On 12 May 2017 at 11:30pm Fairmeadow wrote:
Hustings for the Lewes constituency candidates will be held at 7.30 pm on Thursday 18 May in the King's Church building, Brooks Road, Lewes.
Maria Caulfield & Kelly-Marie Blundell, both confirmed as attending - not certain about the Labour candidate. All welcome. The equivalent hustings in 2015 were packed out, so best not to leave it to the last minute.
On 12 May 2017 at 11:59pm The Greek wrote:
The cauliflower will meet its cheese
On 13 May 2017 at 9:47am Mark wrote:
Such a shame that a second Tory PM is too spineless to stand up to TV debate and falls back on the media to put forward their case for them. The weird robot lady wouldn't be able to do very well just trotting out, over and over again, the phrase, "strong and stable leadership vs a coalition of chaos"
On 13 May 2017 at 10:38am Reality wrote:
You do realize she was a very good Home Secretary dont you? She is perfectly eloquent
On 13 May 2017 at 10:54am Chester Packov-Lyze wrote:
@Reality If by "Perfectly eloquent" you mean that she can spout one meaningless phrase indefinitely then yes she is perfectly eloquent. Also would you like to list her achievements as Home Secretary.
On 13 May 2017 at 11:13am Alan the cat wrote:
She destroyed the police as home Secretary.
On 13 May 2017 at 11:45am From bbc wrote:
Organisations that she distrusted - the National Policing Improvement Agency, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Police Federation - have either been scrapped or neutered. Those which are independent of the police - HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Independent Police Complaints Commission - have seen their budgets and influence increase.
Mrs May has been as tough on stop-and-search, deaths in custody and police corruption as a Labour home secretary would have been, perhaps even tougher. She gave no concessions to forces in the first five years of austerity, and pushed on with reforms to police pensions, pay and conditions making her, arguably, the least popular home secretary among rank-and-file officers for decades.
Source:BBC
On 13 May 2017 at 12:04pm Voter wrote:
Sounds good to me.
On 13 May 2017 at 12:19pm Jack Regan wrote:
SHUT IT ! us thieftakers deserve our pensions. And er, perks.
On 13 May 2017 at 8:41pm Newms wrote:
I will be there if anyone wants to say hallo
I would like to ask Maria Caulfield something like this
“Maria , you closely associated yourself with a referendum campaign which employed relentless anti-immigrant propaganda and dog whistle racism. Prior to this referendum you wrote a piece in which you linked high housing costs with immigration.
In fact the increase in aggregate demand for housing caused by immigration is a tiny factor in the equation . Can you explain why you chose to blame immigrants for one of the social evils of our age and would not agree that spreading this sort of incendiary lie was an inexcusable act for any politician …”
And plenty more ……..
On 13 May 2017 at 10:28pm Fairmeadow wrote:
Rely on facts as they are Paul, not as you would like them to be. Neither the demand for housing caused by in-migration to the UK, and in particular to South East England, nor the demand for schooling could be considered tiny by anyone more numerate than Diane Abbott.
Population growth in recent years has averaged an amazing 500,000 per year. Two thirds of that is due to net in-migration. That requires us to build a minimum of 200,000 new homes per year just to keep pace, and we have never come close to that in any year since the banker's crash. In some years we have built less than half necessary just to meet the new demand. Hence the broken housing market, the nightmare situation facing those who struggle to compete for access decent housing and the pressure to concrete over the Sussex countryside.
As the in-migrants are mainly young people while the out-migrants are mainly older, entirely unsurprisingly the birth rate has also risen way above prediction. All these changes were entirely unplanned, so none of the infrastructure needed is being delivered. The result is a pressure on school places and transport that unfortunately coincides with an austerity-driven cut in school and transport budgets. Not great news for education or for those trying to travel around the country.
I could go on. Ascribing the unpleasant consequences of unplanned population growth, unaccompanied by the necessary infrastructure delivery, to dog-whistle racism does you no credit - indeed discredits your arguments. Maybe you and I are already comfortably housed and have the spare money to ensure our personal needs are met, but lots of our friends and neighbours are not so fortunate, and it matters to them.
On 14 May 2017 at 8:54am bobob wrote:
Why haven't the tories reduced immigration they can control? Half of the migration you detail above is from outside the EU.
That's 165k people per year that the government chooses to let in each year. If this is such an issue why hasn't the government done anything about it?
Probably because it provides a massive benefit to the country. The real problem has been that these benefits haven't found their way to us normal folk at the bottom. We get stuck with the downside (other than interesting new food).
The tories will continue to bang the anti immigration drum and tell us that's why we can't afford stuff. We can afford a generous tax system though to attract foreign investment?!
At least with labour and lib dems we'll get more spending on schools and hospitals rather than all the upside going straight to the top.
On 14 May 2017 at 10:35am Huh? wrote:
Despite promising to reduce immigration the Tories presided over a huge rise in immigration... non-EU immigration, the stuff we are supposed to be able to control too. Guess whose responsibility this was at the time? Yup you got it, Theresa May, head of the Home Office.
What was that about her being a good Home Secretary?