West Herts Liberal Democrats - Working for Hertfordshire, for Britain and for You!

Why are MEPs like buses?
You wait 5 years for one to come along - then 2 arrive together! Ba-boom!
The photograph shows a party in Harston near Cambridge this afternoon (Sat 15/06/2019) celebrating the Liberal Democrat success in having 2 MEPs elected in the E of England Region.
The Liberal Democrats now have 16 MEPs in Great Britain plus 1 Alliance MEP in Northern Ireland.
Barbara Gibson MEP is on the left and Lucy Nethsingha MEP is on the right.

On the third Tuesday of each month we have our Supper Club here in Berkhamsted.

We discuss politics and anything else we choose to talk about.

It gives us the chance to get to know each other and to put the world to rights.

We welcome all Lib Dem members - and anyone of a similar mindset - who would like to join us.

The Liberal Democrats in Coalition worked hard to mitigate the Tories' excessive enthusiasm for what they called "austerity" - just the usual Tory cuts under another name of course.

The Liberal Democrats, especially Vince Cable and Ed Davey, apart from pushing forward massive investment in green energy, were also quietly supporting smaller but useful investment in infrastructure where it mattered most to people and business.

Rail improvements in the East of England were some of these and one in particular - the railfreight route enhancement from the coast to the Midlands - was implement partly with EU grants.

One major component was the opening of the new station of Cambridge North eighteen months ago - where passenger journeys have now reached 550,000 - and with the Hitchin flyover cutting out a junction bottleneck, rail passengers to both cities and the towns in between have increased in number.

35,000 additional journeys were made in 2018 and the total between Norwich and Cambridge has now topped a million a year.

More journeys but with fewer cars and containers on the roads.

Every little helps.

The Liberal Democrats are strong in Dacorum, strong in the East of England and, with their partner parties in the ALDE Group, strong in Europe.

Votes in the European Election were counted district by district and then added up centrally.

So we know how many votes were cast for each party in Dacorum Borough.

Three years is a long time in politics, and 10 years is longer still. Actually both are pretty long periods of time anyway. Ten years ago, back in the aftermath of the financial crisis - that self-inflicted near-catastrophy resulting from a lack of oversight and regulation in the US and UK - things looked good in Britain when viewed from Riga, or Plovdiv, or Craiova or from Bydgoszcz. Prompt action in the UK had saved its banks, liquidity pumped into the financial sytem had saved its economy. Britain was back on its feet, the pound gave you €1.30 and wages were anyway far more than you could earn at home.

Small wonder then that energetic people trapped in rural economies with few opportunities and low wages flocked to the UK - and the British government made no attempt to use EU mechanisms to control this. With the second wave of eastern countries joining the EU, Britain did apply for a 5-year delay as it could have done ealier, to enable a controlled adjustment to take place.

However, vacancies were filled, pipes were fixed, nurses, doctors and dentists looked after patients, construction boomed, the UK was doing very well indeed and most people were happy with the outcome.

Then along came the nativists for whom where you were born was the big thing ("We're British and we don't need Europeans!") and the populists for whom what they personally wanted was the biggest thing of all ("We're the voice of the people and what we want we get!").

And of course three years ago we had the Referendum and a small majority of people in a not particularly high turnout poll, voted to leave the EU. Some were influenced by Boris Johnson's untruthful statements, others by UKIP's downright lies about tens of millions of Bulgarians, Romanians and Turks all poised to arrive, it was implied, the very near future.

Record numbers of people are joining the biggest, strongest Remain party - the Liberal Democrats 🎉

By Greg Foster, Jun 08, 2019 11:06 (Read more on our national web site)














105,480 105,480 - that's how many people had joined the Liberal Democrats as of midnight last night.

That makes it official - our party is the biggest it's ever been!

Dacorum Borough Council Election Results May 2019 - BOXMOOR

Thank you to the people of Boxmoor for their support of the Liberal Democrats.

Results

WILLIAM ALLEN: Liberal Democrats; 1285; ELECTED

Cameron Brady-Turner: Labour; 427

Neil Harden: Conservative; 898

Sherief Hassan: Green; 367

CLAIRE HOBSON: Liberal Democrats; 1232; ELECTED

Bernard Hurley: Green; 281

Janice Marshall: Conservative; 968

Barbara Pesch: Labour; 326

Michael Pesch: Labour; 260

Robert Theophile: Green; 255

LIZ UTTLEY: Liberal Democrat; 1117; ELECTED

William Wyatt-Lowe: Conservative; 848

A £170 million rail improvement project which had its origins in the infrastructure investment plans of the Coalition Government is on the point of completion. It will include the addition of a third track to the line between Stratford and Meridian Water, a new housing and employment area in the Lee Valley centred on the old Angel Road station just south of Ponders End by the River Lee.

The new track will be 5.5 kilometers long and additional platforms will be provided at Tottenham Hale and Northumberland Park. It will significantly increase capacity on the West Anglia Main Line

These improvements will enable an extra two trains per hour to be run in each direction over the line from Autumn 2019 onwards.

When the 10,000 new homes are completed and the 6,700 job vacancies are filled it is estimated that as many as 4 milluion passeng3ers per year will be using the new Meridian Water Station.

These improvements will result in better rail connections between Cambridge and Stansted and Stratford and Liverpool Street and will boost regeneration in southeast Hertfordshire and northeast London.

Dacorum Borough Council Election Results May 2019 - HIGHFIELD

Thank you to the people of Highfield for their support of the Liberal Democrats.

Results

SAMMY BARRY; Liberal Democrats; 504; ELECTED

Louise Douris; Conservative; 230

James Froggatt; UKIP; 194

Luke Jordan: Labour; 337

BRENDA LINK; Liberal Democrats; 541; ELECTED

Vanessa Mitchell; Labour; 311

Charlotte Palmer; Conservative; 185