Thursday - Your day to vote!

By Clive Hart - Thanet Labour Group Leader

A month ago we launched our Thanet Labour Manifesto. We also launched this ThanetLab 'blog site and our goal for both projects was to set out our aims and objectives, clearly and concisely for all the people of Thanet. We've used the blog to expand on a number of pertinent topics and we hope that has been helpful. 

 

For example, the Labour government brought high speed trains to Thanet and we've outlined our continued support for shortening travel times to London. However, Thanet Labour is always mindful of our local environment so a Parkway station with (to quote the Tory Leader at the last full council meeting) a huge car park, just doesn't make economic sense and we will certainly fight to keep Ramsgate main station.

 

We explained that Thanet Labour will support the development of Manston Airport but will always be mindful of the impact on residents and the environment. To this end we will implement a policy of no flights during the hours of 23:00 to 07:00, except emergency landings and humanitarian flights. We have simply not been convinced that the economic argument has been made for night flights, particularly when the airport is so underused during the day. 

 

We have highlighted the sad plight of our local harbours under eight years of Tory neglect. Margate silted up and smelling of rotten seaweed and Ramsgate Royal Harbour and marina left in such a shoddy condition.

 

It was important to expose poor Conservative decision making. During discussions on a matter with serious financial implications and at a full council meeting last year, a leading Tory clearly said "lets make the decision now and look at the detail later". For this election, the Conservative's have also boasted openly on their leaflets that they help local traders by encouraging residents to shop locally, whilst having the very same leaflets printed in Canterbury.

 

Furthermore, the Tory fiasco regarding development in Pierremont Park in Broadstairs once again explained the Conservative's total lack of meaningful consultation and has all the hallmarks of their marathon fight with our own Thanet residents at the Montefiore Games Centre. That particular nonsense cost tens of thousands of pounds of ratepayers money and hundreds of hours of council time.

 

We set out our aim to have a Criminal Records Bureau check for every Thanet councillor and just to validate our claim that we need to improve standards at TDC, a Conservative candidate for Salmestone ward had to resign from the Conservative party only last week, due to appalling views he expressed openly on the internet.

 

For the past four weeks we have also been very busy delivering as many paper summaries of our manifesto as possible through residents letter boxes across Thanet (printed on the inside of Labour election addresses). It's been a fantastic month with wonderful weather and we've been joined by a number of leading Labour MP's including Harriet Harman and Yvette Cooper.

 

We gave our manifesto a great deal of time and thought and we sincerely hope we've informed you of our aims and objectives in one way or another. We know that everyone has busy lives these days, but this election will be a very close run event and every vote will count. We hope we have convinced you of our commitment to bringing back the pride in Thanet and that you will take the time to vote Labour on Thursday.

 

Thank you sincerely for your time.

 

Clive