‘Success’: just what do you think it is? In private life? In political life? Each of us, I think, would have a different definition. How about this, which was read at the sad funeral of my friend Richard Bridge in Great Somerford last week? It’s by a lady called Elizabeth Stanley:-

‘He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it; who has looked for the best in others and given the best he had; whose life was an inspiration, whose memory a benediction.’ Most of us would, I think be pretty happy to have that as our epitaph.

I very much enjoyed, for example, the Wootton Bassett Mayoral Service on Sunday – it’s a celebration of all that is good about civic life, about putting more into society than one takes out of it. I wish Paul Heaphy a huge success in his Mayoral Year.   What greater success could there be than Cricklade’s great success in winning the National Britain in Bloom Competition.   Of the dozen or so cases at my surgeries in Cricklade and Malmesbury on Saturday, I would hope for some degree of success with at least some of them. I personally get more satisfaction with the successful outcome to a constituency case than almost any other political success or reward.

But I do have another little success which I hope to achieve in the next week or two. Perhaps because I was born in 1954, I have a great deal of sympathy with a group of 30,000 women born in March and April 1954 who will unexpectedly have to wait for a further two years for their pension, and with a wider cohort of 1953/54 babes whose delay will be less, but still unacceptable. It may sound like a detailed matter, but it’s of huge importance to that group of women. So I made a fuss about it in Parliament, indicated my readiness to rebel against the Conservative whip on the subject, have had discussions with the Labour Party and Age Concern on it and have had private  meetings over the last few weeks with Secretary of State Iain Duncan-Smith and in passing with the Prime Minister. The newspapers this week report that a concession is imminent – probably transitional relief of one sort or another – about which I am very glad, and for which I can claim some little degree of credit!

It doesn’t change the world; it doesn’t avert the Euro disaster; it won’t be much more than a pretty small footnote in the history of 21^st century politics; but I am glad to have played a small part in righting a wrong and helping a small group of people. So when my grandchildren ask me if my life in politics was a ‘success’, I hope that I will be able to claim at least a few of the things in Elizabeth Stanley’s list; I hope I’ll be able to claim ‘success’ with helping a decent number of constituents with their problems; and while I hope I can claim a few more things as well, (I am proud of Lyneham, for example), if I can show a decisive part in securing a decent pension for 30,000 women of my own vintage, then I’ll be very satisfied with it.