It’s been a busy month for Parliamentary visitors. First I welcomed a delegation from one of my “thank you” tours where I invite community volunteers from across the constituency up to Parliament as a small way of saying thank you for their energy and dedication to many local causes. This group included volunteers from Julia’s House Children’s Hospice in Devizes, due to open next year, and for which I am proud to be an ambassador.

Then I had a great morning on the terrace with members of 5th Battalion The Rifles when they visited Westminster. The battalion is relocating from Paderborn to Bulford in my constituency and we were able to discuss the current rebasing plans and the impact of the £1.2 billion that is being spent in the Bulford-Larkhill-Tidworth area on housing, schools, roads, medical and military facilities.

We have had important legislation to consider too, with the Digital Economy Bill moving forward and which contains very welcome measures that give us a legal right to a superfast broadband service which will help those people not served by the current Openreach plan –a small but significant number. The bill also has important safeguards to ensure that people who want to access online pornography will need to prove they are over 18 to enter the site, and I pushed the government to amend the original bill to ensure that sites that did not comply with this requirement could be blocked and was very pleased that they accepted my arguments.

Against this normal backdrop, the world of “post-truth” politics has been raging with the highlight being the shock election of Donald Trump. I can certainly see some advantages for Britain if he does force other NATO members to pay their fair share, for example, or accelerate a bilateral trade deal, but for the greatest country on earth to elect an orange-hued braggart who is already scrambling back from his election lies (how big was the wall going to be, Donald?) is a sorry sight.