Don't Vote Labour

Selling New York New York

This evening I had a meeting to discuss the Council's decision to sell off 2-8 Queensway (what was the McCluskys and New York New York nightclubs) Conservatives feel that the Council is a bit off a soft touch when it comes to dealing with property developers. The land will be sold off for flats and the money from the sale of the land will go into the general Council coffers.

Saints Pub Saved

The Saints Pub (on the Millbrook Estate) was under threat from closure and today a planning application was heard by the City Council to consider whether flats could be built on the site. The Conservatives have been lobbying to keep the pub open as it is an important community facility. Fortunately the planning application was turned down unanimously by the Council's Planning and Rights of Way panel.

Glass Recycling

A few people have asked me to get a bottle bank sited in Shirley Road. The obvious site was the Co-op, however they weren't prepared to have one. The Council has two sites in mind; one is a church and the other is South Brook Rise in Millbrook Road East. Millbrook Road East is a definite as the Council has the building there. The Council will do its best to make sure its not right next to anyone's house and will have signs up to remind people not to drop off bottles late at night.

Encounters with the BNP

I was out campaigning in Sholing Ward on Sunday (in an effort to get our Conservative candidate, Clare Bettison elected) when I bumped into a group of BNP political activists. I initially thought they were Lib Dems (as they were rather strangely dressed - one had a huge raincoats on and it was quite a warm day). They were handing out fliers for the local elections. I was a bit confused as the BNP aren't putting up a candidate in Sholing Ward. I discovered that they thought they were in Bitterne. They were from Bournemouth and were a bit lost. I gave them directions. They asked me about what I thought of all this immigration. I explained that the City Council didn't really have an immigration policy. It reminded me a bit of the chap we canvassed the weekend before, who said if we would get out of Europe, close borders to immigrants and resinstate the death penalty, he might vote Conservative. I am not sure people understand what a local election is about. Nevermind!

It's a CUT & DRIED CASE that Conservatives offer better value for money

I read this in a recent edition of Redbridge Conservative News:

Mrs Howard spent £65 over the election period on her hair, Mrs Blair £7,700...

Friends of the Field

The Freeemantle and Shirley Community Association has changed it's name to "Friends of the Field". The next meeting will be held at St Marks school on 26th April at 7pm.

Conservative TV

All the latest Conservative local election video messages are available on the conservatives.com website.

Labour Cuts to Neighbourhood Wardens

Despite all the rethoric from Labour locally about anti social behaviour, it does not seem to be much of a priority to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

More Labour Spin

I bumped into a Labour deliverer in Millbrook Road East on Monday and he kindly let me have one of his Labour election leaflets.

Labour have a track record of negative campaigning and spin in Freemantle so I was curious to find out what the issues they would be going on in the campaign.

True to form is was more fabricated partisan spin.

The two key lines of attack seem to be St Marys sports Centre and Free Bus travel across Hampshire. No surprises there.

Both are subjects that I have addressed in previous posts. Also there are no real differences in policy objectives between the Conservatives and Labour on the two issues.

Both of us want to provide sporting facilities In St Marys and both of us would ideally like free bus travel for pensioners traveling out of Southampton into the rest of Hampshire. The difference between us is that they are making wild promises about what they can deliver and we are being honest about what is achievable. St Marys sports centre is falling down and we have made some proposals for building a new centre. When I raised the subject at the last Council meeting it was acknowledged by the Council Administration that no additional capital funding had been put into the budget as a result of the Labour budget deal.

On free bus passes, the Council are introducing this in Southampton. We don't know what the cost is going to be or whether Government funding will be prove to be sufficient. We will have a of logistical issues to deal with. Integrating the use of the Council Smart Card with all of the bus companies and agreeing recharges will be a challenge. If we can link up with Hampshire in the future that will be great but at the moment no one is saying how that would be funded, least of all Labour.

I am pleased to say, where the Conservatives have knocked Labour, it's over areas that we have profound disagreement. (e.g. their cuts to social services provision).

Lots and lots of leaflets and Labour spin

I have pretty much spent the whole day delivering leaflets for the local elections. I am totally exhausted. I have spent 7 hours wandering up and down driveways and climbing up stairs in blocks of flats and my legs really ache!

On the plus side I discovered lots of opposition literature. It seems the Labour Party have been out today too.

Some of the stuff in their election literature is pretty negative and knocks the Conservatives. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to rebut all the Labour allegations. The Labour leaflet in Freemantle doesn't say that much. There is a comment about leisure though which is worth mentioning:

Voting Tory means cuts and sell offs. Alec Samuels (Conservative group leader on the Council) is quoted as saying "We believe the private sector provides the solutions to the Council's Leisure problems."

I am not really sure whether he said that but I certainly do not have a problem with that quote. We absolutely want to involve the private sector in running leisure in the City. We want private sector expertise and money to improve leisure. A prime candidate has to be the municipal golf course. That could be so much better if a keen entrepreneur took over.

My parents live in Shirley. I have been round there this evening and they showed me the Labour leaflet that they have had. It has a list of criticisms of the Conservatives. Again I will give my thoughts.

