Up now is the third candidate for the Ventnor West ward town councillor elections. We’ll be chatting with all the candidates this week and releasing the interviews as podcasts next week. If you have a question you’d like us to pose on your behalf, get in touch. Ed
GREEN IDEAS-SO GOOD EVERYONE BORROWS THEM!
Louis Lawrence asks for your vote.
Town Councils are not usually a political arena but a Councillor with clearly defined principles is better than those who declare none at all. The problem for voters is they need a definition so that they can choose whether the person they are voting for has extreme views or none at all! Beware the so called ‘Independent’. it usually means they have no clear idea of what they are about!
Have no doubt where I stand
The Green Party has been telling the truth about the environment for the past thirty years so it is not surprising that at last other political parties have discovered the value of what we have been saying. The main principles are-
REDUCE- RE-USE- RECYCLE.
Applied to the town in everything the Council does on your behalf, they can reduce costs, lower your taxes, as well as keeping Ventnor a nice place to live. So what is on the Agenda if I am elected to serve as your Councillor?
1. Clean the streets !
The pavements are filthy, spattered with chewing gum, and at weekends there is often the ‘overspill’ from pubs left by the town’s drunken slobs. So who is responsible for cleaning up. We need to know, and get something done !
2. Stop the disorder!
Amazingly the Police can find dozens of constables for festivals and the like but never two of them to patrol the streets at chucking-out time. They know when there is going to be trouble. Window smashing is not done in broad daylight !
3. Don’t sell spray paint, alcohol and tobacco to minors!
Shopkeepers selling these must refuse to provide them to young people. This is a Trading Standards officer’s job and the Town Council must press the County for action.
4. Make Ventnor a plastic-bag-less zone!
It’s been done in other places so let us persuade local traders to start using paper or alternative types of bags for shoppers and do away with the plastic. Bring back mum’s old shopper !
Will those will do for a start?
I HAVE lived on the Island and in Ventnor for the past fifteen years, retiring to live in the area after first coming here in 1947 with a Boys’ Club camp, then visiting with my family over many years .
Apart from professional life as a graphic designer and senior manager with FMCG companies, I was a part-time professional youth worker in several London boroughs.
I am active in a number of voluntary and charitable groups on the Island including the IW Credit Union ,University of the Third Age and the Ventnor Enhancement Fund for whom I organised the Sunday afternoon concerts in Ventnor Park.
I was previously a member of the Town Council until disqualified by the Standards Board for bringing the Council into disrepute, a matter of insisting, very vocally, that some of the Councillors should account more thoroughly for a large sum of money from the Single Regeneration Budget that was spent in the town.
If elected I will be an active member of the Council and be questioning the expenditure now amounting to almost £100,000 a year with little to show for it, also asking why it has not become a Quality Council like others on the Island?
I have recently completed a book ‘Ventnor””Town of a Thousand steps’ to be published in January and am producing the Christmas Variety Show at the Winter-gardens.
Promoted by Louis Lawrence, Albert St, Ventnor, PO38 1EZ
Published by VentnorBlog
