Thank you so much to all of you supported us during the election campaign in 2005, especially our dedicated team of deliverers and canvassers, not to mention the County Council candidates who gave up their free time in the name of local democracy.
According to Henry Bolton, the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Runnymede & Weybridge, there is a real need to introduce a pension that ends means testing for the oldest pensioners and removes discrimination against women. He says, "Women should be entitled to a pension in their own right. The LibDems would address this immediately once in power."
A Unite/Mori student survey carried out in January 2004 on voting intentions gives the Lib Dems a leading share of 34%, with Labour on 28% and the Tories third on 19%. Students will have a major impact in 2005, as the elections are expected during the university year, on May 5, unlike in 2001 when the elections fell during the holiday period.
Commenting on the launch of an online map to tell homeowners about flooding risks in England and Wales, Norman Baker MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Environment Secretary, said:
Liberal Democrat Leader Charles Kennedy today launched the Liberal Democrat Pre-manifesto - the first important stage in the manifesto process, which will take the Party into the General Election.
Under new Liberal Democrat proposals police chiefs would sign contracts with local communities setting out how many officers they would deploy. The "minimum policing guarantees" would set funding levels for local police for a rolling three-year period. The guarantees are part of the party's new plans to tackle crime. The plans include using money earmarked for the government's ID card plan to hire an extra 10,000 front line police and 20,000 community support officers.
The County Council admitted in its Cabinet meeting, on the 26th March 2019, that the car park charges introduced last year at the Norbury Park car parks has resulted in substantially fewer vehicles being parked in the car parks than anticipated.
The Liberal Democrats today saw success when their motion aimed at cutting the costs spent on interim staff at Surrey County Council was adopted. The motion, proposed by Cllr Chris Botten, and seconded by Cllr Will Forster was produced in reaction to recent news that Surrey was recruiting for another interim manager on a £90,000+ annual salary.
Two onerous responsibilities impacted on me at the beginning of this week. You may have seen the BBC programme in which Gareth Malone trains a choir for a concert at the school which sits beneath the hulk of Grenfell Tower. In a very moving film, he works to identify talent among the remarkably resilient and interesting young people, who lost many of their school friends in the fire. Among them is a young man with an obvious talent and imagination, but who finds school challenging because he has had to move to new foster parents; he has difficulty trusting people because as he gets to know them they seem to abandon him.
The 8th March 2019 marks International Women's Day across the globe, and we Liberal Democrats at Surrey County Council want to wish all the strong women across Surrey, and further, a very happy International Women's Day. At County Hall four of our nine Liberal Democrat councillors are women, and this is something we are proud of but hoping to further improve on in all future local elections.
Much of the depth of Surrey's financial crisis can be tracked back to the chaotic introduction of computer systems which an audit has revealed, among other things:
The Lib Dems have warned of a 'postcode lottery' as official figures reveal that only 30% of people in Surrey have been offered a health check over the last 5 years, significantly below the national average of 85.21% - the lowest in the country.
