{"id":17226,"date":"2015-05-03T17:54:43","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T16:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17226"},"modified":"2015-05-03T18:06:32","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T17:06:32","slug":"british-general-election-14-what-does-my-local-conservative-candidate-think-is-the-key-issue-in-his-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=17226","title":{"rendered":"British general election (14): what does my local Conservative candidate think is the key issue in his campaign?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four days before actual polling day, I’ve received another flyer from him and virtually the whole of one side of it is dominated by the statement: “To fight the bin tax and build a better Brent, vote Luke Parker on Thursday 7th May”.<\/p>\n

Now I don’t know how closely you’ve been following this election. I’ve watched all five television programmes featuring debates between and interviews with the party leaders and I’ve read a lot in print and online – and I’ve never heard anyone talk about “the bin tax”. Indeed I am pretty confident that you have no idea what Parker is talking about.<\/p>\n

In fact, it is not a tax (which is mandatory) but a charge ( which is voluntary). If you live in the Borough of Brent, the \u00a0charge is the princely sum of \u00a340 a year to have garden waste collected from your home every two weeks or every month (depending on the time of year). We do live in \u00a0Brent and we have signed up for the service and paid the charge.<\/p>\n

There are two points to be made to Luke Parker:<\/p>\n

1) This is a charge levied by the London Borough of Brent -which happens to be Labour-controlled – and it has absolutely nothing to do with the British Government or the British Parliament – except that boroughs are having to make such charges because central government funding to local government has been cut so much.<\/p>\n

2) Even if this charge was a matter for national government, is it really more important than the deficit, the National Health Service, child benefit, \u00a0jobs, housing, immigration, education, Europe, Trident … ?<\/p>\n

The voters of Brent North deserve to be treated more intelligently than this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"