A cold morning and freezing conditions, following Friday's snow. The inevitable backlash against closed schools and cancelled planes and trains has begun. I was asked about it while recording the Pollitics Show at the BBC South studio in Southampton on Friday afternoon. My view is that common sense must prevail and that often trumps health and safety, which is frequently misinterpreted! After catching up with emails and correspondence in my office, I headed to London by car and was relieved to find myself sailing through without a problem. Yes, it was cold, but no hold-ups. At 3.30pm the PM made a statement on the situation in Algeria. The situation was grim, with three British nationals dead and three more suspected to have been killed. The Algerian Prime Minister said today that 37 foreign hostages were killed when more than 30 terrorists attacked the BP plant. Twenty two other British nationals caught up in the raid have returned to Britain. The PM went on to say that Al Queda franchises have grown in Yemen, Somalia and parts of North Africa and that we could be facing further similar threats for years to come. I wanted to ask the PM why he was cutting our armed services at a time the world was becoming more and more unstable. I hung on until 4.28pm before I had to leave to attend a whipped committee debate on fluorinated greenhouse gases. This was delegated legislation and I found myself concerned that the speed the EU Commission wants to reduce these emissions could affect industry badly. I asked the Minister, Richard Benyon, for some reassurance on this. For, while we all want to reduce emissions, there's no point in destroying British business and jobs in the process. And that was one of the points I raised that industry is concerned that the EU is moving too fast and not allowing the development of new products. Then, it was back to my office to read up on Bill Cash's paper on further thoughts on the EU. He knows this subject intimately and is a wise hand.