‘Newton Says No’ Takes the Fight to Teignbridge Election!
Shared from the inspiring ‘Newton Says No’ community campaign website, also recently featured on our radio show:
This means war! Four NSN members to fight for place on Council
The battle lines have been drawn. Four members of Newton Says No will fight to take over this catastrophic council that, for the past decade, has been the source of our problems rather than the remedy.
With your support we can get enough like-minded people into the chamber to force a reversal on overdevelopment plans that will almost DOUBLE the size of Newton Abbot with minimal extra services. The Conservatives dreamed it all up, the Liberal Democrats insist you can do nothing with the plans but tinker around the edges. Most of the long-standing ‘independents’ are yes-men or demonstrably useless. They’re all cowed by procedure, by protocol and by lawyers, or they’re distracted by photo ops, dog poo petitions and long lunches while this Titanic plan sails blithely on to disaster.
But now – at last – we have four people on the ballot sheet whose intention is to consign the hated Local Plan to history forever.
Their policies include:
- SCRAP THE LOCAL PLAN. Teignbridge’s five-year housing requirement is already 70 per cent met, and there are many better, brownfield sites in places where people would prefer to live
- HANDS OFF OUR TOWN. Newton Abbot was sacrificed for the benefit of the Teignbridge executive, desperate to keep housebuilding away from their own wards. We must make Newton Abbot’s beautiful and scientifically important places legally inviolable so this mess cannot happen again
- TRANSPARENCY. Teignbridge is one of the least transparent district councils in Britain, where far too much is done in the dark. We must open our democracy and subject the council to a full audit to investigate irregularities connected to the Nicola Bulbeck Affair
- A FAIRER DEAL FOR OUR CHILDREN. Our schools get almost £300 less per child than the national average, and teachers are warning that the South Dartmoor catastrophe could happen here next. Parks and recreation grounds lie neglected and broken. We need a council that will fight for the next generation
- NO HOUSES WITHOUT INFRASTRUCTURE. Greedy developers have been allowed to throw up shoddy housing without even giving us roads, bus routes or cash for our overstretched NHS. No more!
- SAVE OUR HIGH STREET, SAVE OUR HERITAGE. The centre of town is slowly dying while our council wastes money on the botch job that is Market Walk, closes our cinema and cattle market, plots to turn Baker’s Park into a car park and dreams up 1980s-style out-of-town developments that will be the last nail in the coffin of local business.
HERE ARE YOUR CANDIDATES
BUSHELL WARD: Kirk Field (3rd from left)
COLLEGE WARD: Janet Bradford, Liam Mullone (2nd, 4th)
AMBROOK WARD: Richard Daws (1st)
THIS IS OUR STRATEGY
REMEMBER. YOU HAVE TWO VOTES. We advise anyone who agrees with us on the future of Newton Abbot to give one vote to the NSN candidate for their ward and the other to the front-running Liberal Democrat. This is our best chance of changing the ruling executive of Teignbridge Council AND holding it to account. In College Ward please give BOTH your votes to NSN, as we need to get both our councillors in there. In areas of Newton Abbot with no NSN independent candidate we would advise you to vote for the Liberal Democrats, even if it’s against your usual or better judgment. Labour has too little support to help us. The Conservative-led executive is simply not going to change its mind on the Local Plan or the way it treats Newton Abbot in general – and only its removal will avert the coming disaster.
NB: NSN is a pressure group, not a political party. Please remember the candidate names as they will be standing as independents, not NSN,
This is our last chance. Please stand with us.