What do Tonbridge People want to ask the candidates before polling day?

Tonbridge People will be putting the questions YOU want to ask to our election candidates.

Please tell us the questions you want to ask and we will choose the top 10 and put them to each local candidate and print their replies before polling day.

The election could be announced any minute now... so watch this space for all your local election news and let us know what YOU the people of Tonbridge really want from your local MP.

What are the issues that matter most to Tonbridge People?

Do you think ANY of the candidates will improve your life in Tonbridge?

And do you even know who the candidates are and what they stand for...?


Let us know your thoughts and look out for much more election news on Tonbridge People.

Replies to these posts from Steve Dawe, GREEN PARTY Candidate for Tonbridge and Malling:

1. Grammar school places: No. The Green Party supports the full integration of faith, grammar and private schools into one comprehensive secondary education system. This would mean moving resources towards education, to ensure all children had a good school near to where they live. This would inevitably be a long term process.
2. Hospital spending: the main issue at present is to spend on staff and on health promotion, with appreciably less on new buildings. Health promotion is critical to bringing down avoidable costs in the health sector. Funding for this would come from increasing current levels of taxation on alcohol and cigarettes, in stages, by half.
3. Ordinary waste bin collections are already fortnightly in much of West Kent. I would support councils collecting more recycleables from the doorstep.
4. Library services: The Green Party favours a general increase in the proportion of public spending going to local government, which includes Library services.
5. OIl prices: price rises are inevitable as we are very near the Peak of cheap, recoverable global oil supplies. The Green Party would restore the petrol price escalator to ensure conservation of remaining oil supplies and a more rapid move towards the use of electric vehicles and public transport, walking and cycling. About half of journeys in urban areas are only 2 miles, which most of us could walk or cycle.
6. Clean streets: the quality of street cleaning, and the condition of pavement, currently reflects public spending cuts wrongly targetted at local government since the 1970s. The Green Party supports a larger share of public spending being used by local government.

best wishes
STEVE DAWE, - GREEN PARTY CANDIDATE - TONBRIDGE AND MALLING
Profile: tinyurl.com/yewq39q
email: greenparty@gn.apc.org
Manifesto: (from 15th April) tinyurl.com/cuwybb
phone nos 01732 355185 & 07747 036192
Address: 27 Audley Avenue, Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1XF

Having just spotted the Green party candidate’s comments it is worth reminding everyone that regardless of the affection you may have for their standing and the Earth we inhabit almost every utterance I’ve heard from a ‘Green’ representative includes somewhere the phrasing or concept of ‘SPEND MORE’.

If you look a little closer you will see that on a philosophical level they would be higher spenders than Labour and you might want to ponder the sustainability of the ‘spend more on everything’ approach when the country hasn’t got any money left.

They may have greater credibility if some thought was given to how the country might earn the dosh in the first place.

I know of no environment where how much you spend isn't a principle factor. It's the starting point. I bet you don't decide what to buy until you know how much you have to spend whether that’s a house or a TV, or private health care or a holiday. We all have limits on available money both cash and borrowed and our choices are determined by that.

The point of our national situation is that we spend £4.00 for every £3.00 earned and that continues today but cannot do so indefinitely.

All governments spend our taxes for the common good but there comes a point where government spending actually stifles the ability of an economy to grow at all and we are there now. Private business generates wealth and not government spending.

Other countries, noteably Canada, have been in this situation and recovered to strong growth but only by severely scaling down the destructive influence of excessive government spending.

The point very much is the level of expenditure.

It’s also worth noting that the natural limits on government actions apply to taxation as well as to spending in that there is a point which when passed the revenue generated by ever higher taxation actually reduces. The long standing conviction of conservatism is that lower taxes mean more income and it really happens.

To maintain sustainable growth spending and taxation have to fall within parameters relative to the performance of the overall economy and neither one of them can get too far out of step before slowing an economy down. Gordon Brown Set a limit on this spending for years but then undermined that by keeping PFI commitments off the books and losing control of it for political gain. The banking crash was so devastating (or the real effects of it will be) precisely because spending and taxation were already far too high leaving no room for manoeuvre.

An interesting and recurring phenomenon at general election times is the propensity of ‘single issue’ parties to cobble something together outside of their primary interest so that they can claim to have enough to be able to represent us all. It is no wonder that the deluded and the fantasists among them take this opportunity to pop in some nonsense.
Just browsing the highlights of the ‘Green’ manifesto really highlights this well though little is actually said other then we believe this or we will fight for that and in these contexts I couldn’t say where the believing stopped and the fighting began.
Apparently they are going to spend more on everything yet halve the deficit in three years and reduce unemployment and everything will be wonderful. The master plan is that all of this is going to be achieved by simply managing things a little bit better and the trillion or so quid we owe and measures to stimulate the economy to generate the wealth to pay it off don’t get a mention.
Ah well, it’s nice to browse a bit of fiction from time to time.
Now I’m not saying that inside this ragbag of idealism there aren’t some thought provoking ideas but the Greens like UKIP and all the other one trick ponies should stick to fighting (cos they mention that a lot in their stuff) realistic and achievable objectives. Hey, but then again those two words don’t really feature when you are pretending to be what you are not.
A vote for the greens may bring to you a warm feeling in the back of your neck that you could equally achieve by lying on a fresh cow pat because the substance underneath is exactly the same.