Surrey Green Belt
Monday 28th April, 2003
Since Labour came to power, council tax has gone up on average by 60%. Shire counties have suffered the most, thanks to Labour fiddling the local government funding system. They've fleeced efficient Conservative councils in order to prop up their wasteful town hall cronies.
The dictionary calls it gerrymandering.
I call it cheating.
Despite this, Conservative councils are keeping council taxes lower. Yet here, in LibDem-controlled Guildford, the council tax has gone up by 77%.
And so, you're asking: where has all this money gone?
Guildford isn't any greener.
The Liberal Democrats call themselves the party of the environment but this Lib Dem council recycles only 10% of waste.
That's only half of what Conservative councils next door in Tanbridge and Surrey Heath have achieved.
When it came to John Prescott's thumb-suck building targets for the South East, most of the Liberal Democrats on the South-East Regional Planning Authority fell over themselves in their rush to vote to concrete over Surrey's green fields.
Yet John Prescott and the LibDems never even bothered to ask the people of Guilford whether they wanted these houses.
They also want to impose a new tier of regional politicians on you – and at your expense.
Regional dictats will dump housing estates on Surrey's Green Belt land, or impose an incinerator on Guildford, irrespective of local wishes.