Liberal Democrats Announce Local Election Manifesto

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Consider "waste and incompetence endemic in Hounslow"

Hounslow Liberal Democrats promise to stand up to the developers in their local election manifesto.

"If you want to understand a political party’s values, look at one thing: how do they spend your money? Waste and incompetence becomes endemic in places where political control rarely changes. This is ever evident in Hounslow Borough with, for example, the new LED street lamps that are so bright residents are unable to get a good night's sleep and many people complaining it is "like living on a football pitch".

"Where the Liberal Democrats are in power, it’s a different story. In all the councils we currently run we are freezing council tax while protecting essential services from cuts.

"We seek to bring economic prosperity and a fairer society without abandoning the fight for the environment.

"​We have fought many campaigns with this theme in mind here in Hounslow Borough. A few examples:

- We have fought together with local residents to get the council to address the Feltham Arena disaster. Through gross incompetence the previous Conservative and current Labour administrations allowed a criminally convicted fly tipper to bring7,000 lorry loads of construction spoil to Feltham North under the guise of creating football pitches.The result has been a facility ruined and misery for the local residents (would a disqualified director with a talent for making lots of money from fly tipping be your choice to 'develop' a public site?).

The Labour administration dismissed a 400 strong residents petition hiding from action behind the multi-stage complaints procedure until being forced to hold an enquiry and spend £300,000 to 'turf-over' the site. We may still invoke the local government ombudsman as we feel they should be pursuing the developer to make it usable as a recreational facility not turfing-over to hide their mistakes.

- We have fought for people to be allowed to drop off passengers at Feltham station. Extracting over £600,000 from the local community from poor signage isn't fair as dropping off at a railway station is not a public nuisance. Our campaign included a visit from Vince Cable resulting in the council allowing out of hours drop-off.

- We organised and chaired a public meeting on the future expansion of Heathrow Airport in Brentford. We invited the Lib-Dem transport minister Norman Baker to attend along with several airport group experts and a representative from Heathrow airport.Lib-dem policy is currently against further Heathrow expansion although we understand the critical importance of the airport to theeconomy and the massive advantages of a large airport hub to theUK.

-We are concerned with the Labour’s local area plan and housing plans, developed without seemingly considering the implications.Hounslow with its high population density already has a transport system under strain. More people will result in yet more transport misery as extra traffic contributes exponentially to traffic jams and pollution. We need joined up policy making not eye-catching headlines.

Ten Reasons to vote Liberal Democrat in the Hounslow Borough elections this May.

1. Conservatives and Labour are the parties that support big powerful vested interests – big business, big unions, and big government. Liberal Democrats are different. We support individuals, families and communities.

2. In local politics, the vested interests Liberal Democrats stand up to include commercial developers, landowners, and Councils themselves.

3. Liberal Democrats believe local politics should be far less party-political. We oppose heavy political partisanship, block voting, and suppression of individual councillors’ views by party bosses.

4. Liberal Democrats object to the three-line-whip on development issues. Such issues should be determined by the whole Council after open debate.

5. Liberal Democrats recognise that council officers and the local Council ruling group all too readily cooperate to conceal each other’s mistakes.

6. Councils often ask Councillors to be their uncritical cheerleaders. Other parties often agree. Liberal Democrats do not. We are there to serve the electors, monitor what the Council does, criticise and get things done better when necessary.

7. Other parties use words like strategy and leadership. That basically means imposing an agenda on the public. Liberal Democrats do the opposite. We go out and talk to people, we listen, and we try to give people what they actually want.

8. We prefer to do useful things rather than waste time in petty politicking.

9. We talk to people as fellow residents, as equals, as friends. We talk about things that matter in their lives – not things like committee meetings that might matter in councillor’s lives.

10. We get things done!

 

May 12, 2014