Tremendous honour and a huge challenge - new MP

The opportunity to represent this wonderful constituency in our nation’s Parliament is a tremendous honour but also a huge challenge that I do not take lightly. But I can assure local residents that I will always work very hard for them and seek to repay the faith they have shown in me.

Kris Hopkins

MP for Keighley and Ilkley

Candidate thanks voters and campaigners

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have been involved in my campaign in the last 15 months – many of them not in the Labour Party. We have had a lot of fun and a lot of serious debate too, about the future of Ilkley and how we can start to address issues around planning and jobs.

Now we face an uncertain few months. Whilst Labour lost the General Election, the Tories failed to win it. The only really good result was to see the BNP and National Front do so badly.

It is unclear whether there will be another election in the near future. There remains a real and deep divide between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives on Europe and voting reform and it is hard to see any real and sustainable government being formed.

However, it is clear we need big decisions to be taken on the economy, not just ours but in Europe as well, and I hope that some sort of arrangement can be brokered that allows for stability in the coming months.

In the meantime I hope I can continue to be actively involved in the community and look forward to continuing to campaign around those issues I care deeply about.

Jane Thomas

Former Labour candidate, Keighley & Ilkley

Ilkley’s cash mountain is still growing

Ilkley Parish’s cash mountain is like Iceland’s volcano! It’s still growing rapidly.

The cash mountain at the April year-end is £122,502. That’s £15,000 more than our parish taxes this year. Ilkley’s mountain has grown from £86,000 last year by 42 per cent (£36,500). It’ll breach £200,000 soon.

That Ilkley precept is contrary to Prime Minister John Major’s law. He laid down the Rating Act to make it unlawful for any council to levy a tax when they already had a mountain of unused cash.

John Major “trusted” councillors not to break the law passed by his Conservative Government. Most do. Ilkley Parish Council does not.

Ilkley people have been denied a parish-wide election for ten years. Not since before these taxes were imposed. None of the Conservative councillors who devised these taxes has been elected since then. That’s why a 600-name petition was presented by Ilkley people and asking for our money back. But that petition was refused and Ilkley’s cash mountain has just grown and grown.

Over 1300 Ilkley people petitioned for equal votes in Ilkley elections. Those petitions were refused, too. One word from either the law or Ilkley people and our parish council just does as it likes.

Ilkley people pay more than twice the tax that people pay in Burley and Menston. They were fortunate to escape from Ilkley Parish’s clutches in 2005.

It’s clear that Ilkley Conservatives do not agree with David Cameron that election areas should be equal sized and taxes kept low.

Andrew Dundas

Parish Ghyll Drive, Ilkley

Parties treated differently before and after election

The difference in the ways in which the results for UKIP, the Green Party and the BNP have been treated since the election have mirrored the differences in treatment before the election.

The Green Party has been (quite rightly) congratulated for winning its first Westminster seat but its indifferent performance elsewhere has not been mentioned.

It won a total of 285,616 votes in the 335 seats that it contested. UKIP has (less justifiably) been congratulated for winning nearly 917,852 votes but without mentioning that it had to contest 572 seats to win that number of votes.

The British National Party has been derided for failing to win a single seat but there has been no mention that its average vote in its 339 constituencies was 1,662 compared with 1,604 for UKIP and 852 for the Green Party. The BNP secured 563,743 votes in the 339 seats we contested.

The reality is that all of the small parties were eclipsed in a general election campaign in which the result was seen to be uncertain and even crucial. Furthermore, hundred of hours of news publicity were lavished on the main parties, compared with only minutes being given to the smaller parties. However, whilst UKIP and the Green Party were invariably given favourable treatment, coverage of the BNP was nearly always hostile.

Andrew Brons

British National Party MEP for Yorkshire & North East Lincolnshire

How accessible is your MP?

Before the election, Leonard Cheshire Disability set up our ‘My vote, my say’ website to provide information and advice for disabled people about voting.

