I have made a promise of spending every Friday out on the doorstep, I thought I would update you all on some of my recent experiences out campaigning.
The other week I had another inspiring day on the campaign trail, this time with Jasper Gerrard and his team. The age of the team ranged from 22 to 78! Who says we can’t generate commitment! Jasper is clearly neck and neck here with the unpopular Tory incumbent. The perfect antidote to those who are paying too much attention to the national polls.
I had another brilliant day in St Albans last Friday with Sandy Walkington and his team. We had a very positive response on the doorstep as I campaigned with Sandy and all the local activists, including a local Councillor of 33 years standing – Geoff Churchard in Marshalswick ward.
Sandy and I also dropped into the Cross Street Centre to admire the display of the knitted village of Sandridge which formed part of Age UK’s Cold Homes Week in support of its campaign for warm homes. Each winter, one older person dies every seven minutes from cold-related illness and excess winter death rates and illness are highest among those living in the coldest homes. Yet with just under one million older people living in fuel poverty, many simply cannot afford to heat their homes to a sufficient temperature in order to keep warm and well.
Age UK is calling for a commitment to upgrade all homes to meet higher energy efficient standards. As they say, a legacy of warm and well insulated homes would make a significant contribution to enabling everyone – not just older people – to keep warm, well and healthy in the future. There is more information on the campaign here.
I am pleased that Ed Davey has been working hard in Government to help these vulnerable people out. He recently announced that 1 million tenants renting energy inefficient leaky homes will be able to benefit from new regulations and so enjoy warmer homes and cheaper energy bills. He announced that landlords won’t be able to rent houses that don’t meet minimum energy efficiency standards and landlords can’t turn down residents’ requests for more energy efficiency improvements. A fair, and green, way to ensure that people have a better chance to live in a warm home.
Our peers are out and about campaigning across the Country. There’s 105 of us total and we’ve got 1000+ years of campaign experience between us! If you want our help in your local campaign don’t hesitate to contact our visits coordinator Louise ([email protected])
* Tim Clement-Jones is Lib Dem Lords DSIT Spokesperson and former member of the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill
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2 Comments
Well done TCJ on drawing attention to Cold Homes Week
The week is part of the binging campaign Energy Bill Revolution, so there is still time for folks to get involved —
http://www.energybillrevolution.org/
The other people behind this campaign (and there are lots of them ) are —
http://www.energybillrevolution.org/whos-behind-it/
It is a scandal beyond all logic that we have tens of thousands of children and even more elderly people condemned to endure winter in dangerously cold homes when there are simple, easy and cheap ways of preventing this.
It is a scandal that poor people have to use such a huge proportion of their limited means on heating the air around their homes because the walls, roofs and windows are leaking heat like an inverted sieve on top of a steaming kettle.
It is a scandal that the minimal improvements of this government are seen as progress when all of this and much more could and should have been done forty years ago. All of this could have been done for the price a year’s evasion by a handful of HSBC tax dodgers.
Thank you so much for coming to Maidstone and the Weald Tim. Everyone said how hard working, encouraging and friendly you were. We have had a veritable tsunami of Lib Dem peers the last couple of weeks (Olly Grender and today Alison Suttie for the second time in a month). We are canvassing huge numbers and gaining such a positive response. As you say, the national polls are misleading. This general election will be a series of by-elections, and with multiple parties there are so many permutations that seats such as Maidstone and the Weald and St Albans are very, very winnable. But we need good Lib Dems to come and help! Thank you so much Tim and look forward to seeing you in the next couple of weeks.