Date published: 2009/06/06
The Cambridge News says:
Labour is all but wiped out at Shire Hall - and the Conservative spearheading the controversial guided bus scheme has been kicked out.
Mirroring its woe nationwide, Labour saw its four seats on Cambridgeshire County Council cut to just two, with one of its seats being captured by the Green Party.
And there was a major shock in the Cottenham, Histon and Impington ward, where high profile Conservative Matt Bradney, who has been steering the party”s transport policy and the guided bus scheme, sensationally lost his seat to the Lib Dems.
The county council also has its first Green Party representative - ex-Labour leader of the city council, Simon Sedgwick-Jell, now Green, beat Labour”s leader on the county council, Paul Sales, in Abbey ward.
Labour also lost in Cambridge”s King”s Hedges ward.
Not exactly surprising results. Labour took a hammering everywhere. The defeat of Bradney might mean the end of the (so-called) congestion charge, but only time will tell. The congestion charge would have been one of the top issues in the election for all seats in and around Cambridge were it not for the national scandal to do with MP expenses diverting attention away from local to national issues.
The Lib Dems won the seat lost by Bradney, and they themselves are two faced on the issue of the congestion charge. So the Lib Dems are academic middle class, and so hate cars (at least those driven by the peasants). So they are natural congestion charge supporters. But they know that most voters oppose it (at least in and around Cambridge) so try to have it both ways by claiming that they love it in principle only want special rates for Cambridge drivers, which would make the financial case for the charge much less believable than it is already.
Anyway, ultimately it will be up to the Tories, who control the county council, to decide what will happen with the congestion charge. Many of them represent areas far from Cambridge and of course those councillors think it is a jolly good idea that the people in and around Cambridge should fork over millions of pounds in a new tax all so that (allegedly) lots of central government money can be given to their own areas.
Needless to say, the Green Party is super keen on the congestion charge, since they really, really hate car drivers (being if anything more academic middle class than the Lib Dems). The Abbey ward is not exactly one of the richest parts of Cambridge, and it would be interesting to know how many of the people who voted for the Greens realise that the Greens are going to try and make their lives miserable on the car front (more than the county council has already with their disasterous transport "planning" of Newmarket Road). Heck, the Greens would even close down every Sainsburys and Tescos in the city if they had half a chance. They do not serve the interests of the ordinary people of Abbey ward or Cambridge.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").