We also supported many disabled people to contact their local candidates to ask them what they would do to make sure that, if elected, they would be an ‘accessible MP’ for all their constituents.

But now that the election is over, we want to find out just how accessible MPs are. Will their constituency surgeries be in accessible venues? Will they make sure that their disabled constituents can get in touch with them? And how will they respond to disabled people’s key priorities?

You can tell us your views, find out more information on disability policy, discover how to become a campaigner and how to lobby your MP by visiting our website: lcdisability.org/myvotemysay.

Guy Parckar

Leonard Cheshire Disability Policy and Campaigns Manager

Clegg has given away Lib Dem votes by siding with Tories

The Conservatives and Lib Dems are in bed together. On December 28, 2009, David Cameron said there was a “lot less disagreement than there used to be” between Conservatives and Lib Dems. On March 11, 2010, Nick Clegg spoke of his admiration for Thatcher in the Daily Mail. As a candidate at the General Election I warned voters that a vote for the Lib Dems could see a Conservative Government. Not only was I the only left-wing candidate in York Outer, but the only one to rule out supporting a Conservative Government. Yet my Lib Dem opponent spent thousands on leaflets saying vote Lib Dem to stop the Tories. How disappointed must some Lib Dem voters feel today? I am not surprised.

In February 2008 Conservative councillors voted for a Lib Dem Council budget that cut travel tokens for the elderly in half. In February 2009 Lib Dem Councillors voted for a Conservative council budget leading to increases in the cost of school meals and abolished travel tokens altogether. In May last year the Conservatives even backed the Lib Dems to remain in power of the council. Until the recent local elections, they have been in coalition control of councils across the country including Blackburn, Birmingham, Newcastle, and Leeds. After years of exceptional service, Gordon Brown left office with dignity saying he was “Labour and will always be Labour through and through”. Can David Cameron and Nick Clegg say this about themselves and their parties?

Nick Clegg said in a speech on March 14, 2010: “You worry that your choice won’t make enough of a difference. So you are thinking of giving your vote to someone else . . . I say to you: don’t do it.” To Lib Dem voters I say you didn’t have to. He did that for you.

Councillor James Alexander

Leader of City of York Council Labour Opposition Group

Spare a thought for those who prefer to amble than auto

Now we have a new representative on Bradford Council, might Ilkley’s pedestrian public look forward to a plethora of road surface embellishments (yellow and white lines), safer sidewalks, repainted crossings, arboreal replacements for Brook Street, and less of the vertical fairy lights in our so-called conservation area.

While a section of the community complain about road signs on boundaries how many realise their lives are put in danger by others? Over the years signs erected to warn pedestrians and road users have or are becoming obstructed by nearby vegetation. Denton Road and Leeds Road, for example. Trees overhang signs at crucial bends, road junctions, crossings or speed signs while on Denton Road verges on both sides too. While others are joined by more obstructing those originally put in place. If a peasant writes to the departments concerned, they reply, ‘We haven’t any spare cash.’ So who pays for new signs?

The pedestrian public are desperate for someone to coach them in physcic awareness. Indeed, it is something close to every pedestrian’s heart. More so with ever more over-priced developments, vast Teutonic automobiles, mobile ghetto blasters and motorists seemingly unable to read their driver’s handbooks or anything else for that matter. In days of old we knew which way a horse and carriage was about to turn because the driver signalled with their whip. Later pilots of the infernal consumption engine waggled their arms in various and wonderful directions for the same purpose.

Today the lack of signalling equipment on horseless carriages requires one to read motorists’ minds. At least try to. Many pilots appear not to notice pedestrians in the middle of the Station Road crossing or any other crossing for that matter. Perhaps if they used cushions or raised their driver’s seats, they would see the petrified peasant hung from their front fender. Less spent on the superfluous and more on the needy would make our sidewalks and freeways safe and enjoyable for all. Ilkley may well be The Address to abide in, but spare a thought for those who prefer to amble instead of auto.

Thomas Rothwell, Ilkley