1. They repeat the same nonsense about leisure.

I am not sure why the local Labour party profess to be so anti the private sector. There is nothing in what the Conservatives would do with Leisure in the City that Tony Blair would object to and both of Southampton's Labour MPs vote for just about everything TonyBlairs Government comes up with (Foundation Hospitals, PFI, Trust Schools etc.).

2. Tories say they would sell off Council Housing to a private landlord.

In fact the Government has skewed funding of housing so that it is not economically viable in the long run for Council Housing to remain in Council hands. The Government is doing everything it can to get Council's to sell housing to a private landlord. The shortfall in housing funding running up to 2030 is about 1/4 of a billion pounds in Southampton. Southampton Conservatives do think that tenants would be better of with a registered social landlord. However we didn't actually vote for this. Tenants were balloted on their views and the vast majority wanted to stay with the Council. The Conservative Group respected this. Furthermore plenty of Conservative Councils still manage their own housing stock.

3. Tory budget plans would slash council jobs, devastating vital services like road maintenance and street cleansing.

This simply not true. What we said was that we would be more disciplined with staffing given that its the largest part of the Council budget. In a tiny fraction of back office areas, we would not necessarily refill vacant posts. Road maintenance and street cleaning is a very high priority for us and we are keen to reverse the years of neglect to our roads from 20 years of Labour.

4. Tory councilors opposed extra funds to tackle anti social behaviour.

We didn't support the Labour budget which included a token increase in expenditure on anti social behaviour. However we are concerned about value for money unlike Labour. The City council is massively underfunded by Government which means that we struggle each year to fund everything we would like to do. We did include innovative proposals to get more special constables on the beat. Since Labour has come to power nationally the number of specials has halved. We are planning to scrap Council tax for specials. In Hull I understand that this has led to the recruitment of an addition 100 specials. If we could achieve that in Southampton it would make a massive difference.

5. Tory Councillors voted to with LibDems to prevent Southampton pensioners traveling free on buses across Hampshire.

The truth is that the Government requires all Councils to have free bus travel for pensioners and has provided some funding to help achieve this. Southampton introduced free buses on 1st April. The actual costs of introducing this are unknown and will be determined by how much the service is taken up. The scheme in Southampton only includes free travel out of the City to a select number of destinations. However it is free within the City boundaries. Extending the scheme beyond the City is of course desirable and everyone would want to see that. However it will cost a lot more money. If we can afford it in the future then I hope it will be implemented. Labour are running around telling everyone that they would have free travel all across Hampshire. They are saying this because one of their Councillors stood up in a meeting and proclaimed that it would be a good idea. However the extra funding was not in their proposed budget for the City in February. Also when they ran the City they actually cut subsidies to pensioners using the buses.

If you want to see how the Conservatives run councils you do not have to look far. Southampton is surrounded by councils run by us: Test Valley, Hampshire, New Forest. On the whole they are much better run than Southampton.

Quingdao Tourism Agreement

I attended an event at lunchtime to mark the signing of a tourism agreement between Southampton and the Chinese City of Quingdao (with whom Southampton is twinned).

I was particularly interested to hear of the forthcoming international beer festival being held in Quingdao.

Tudorwood Development

I attended a drop in session at the Blue Keys Hotel in Northlands Road last night. It was arranged by Linden Homes to provide information to residents about the planned development of flats next door.

It was an interesting session and all the plans were on display.

If anyone has any concerns about the development or would like to discuss it, please get in touch.

Some people may be upset by this picture

Dirty Lib Dem Election Tactics

This is an extract from "A Guide to Fighting Local Election" by Lord Reynard.

Pretty outrageous!

Local Elections - 4th May 2006

A full list of candidates for the City Council elections can be found here.

I am standing for re-election in Freemantle Ward. Freemantle's candidates are as follows:

Tom Flynn - Labour
Jeremy Moulton - Conservative
Darren Pickering - Green
Ann Russell - Liberal Democrat

More on the Saints Pub

I have pretty much got to the bottom of this now. The bottom line is that if the Council wants to keep the pub open it can and it can veto any development (flats etc.).

The land is owned by the Council, who lease it to Enterprise Inns on a long lease (until about 2060) on a pepercorn rent of £300pa. There is a clause in the lease which says that Enterprise Inns must run a pub on the site. If they do not they are in breach of the lease. I.e. they cannot close the pub.

A planning application has gone into the Council to develop the site for flats. As the owner of the land the Council can say yes or no to flats regardless of whether planning permission is granted.

The decision rests with the Executive of the Council which is the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems are also campaigning to save the pub.

Bizarrely the Council was about to agree to sell the land to Enterprise Inns yesterday. Even more bizarrely the Lib Dems did not seem to know this was happening even though they were due to make the decision in a public meeting at 3pm yesterday!

Following pressure from the Conservatives the decision was deferred to allow for further discussion. This will mean that no decision is taken before the elections for the City Council on 4th May.

The decision will then be taken by whoever is in control of the Council (currently Lib Dems, although after May it could be the Conservatives).

I think the wider question is, should the Council have a policy on whether pubs like the Saints should stay open? This is where the Council owns the land but leases it to a brewery at a pepper corn rent as a social amenity. I am minded to say yes.