This evening a group of travellers have moved onto the running track on Moor Lane. I have been in touch with the council and asked that urgent steps are taken to secure their removal. The running track is used by a range of different groups and I fear what damage may be done to it.

A very large advertising banner has been erected over the past 24 hours close to the traffic lights at Balloon Woods at the top of Coventry Lane. This does not have any planning permission and so I have reported it to the council and asked for urgent action to be taken to have it removed.

Our hapless Prime Minister chose to visit Broxtowe yesterday, visiting Beeston and Stapleford. He didn’t display the usual courtesy of even informing the local authority that he was coming. He was here to promote the governments cycling strategy, so it seems off he chose a county where the Tory controlled county council sent back half […]

Well there is no disguising how disappointing last nights results were for us. Nationally we improved our vote share by 4.5% but ended up with less MP’s than previously, and of course we lost our leader Jo Swinson. Something clearly went wrong with our messaging as we started the campaign on a high and went […]

We are now just a few days away from the end of this election campaign. This is the 3rd time that I’ve stood in Newark and this election has been like no other that I’ve ever been involved in. Even now, just days from the vote, lots of people are telling me that they are […]

The Trussell Trust have emailed me today to say that they have distributed 1,018 three day food parcels between April and September this year in Newark, a 21% increase on last year. This is shocking. What sort of society are we creating where people can’t afford to even feed themselves. For too long we have […]

There are over 640 long term empty homes in Newark. This figure has been fairly consistent since 2004 at least. It is vital that we take urgent action to bring these back into use. Adding these houses to the housing stock would go a long way towards ending homelessness in the area. We can never […]

There are three purported tactical voting sites that I know of, all claiming to try and maximise the anti-Tory vote. If we had a fair voting system sites like this would not be needed. However we don’t so they are. Unfortunately the quality of the sites is very different. Best for Britain, a campaigning organisation […]

Thanks to everyone who came out campaigning for us in Newark today. It is clear there is a very different mood to that in previous elections, which much more support at the stall than ever before. People who were there at about midday were treated to a strange sight when I was confronted by Robert […]

Whilst both the Conservatives and Labour find themselves in the grip of extremists it is good to know that there is somewhere where moderates can feel at home. Over the last few months five former Conservative and three former Labour MP’s have joined the Liberal Democrats, showing that moderates from both sides of the political […]