She is delighted that the Conservative Party has 49 new women MPs and told the assembled, largely female gathering, that £50,000 was given out to 50 candidates to help boost campaign literature, ideas and fundraising as well as helping with training for public speaking.

One of those involved in that was Andrea Leadsom, the new MP for South Northamptonshire.

She said: "Women are not so used to public speaking as men and they need some encouragement to give them confidence."

She should know. Before becoming an MP she worked in the City as head of corporate governance at Invesco Perpetual and was at Barclays Bank before that.

Oddly, Brookes Newmark, Conservative MP for Braintree, is also a founding member.

I asked him why a man would get involved.

"I thought that it was important because women had no networking events, that men have had for centuries.

"When I came into parliament (in 2005) less than 10% of MPs were women. We aimed for 20% with Women2Win and we have just fallen short of this but we are well on our way."

Maybe the other parties, who elected six men between them in the East, could learn a thing or two.

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• - What's this?

Across the region councillors are drawing up plans to cut jobs, reduce services and close down buildings.

So how will they have reacted when they heard the Communities Secretary and Essex MP Eric Pickles declare: "There has never been a better time to be involved in local government."

Mr PIckles is relishing his new job and it showed as he gave one of the first keynote speeches at this year's Conservative Party Conference.

Already he has abolished regional Government offices, regional development agencies, the Audit Commission and slashed funding to councils for transport projects, new homes schemes and education.

And he's only just got going.

"We're cutting back the red tape that holds councillors back," he announced to loud applause. "We're shredding unnecessary guidance, performance indicators and data reporting regimes."

Mr PIckles spoke about being as "bold, radical and ambitious as we want".

And he said council chief executives who earn £150,000 a year could afford a 5% pay cut while those who earn £200,000 could manage a 10% pay cut.

For the record Suffolk's Chief Executive Andrea Hill earns £220,000 a year, Norfolk's Chief Executive David White gets £212,000 while the joint Chief Executive of Brentwood Borough Council and Essex County Council Joanna Killian brings in £285,000.

Mr Pickles has a vision of slimmed down, cost-effective councils, making their own decisons without the heavy hand of Whitehall on their shoulder.

"A stronger say on licensing, on planning, on public health. We've freed up £1 billion of ring-fenced funding with much more to come.

"We'll allow councils to borrow against future business rate revenue to provide new infrastructure. And we want to put local councils in the driving seat to join up public services, pooling budgets across the public sector - social services, care, housing and health improvement and reward councils for delivering results."

He talked about councils merging services, he likes the idea of whole councils merging - something that has just happened in Suffolk, where Babergh and Mid Suffolk have just decided to tie the knot.

At no time in his speech did he refer to job losses or to the very real pain which will be caused as councils adjust to this brave new world.

But then according to Mr Pickles: "This is a once in a generation chance to change our country for the better - let's get on with it!"

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