Tag Archives: ealing

Opposition councillors can achieve real change in our community

By Gary Malcolm | Fri 1st May 2020 - 7:16 pm

In Ealing I lead a small but proactive team of four Lib Dem councillors who provide real opposition to the Labour-run council.

In these times where we are all trying to deal with Coronavirus, there are many ways we can help the community by promoting advice to our constituents, holding virtual meetings in our wards to answers residents’ concerns and scrutinising what the Council can do differently or better to help residents and users of Council services.

By campaigning in an active and smart way consistently, you can be an effective opposition party by getting the Council to listen to you and to introduce policies that will help people in your local area. Some of these include:

Reversing changes to Council Tax Support scheme that were causing harm and greater levels of Now more vulnerable residents are exempt.
Leading the campaign to stop Charing Cross Hospital’s Accident & Emergency ward from closing.
Highlighting a £1.1 million IT blunder causing the telephone system to stop working for a week and then leading the charge to enable changes to stop this reoccurring.
Extending the use of powers of local Ward Forum meetings which have a budget to spend on local matters including play facilities for teenagers, care facilities for the elderly and providing cycle training.
The introduction of one of London’s first ward wide 20 mph zones and other road safety initiatives.
Persuading the Council to be opposed to an expansion of Heathrow airport.
Forcing the Council to introduce a large number of policies which will help reduce the negative impact on our environmental from the Council and its contractors.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged council elections 2021 and council elections 2022 | 4 Comments

Post-election reflections on building a Lib Dem core vote

By Joyce Onstad | Sun 6th May 2018 - 10:29 am

This year I decided to carry out an experiment. I had the feeling that our strategy of Targeting had swung too far one way and was over-allocating resources, adding to the haemorrhaging of our Core Vote and leading our supporters, ex supporters and electorate at large to view the LibDems as increasingly becoming irrelevant.

So I decided to do some work in the non-Target ward in Ealing that I had been allocated without using any human or material party resources. I also did not work with the other “paper candidates” in the Ward as I did not want to detract from their efforts in helping in the Target wards.

This was the result of my limited effort in my Ward Ealing Broadway:

Ealing Broadway Ward
	Vote 2014	Vote 2018	Share 2014	Share 2018	Change	Pct Change
Dorothy Brooks/Joyce Onstad	524	789	4.72%	6.24%	265	50.57%
Patrick Salaun	442	627	3.99%	4.96%	185	41.86%
Mark Sanders/Toran Shaw	391	572	3.53%	4.52%	181	46.29%

Total LibDem	1357	1988	12.24%	15.72%	631	46.50%

Total Vote	11090	12644

Electorate	10390	10641
Turnout	38.49%	41.30%