LABOUR PARTY

In a staggering turnaround, the Conservative Party hold over Wealden was trounced during the May 2023 local elections. As you can see from the roster below, the Liberal Democrats have 13 seats, closely followed by the Green Party, with 11 seats. And then another blow came in the form of 11 Independent seats, with Labour bringing up the rear, with just 2 seats.

It appears then that if Labour want to win at the next General Election, they will have to do more to win over the public. At the moment, Prime Minister Rishi Sunack is under attack from rampant inflation that, according speculators is beyond control. As of 22nd June 2023, the Bank of England is said to be on track to kick interest rates up to their highest level in over 23 years in a bid to rein in inflation that is withstanding prior increases to borrowing costs, markets are betting.

City traders ratcheted up their bets on peak UK interest rates in response to numbers from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) this morning that showed inflation is still plaguing the economy. Market participants now think Bank Governor Andrew Bailey and the rest of the monetary policy committee (MPC) – the nine-strong group who set official UK borrowing costs – will lift rates to at least six per cent.

That would be the highest level since February 2000 and mark a huge shift in monetary policy since the financial crisis. For over a decade and up until December 2021, rates were near zero per cent. We can blame post-pandemic disruptions, Putin’s war in Ukraine, or Boris Johnson. All have played their part in creating the predicament in which the UK finds itself. Brexit is also a malign factor, and Britain’s unique misfortune.

A distinguished economist who sits on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee as an independent, calculates that Brexit has meant prices are around 4 per cent higher than they would otherwise be thanks to the cumulative effects of the 2016 EU referendum decision, when set against comparable economies, not least because “no other country chose to unilaterally impose trade barriers on its closest trading partners.

In London, housebuilders were among the worst-performing stocks at the close on Wednesday. Barratt Developments, Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey were 3.9%, 4.1% and 3.5% lower, respectively.

The stocks came under pressure from the heat of inflation numbers, as concerns of a slowdown in the housing market gathered pace. AJ Bell's Danni Hewson said it was "no surprise" to see housebuilders among the top fallers as the prospect of higher borrowing costs "could prove damaging to the property market as affordability issues become more acute."

At a more local level, the executive housebuilding stampede championed by Wealden's planners, makes the area less viable in terms of supporting essential workers on a low income. Those already built, overloading waste treatment capacity, leading to illegal discharges and fines for , while straining the capacity of reservoirs at Arlington, that may lead to issues similar to that where at Swindon Magistrates court on 30 May 2023, Wessex Water Services Limited was fined £280,000 plus a £190 victim surcharge. Costs of £21,656.60 were agreed out of court. WWS pleaded guilty to an offence under section 70 of the Water Industry Act 1991 for the supply of water unfit for human consumption.

In 2021, Southern Water was fined a record £90 million having pleaded guilty to 51 offences reported to involve the release of between 16 and 21 billion litres of raw sewage into sensitive marine environments.

The water company appeared at Canterbury Crown Court on 9 July 2021 for sentencing, after pleading guilty to the illegal discharges of sewage which occurred between 2010 and 2015 across 17 sites in Hampshire, Kent and West Sussex. It is reported that the allegations concerned 6,971 discharges, which amounts to some 61,704 hours of releases.

The Environment Agency (EA) commenced their investigation after shellfish were found to be contaminated with E. coli, a type of faecal bacteria. The EA found that Southern Water had deliberately diverted raw sewage away from treatment works and into the environment, which was said to reduce the costs associated with maintaining and upgrading their infrastructure.

Data released by the Environment Agency show Southern Water discharged sewage into waterways 16,668 times in 2022 – lasting a total of 146,819 hours.

At Lewes, the Ham Lane pumping station released sewage into the Ouse 146 times last year (2022), lasting a total of 2,419 hours. The Environment Agency data revealed raw sewage was spilled into English rivers by water companies 824 times a day last year. Sewage was released into Newhaven, by Seaford Bay 86 times, for nearly 500 hours. Ditchling saw over 1,200 hours of sewage released into the Bevern stream with 81 spills.

All of these discharges come from planning consents for major housing developments, without the infrastructure to properly deal with the waste thus generated. In our view, that makes those granting planning consents without first obtaining confirmation of additional treatment capacity to accompany the increase if effluence, just as guilty as the water companies committing these crimes. Town and Country planners and planning committees, are party to these environmental offences. There is no other way to see it. All the more reason, for affordable housing units that are Off-Grid water and waste wise.

It is much the same with potholes and dangerously rutted highways. The roads servicing the additional traffic from new-builds, are simply not up to the task, as with water and waste shortcomings. Our little island is limited in size, and in danger of becoming one large toxic suburb of cardboard boxes. All of which to generate CIL payments, as a quick revenue top-up, followed by the excruciating death on the nation. Shades of Maggie Thatcher's council house sell-off. And her Poll-Tax.

The Labour party is a political group that has had its share of Prime Ministers in the United Kingdom, but even with that balance of the power sharing seesaw, this party has been unable to curb climate change, provide affordable housing or bring down our National Debt to sensible levels. The policies of Conservative and Labour parties - and even for a brief time a coalition with the Liberal Democrats have done nothing to alleviate the poverty trap for millions of British citizens who are effectively, financial slaves.

In our view this calls for a complete overhaul of our policies from the bottom up. We should start at the base bottom to build a solid foundation for a sustainable future. We should not start at the debt laden top and work our way down. Why? Because the system at the moment is unfair. If we start at grass-roots level we can define what is necessary and scrap what is not needed.

For starters, we should declare ourselves neutral and make only what is needed to defend ourselves. In the modern age of robotics we do not need Nuclear Submarines or Aircraft Carriers. There are other ways of defending our soil and providing peace keeping abilities to NATO that are much more cost effective and just as scary to potential invaders.

The United Kingdom has many political parties, some of which are represented in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Below are links to the websites of the political parties that were represented in the House of Commons after the 2015 General Election:

Jeremy Corbyn

Tom Watson

Emily Thornberry

John McDonnell

Dianne Abbott

Nia Griffith

Richard Burgon

Kier Starmer

Barry Gardiner

Jon Ashworth

Angela Rayner

Rebecca Long-Bailey

Debbie Abrahams

Andy McDonald

Andrew Gwynne

John Healey

Valerie Vaz

(Angela) Baroness Smith Basildon

John Trickett

Lesley Laird

Christina Rees

Owen Smith

Sue Hayman

Kate Osamor

Ian Lavery

Dawn Butler

Peter Dowd

(Shami) Baroness Chakrabarti

Nick Brown

(Steven) Lord Bassam Brighton

Barbara Keeley

Cat Smith

Kerry McCarthy

Mary Creagh

Thangam Debbonaire

Harold Wilson

Former Prime Minister

Lord David Blunkett

Former MP

Gordon Brown

Former Prime Minister

Tony Blair

Former Prime Minister

We are concerned with how the make up of the above parties and (reasonably) popular policies affects the Wealden district, because we are all brothers on two islands in the Atlantic Ocean and what we do or fail to do is likely to rebound on ourselves and our fellow man in other nations around the world. How we act today influences policies in other countries in our global community. It is not just about us and our patch.

East Sussex has five District and Borough Councils, each with a border on the coast. From west to east they are:

As near neighbours and with councils now sharing facilities and working together, these area of Sussex are included in our remit and an area where climate change and affordable housing are issues that need urgent attention. Where the coastline is a feature in every Council, Blue Growth is a food security issue, especially where this side of of our local economy is under-exploited.