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Tuesday, 10 June, 2003
 | Checks and balances against extremists |
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(Letter in Local Government First magazine)
The Local Government Association has welcomed the Electoral Commission’s proposals for ‘modernising’ the electoral process (First, issue 161), but I would hope it is more cautious about endorsing the small print. Buried in the report, the Commission has advocated the abolition of the deposit for Parliamentary elections.
Unlike in local elections, Parliamentary candidates benefit from a freepost mailing to every voter and, if sufficient Parliamentary candidates are nominated, party election broadcasts. Do we want to lower the hurdles for extremist, minority parties to benefit from this free advertising ?
At a time when the British National Party are gaining ground in local elections, there is a real threat that the abolition of deposits would help them spread their damaging propaganda across the country. Checks and balances need to remain to ensure that extremist parties are not given the oxygen of publicity to spread their repugnant message, courtesy of the taxpayer.
Cllr Sheridan Westlake
Monday, 02 June, 2003
| Threat of anti-car taxes is no fairy tale |
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David Orchard suggests congestion charging in Guildford is as ‘likely as dragons being discovered under Castle Hill’ and implies that Liberal Democrats are against such taxes (Surrey Advertiser, 30 May 2003). Yet the threat is far from being a fairy tale, given such taxes are official Liberal Democrat policy.
His own party’s policy documents advocate “local road pricing in urban areas”, and Liberal Democrats have fully endorsed congestion charging in London, and voted in Parliament to support the new taxes.
In September, their policy documents announced that regional assemblies should oversee the “strategic co-ordination of congestion charging, workplace car park charging”. Subsequently, the South East Regional Assembly’s transport strategy published in January called on local authorities to use their powers “to introduce new charging initiatives”, highlighting the overt regional agenda for such taxes.
But it is not just Guildford’s streets that could be hit with these new anti-car measures. The Government’s multi-modal ‘Orbit’ study published in November, called for “area-wide road user charging introduced as soon as possible” across the M25 corridor.
At a time when Guildford residents have already been hit with rising council taxes and National Insurance, only Conservatives, in practice and in principle, are opposing these new local taxes on businesses and hard-working people.
Cllr Sheridan Westlake
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