Fire Stations Closures - National Responsiblity

At the moment one of the biggest local political issues here in Stratford is the re-organisation and closure of a number of fire stations across the district. Both the local Labour Candidate and the Lib Dem candidate have latched onto it as an electioneering issue for the forthcoming general election. Below is an open letter regarding the issue.


Dear Sir

I was somewhat surprised to read the letter from Mr Rob Johnston, the Labour Party’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Stratford, in last week’s Herald. In it he suggested that people should vote on the closure of fire stations at the general election, something that I would have thought would do his prospects of becoming MP for Stratford, no good what so ever.

It was after all his own party, in 2003, who passed a law that repealed section 19 of the Fire Services Act, the result of which was to allow fire stations to be closed as part of a modernisation process.  In fact it was John Prescott, then deputy Prime Minister who argued in the House of Commons that this law needed to be repealed as it “makes modernisation on the ground more difficult”

I would suggest then, that Mr Johnston is either ignorant of his own party's actions and priorities or is just cynically attempting to jump on the bandwagon of Tory bashing surrounding this issue.

I also see that Martin Turner, the Liberal Democrat’s prospective Parliamentary Candidate, has also chosen to jump on the band wagon, in a recent post online, by a Lib Dem Supporter in relation to fire service cuts, I have read that he is apparently “already on the battleground making friends” and Mr Turner himself has recently stated in a quote to the Stratford Observer that “the fact is the Conservatives are now deeply unpopular in Stratford”. At the same time both current and prospective Liberal Democrat Councillors have been keen to pounce on the issue as an electioneering tactic.

I was therefore interested to see that on a national level the Liberal Democrats seem to be portraying a very different message and, like the Labour party, have helped enact legislation that makes it easier for the decisions to close our local fire stations to be justified. Perhaps our local Lib Dems do not know that it has been the result of Liberal Democrat lobbying in parliament that has led to sections of the new Equality Bill being extended to cover Fire Services that were not part of the original bill. Obviously extending equality legislation to include Fire Services is no bad thing, but these sections relate to regulations that allow the redrawing of fire cover to reflect “social inequality”, the ultimate result of which is the closure of fire stations in better off rural areas such as Warwickshire in favour of their positioning in less well off urban locations.

I do hope that at the forthcoming general and council elections the representatives of both the Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties will not forget the actions of their national masters, and that neither will the electorate.

Yours faithfully

Simon Smethurst-McIntyre

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Alveston local By-election

So we were defeated last night in the Alveston By-election. Despite a hard working campaign team and the fact that the by-election had come about by the sad death of a conservative councillor the liberal democrats defeated our candidate Lynda Organ.

It was a narrow margin of defeat just 888 votes for Anthony Cronin to 834 for Lynda. With so few votes in it you have to wonder what swayed those last few voters, particularly as it appears that the Green candidate failed to pull any majority of lib dem votes (only 58 votes went to the Greens and 111 votes to the Labour candidate).

The town council seat was also won by a lib dem candidate, this time by a much larger margin (1028 votes to 694). Showing the sometimes incestuous nature of local politics the winning candidate, Ian Fradgley, is actually husband of the current town mayor Jenny Fradgley.

Something that I am increasingly thinking is of vital importance on a local level though is the local media. It's known in Stratford political circles that the local paper the Stratford Herald leans towards the Lib Dems (why though no one has been able to tell me). And on election day the front story of the Herald was a story detailing how the Conservative led council and cabinet will be voting on the building of 800 new homes in the region on Monday. The second paragraph of the story stated "All in all, new housing in the Stratford district over the next 15 years looks like rapidly becoming the single most explosive issue on the political agenda in South Warwickshire. It’s already been made into a matter of “stop press” urgency by the opposition Liberal Democrats in today’s (Thursday’s) district council by-election in Alveston." although there was no conservative quote or mention of the candidate's position on the issue at all. Her position was left implicit by the tone of the comment and article.

Equally on the same day we received our free local paper the Stratford Observer which in it's letters page included a lead letter from a conservative detailing that they will not be voting conservative because the current council has taken away free parking for over 65s in the town, and a letter responding in very negative terms to a previous letter from a potential conservative local candidate who questioned the validity of being a councillor but failing to attend meetings. His original comments were more than valid but yet the letter makes them sound to be false and accused him of attacking others without finding out all the facts. It also falls back onto the established narrative that Conservatives are all nasty people (more coming on that soon) by saying "... doesn't mark a return to tactics Mr Cameron claims the conservatives have given up."

In terms of most people's knowledge of truly local issues the only way they know what is happening is through the local paper so when it has a clear skew towards one party this causes great issues. In the weeks and months ahead as we head towards a real local election relatinships with the media and gateway individuals are going to become key. Sadly as a result of individual (not really conservative policy) in the last few years this is going to be a difficult sell

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Tories Lead Labour by 2 million in fundraising

The latest figures from the Electoral Commission show that the Conservative party receieved 5.27 million pounds in donations in Q3 as opposed to just 3 million for the Labour party. The poor lib dems only received 816,663 which I think shows that regardless of how much people believe support for them is increasing or any hopes people may have they could become a stronger power / an opposition in British politics, they simply won't.

In total political parties received 9.5 million in the quarter down from 13.2 million in the previous quarter (april to June). Any way you look at it these are large figures, by comparison Children in Need this year raised 20 million pounds and was seen as a huge success, so are people more willing to give to political parties than to charity?

This also continues to be a great fact for the conservatives with most if not nearly all donations coming from individuals whilst the Labour Party continue to receive large block donations from unions. Interestingly when you look at per person figures there are approximately 290,000 members of the conservative party so in the last 3 months they on average gave just £18.17, by comparison the Lib Dems have around 73,000 members who are on average each giving £11. I couldn't find current membership figures for Labour, but apparently in 2005 it was 198,000 so they are on average gave the party £15 however I suspect that was one or two generous unions rather than a collective of generous individuals as unions supposedly represent 90% of Labour Donations now. If that's true then members on average gave just £1.04 each in the last quarter. Clearly an unexpected effect of the current financial climate for Mr Brown!

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