To understand what drives me to stand for election to Scarborough Borough Council you have to look at the history of the North Yorks Enquirer. I was persuaded to write a few articles for Real Whitby, a local political blog.
Real Whitby came under attack from Scarborough Borough Council. The council tried to take the site down a number of times and the council’s chief legal officer was shown to be a barefaced liar on the BBC’s Inside Out. The BBC tested out our amateur journalism and we came out with flying colours.
Eventually the site owner, Glenn, lost his public service job for liking a tweet. It became clear the council would not allow any contrarian views of their work so I set up the North Yorks Enquirer with the following raison d’etre.
The North Yorks Enquirer is an internet news magazine covering local, regional and some national news. It provides a forum for citizen journalists working in the public interest to expose wasteful spending, malpractice and corruption in authorities around North Yorkshire and beyond.
Five years later the site is still under attack. We’ve had spurious legal actions against Nigel and visits from the Police at the behest of councillors with hurt feelings. We’re not going away any time soon.
On the 26th February 2016 a decision was made at the annual budget meeting to fund the demolition of the Futurist to the tune of £4million. This money started to be used during 2016/17 to pay for the demolition.
Every subsequent year since then, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, there was £4million in the budget that wasn’t spent on demolishing the Futurist. The council has taxed us an extra £12million and not one of your current councillors had the wherewithal to question why we are being taxed again and again for the Futurist demolition.
This is why I got into politics. We are being taxed far too highly and we need governments and local authorities that have a mindset of delivering value for money to the taxpayer. We urgently need to reduce the near 50-year tax burden high and work effectively to shrink the size of all levels of government.
Across the country there are a small number of councils who actually deliver value for money to their residents. These councils are run by low tax, small government councillors. The councils have delivered numerous tax freezes and cuts over the last twenty years where we’ve had mostly increases.
So why did I pick UKIP? Because they have the same laser-like focus on lower taxes and smaller government.
Brexit fits into a lower tax, smaller government party rather neatly. Never before have politicians stood before you and asked you to vote them out of a job. You liked it so much you made UKIP the largest party at the 2014 European elections. You liked our Brexit proposal more and voted for Independence from the EU in 2016.
We are now being frustrated by politicians who spent last week fawning over the words of a 16 year old Swedish climate activist called Greta Thunberg, but those same politicians won’t listen to 17.4 million voters.
Thursday May 2nd is polling day for Scarborough Borough Council and we ask for your votes for two reasons.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than being part of a team that freezes council tax for the next four years.
The Tories and Labour have betrayed Brexit. If you don’t punish politicians when they ignore your democratic wishes, you will have given them the green light to walk all over you forever.
Democracy is teetering on the brink in the UK. This is a Battle for Britain we must win.
Comments are closed.