Categories
Freedom of Information

Thank you to people who wrote to block controversial Freedom of Information bill

We’ve had an amazing response to our campaign to block the controversial Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill to exempt MPs from the Freedom of Information Act – literally hundreds of people locally backed the national Lib Dem online campaign.

All that work has paid off! The Bill has now failed in the Lords after no-one could be found to sponsor it.

More people signed the Liberal Democrat petition against the bill from Winchester than from any other area.

The campaign to defend Freedom of Information had the biggest response to any campaign that we’ve run online. People were understandably furious about MPs seeking to exempt themselves from the Freedom of Information Act.

The MPs who voted for the bill claimed that it was to protect constituents’ privacy, but they provided no evidence and the current law already protects private correspondence.

Categories
Elections

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who voted and worked for us on Thursday. It was a very encouraging result.

Overall, in the new Winchester constituency

  • We gained three seats – two from Labour and one from the Conservatives
  • We doubled or trebled our majorities in most of the seats we held
  • We achieved a 4.5% swing in votes cast from the Conservatives towards us

Our ‘Greener, Fairer, Safer’ pledges got us a lot of support.

Highlights included:

  • Colden Common & Twyford – Jim Wagner and his team nearly quadrupled the Lib Dem majority from 121 to 442
  • Compton & Otterbourne – Eleanor Bell and her team won this ward from the Conservatives with a 7% swing achieving a 128 vote majority
  • Littleton & Harestock – Kelsie Learney and her team nearly trebled the Lib Dem majority from 109 to 303
  • St Barnabas – Allan Mitchell and his team cut the Conservative majority from 251 to 144
  • St Bartholomew – Sue Nelmes and her team more than trebled the Lib Dem majority to 355 behind a 6% swing from the Conservatives
  • St John – Adrian Hicks and the St John’s team won this ward from Labour winning a 259 majority
  • St Luke – Alexis Fall and her team won this ward from Labour with an 18% swing giving a 308 vote majority
  • St Paul – Karen Barratt and her team more than trebled our majority to 383

Our colleagues in Eastleigh (which covers the Chandler’s Ford part of the new constituency) also had a great day, winning 13 out of 14 seats up for election.

Elsewhere in the Winchester City Council area, we won in Wickham, but lost Owslebury & Curdridge and came within 19 votes of winning Whiteley from the Conservatives. If 10 people had voted differently in Whiteley, the Conservatives would have lost their majority and the council would have moved to No Overall Control…

Overall – a good day for the Liberal Democrats in Winchester – and a bad day for the Conservatives and Labour.

Categories
Elections

Winchester City Council results

Not available yet I’m afraid.

The count starts tomorrow morning at 9.30 a.m.

I’ll post stuff up here or on Twitter as I get it.

Categories
listening2winchester

Listening to Winchester

We’re getting a good response to our new website – listening2winchester.com.

Our site has details of the nine pledges that the Liberal Democrat team are making for the May election – and gives people the opportunity to say which they think are most important and which extra pledges they would like to see added.

So far people’s favourite pledge is ‘improving the energy efficiency of offices and homes’.

Categories
Post Office

Post Office Proposals

So.. it looks like the Post Office wants to take the two longest queues in Winchester and combine them into one.

I can see how the idea of moving the Post Office into W.H. Smith could work in some places, but I’m baffled as to how it will work in Winchester.

Where are the delivery vans going to go? Will St George’s Street be even more congested?

And what are Smith’s plans to fix their queuing problems?

The Post Office is claiming that there will be some consultation on this issue – but one of the possible outcomes will need to be ‘no’.

Mark is in a similar place and we’ve set up a consultation website at savewinchesterpostoffice.com – I’ll be interested in your views.