Lighten up, Labour!

Reading Labour's local, somewhat unmagnanimous, victory newsletter it seems that Labour councillors are a little rattled at the work we have been doing in the ward.

We are used to Labour councillors whinging at us for supposedly 'taking credit' for their work but in reality they are just having difficulty recognising how hard we have been working in recent years and how effective Chris is as a ward councillor.

Some of Labour's favourite areas for this complaint are:

Kelvin Close - Cllr Howell spoke out effectively against unsuitable planning applications and campaigned against the then Labour governments's garden-grabbing policies. Coleridge Conservatives took our concerns about the planning system right to the top in the Shadow Cabinet.

Charges for disabled adaptations - Cllr Howell had challenged council officers on this subject before speaking out on the issue at a meeting of the Housing Management Board.

In contrast, Coleridge Conservatives actually welcome the involvement of our political opponents in issues on which we have led such as City Homes South and the Ashbury Close/Golding Road cycle path - that is what voters deserve. There is no doubt that since Coleridge Conservatives came on the scene in force, making this a marginal ward, residents have benefitted from extra attention from both sides. (The Lib Dems ignore Coleridge.)

The two big campaigns of recent years, saving Marshall's Airport and congestion charging are areas where Labour have tried to paint local Conservatives on the wrong side of the argument in the knowledge that that did not reflect the truth.

Marshall's Airport - Conservatives were first to expose the dangers of Labour's housing targets over ten years ago but Labour dismissed our warnings as scaremongering before waging a long newspaper letter-writing campaign to claim we were for the development.

Congestion charge - City Tories have opposed congestion charging ever since local Lib Dems expressed their love of the concept but Cambridge Labour kept trying to pin the Labour government's congestion charge blackmail on local Tories. I would have voted against the TIF bid if elected to the county council in 2009 but Labour's county councillor actually voted for it, with a sycophantic defence of the Labour government!

If Labour want to claim dirty tricks we could remind them of their attempts to skew our residents' surveys with dodgy responses - not helpful for residents - or the rather amusing 'Tawrie Bluebird'. A bit of self awareness would help! We know it is often hard for died-in-the-wool socialists to acknowledge positive traits in Conservatives and they can tend to 'hear' what they want to hear but my advice for local Labour councillors is to lighten up... we have always been keen to work with our political opponents for the benefit of local residents and nothing has changed in that regard... so how about that pint, Lewis?

Coleridge Betrayed

The letter from Chris Howell in today's Cambridge News (but not online) reminds us how Coleridge residents were badly let down when their newly-elected Labour county councillor voted for congestion charging in October.

I WELCOME Richard Normington's letter warning that we may now be heading for congestion charging in Cambridge, without further approval from councillors. The damage was done when a bid to the Transport Innovation Fund was agreed, which included the charge, and council officers have already drafted a report presenting options in detail for how the charge would work.

I would however go further. The problem is that councillors, sadly including the Labour county councillor for Coleridge, have already voted to approve this bid, including the charge. This was despite clear assurances given during the recent county council elections that he was opposed to congestion charging in Cambridge. The only solution is that we should hold a public referendum, free from all the spin of those obsessed with introducing the charge, and let the people decide.

I stood at the recent county council elections on a pledge to oppose congestion charging (Bower's Blueprint, no. 2), so I was really disappointed when I discovered that my Labour opponent, who had spent the whole campaign trying to imply that I would support congestion charging, went and voted for it himself.

While a Labour councillor suggested that pursuing my pledges would have led to me losing the whip if elected, it turns out that only Conservative members and the member for Ramsey voted against the TIF bid that included the government's congestion charging blackmail. Those Conservatives still take the whip. The Labour members for Coleridge and Cherry Hinton could have decided to vote against but they did not.

Post Offices: 'Nothing to do with me'

As reported in todays CEN, Gordon Brown has claimed that closures threatening Cambridge post offices are 'nothing to do with me'.

Politicians have a bad enough name as it is - it really doesn't help that when Labour's unpopular policies are carried out, it claims it is nothing to do with them. In this case the Royal Mail is blamed - despite it being Labour policy to carry out the closures, and the government recently turned down Conservative plans to save them in the House of Commons. They do this with the NHS - if a Primary Care Trust announces cuts, it is always the fault of the PCT, a quango run by government appointees. As an ordinary voter, how are the boards of these organisations controlled - where is the democracy in their decision making?

Answer, the only democratic control is via the Government, and they implement the Government's policies. When those policies are unpopular, it is the Government who is to blame. Gordon Brown likes to announce and re-announce things he thinks will be popular - he should have some bottle and take responsibility for his ever increasing number of unpopular decisions.

Save our Post Offices

The Conservatives are today leading the charge against the Government's plans to close 2,500 post offices across the Country - they are using an opposition day debate to try reversing the closure program. Labour MPs (including Ministers) up and down the country have been caught out promising to try saving their local Post Offices, despite it being their Government's policy that is causing the closures. Lets hope these MPs can remember what they have been promising locally and support the Conservatives today.

It is expected that closures in Cambridgeshire will be announced on July 8th, and I will be campaigning hard to save Coleridge's two post offices from Labour's planned cuts.