That was quite a day!

Well, it has been an exciting day for the Conservatives in the Council Elections, right the way across the country. We’ve overturned hundreds of Labour and LibDem majorities, and taken control of more than half a dozen more councils.

Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to win in Kings Hedges but I’d like to thank everyone who took the trouble to go out and vote for me. We’re neck-and-neck with Labour now, and I’m very proud of what we’ve managed to achieve.

Even more importantly, we’ve now moved up into second place in terms of the votes cast right across the City. With your help, we’ll be able to build on that and really change things next time around. You deserve a voice in Cambridge’s government, and there’s no better place to make that happen than here in Kings Hedges.

It has been a privilege to meet so many of you over the past few weeks. I look forward to seeing you again, hearing your ideas, and persuading you to come out and help us to take the next steps on this journey.

The signs are all there!

Even the park & ride signs are encouraging us to go and vote.

You can also hear (excerpts from) an interview I did with 209radio here.

Tomorrow

So, election day is nearly upon us.

In Westminster, the government continues to descend into chaos.

But! I hope that won’t put you off going out to vote in the local and Euro elections. It is even more important that we all go and make ourselves heard. The County Council has a significant budget, and our schools, roads and social services are all dealt with at County level.

For too long, the City of Cambridge hasn’t had an effective voice. The Conservative team has been doing a great job, improving services and getting national recognition for it, but it will be that much better if we have one or two or three (or more!) representatives from the City too.

Don’t let people take your votes for granted. And don’t stay at home!

If you come out tomorrow and lend me your vote, I’ll do my best to make sure the issues you’ve been bringing forward get the attention they deserve.

Thanks for all your kind words over the past few weeks (especially those of you who might consider helping the Conservative team a bit more over the next few months and years; you’ll be hearing from me soon.) However the election goes, there’s a lot of work for us to do in Kings Hedges.

Let’s make June 4th 2009 the day we start to vote for change.

Bins…

The issue of bin collections has come up on the doorstep again…quite literally! The alternating fortnightly bin collection has not been a complete disaster. And once we get proper bins to replace the boxes that cause us to accidentally litter our own streets, there’s a clear benefit to the recycling scheme (notwithstanding the problems residents have had with the relocation of those recycling centres).

It doesn’t take much of a walk round, though, and a chat to people, to realise that the fortnightly collection of the green bins works just fine if you’ve got a garden, and perhaps room for a composter. If you’re living in a flat or a smaller property, the bin is on the little piece of ground at the front door; people rightly complain that the smell is awful, and the flies are worse, after only a couple of weeks of summer weather.

I think we need to get together and rethink this. We need a scheme that will work for everyone, that we can afford, and that won’t discourage recycling. It may be that we just need to look at the schedules and frequencies of the different types of collection.

I know this comes up for discussion regularly, and I’d welcome your ideas.

It must be election time…

…because we’ve just received another of those highly misleading graphs that show you that “X or Y can’t win”.

Don’t forget, the only way you can be sure of getting a Conservative at the Council or Euro elections is to vote for your Conservative candidate.

In the Euro election, the (rather peculiar) PR system means that every single vote has to count if we’re to get as many as Conservatives elected as possible; and the more Conservative MEPs we have in Brussels, the more chance we’ve got of implementing some of the same kind of reform we need over here in Britain, over there in Europe.

And in the County Council elections, there are only ever a few hundred votes in it, either way. We might have been in 3rd place in Kings Hedges last time, but if only a couple of hundred people switch, we’ll win through!

I know you probably don’t feel much like lending your support to politicians of any kind at the moment, but don’t let recent events get in your way.

Take a walk down to the polling station on Thursday, and put a cross in the box. It is only a small thing, but you have the power to change the way our whole country is governed; here in Kings Hedges, in Cambridge, in Europe, and eventually in Westminster.

And don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t win! Together, we can change things.

More on cycling

I had an opportunity to comment on some questions from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign. Although I don’t agree with absolutely everything they suggest, I think they do a lot to promote responsible cycling in our City.

You can read my comments, and those of the other candidates that have replied, here.

On a related note, I see that the Labour Party are still claiming that we support the Congestion Charge (rather than the more subtle but interesting point that the County Council are being held to ransom by the Government on this issue).

If you see the Conservative team out in the City Centre, don’t forget to sign the petition, if you don’t want to see this unfair tax introduced.

Parking and people

If you think that there isn’t much in the way of space for car parking where you live, then you’re not alone!

One thing you notice when you walk around Kings Hedges is that most of the new building has woefully inadequate parking; people end up putting their cars on verges (where there are any) or across the pavement – not because they want to, but because they have nowhere else to go. And woe betide you if you should have the misfortune to have guests!

This is inconvenient for pedestrians like me, and downright dangerous for children and those who have difficulty walking, or are in wheelchairs. Not to mention people with prams and pushchairs (who suffer from the same accessibility problems, and are often forgotten).

Believe it or not, it turns out that a lot of new developments are actually planned this way, in a somewhat misguided attempt at social engineering. They seem to think that if there aren’t any car parking spaces, the cars will miraculously disappear!

I don’t own a car myself, and I depend on good public transport, but even then I can see that this is another of those ideas that seems great in a planning meeting, but falls flat when real people come into the equation.