With International Women’s Day, the culmination of the Six Nations, and St Patrick’s Day, March is always a busy month in the Giles household. Add in an election year, and it’s non-stop! With just over 40 days to polling day, your Conservative teams have been out across the borough listening to residents since the summer. From Cranford to Chiswick, we’ve heard the same response ‘Hounslow doesn’t care’...about us, about the areas we live in, that our potholes go unfixed, that we have dark roads, that people don’t feel safe, that our roads are full of weeds in the summer and leaves and mulch in the winter.
Everywhere you go in Hounslow, it would appear that our friends and neighbours are fed up with being taken for granted. From the small things like street cleanliness, to the more critical items like children’s social care, Labour simply isn’t working. Instead, we’re being failed by the people who should be thinking of the needs of those we’ve been elected to represent instead of their own egos.
In my blog over the weekend for Chiswick W4, I went through the week, and shared about the only Area Forum to take place this cycle, Chiswick’s. However, what I didn’t mention was Cllr John Todd’s very sobering statement of a high court case of two of Hounslow’s orphans left in a home described as a hovel. We had been promised transparency and accountability from Labour run Hounslow, but instead, it’s been silence on contentious topics and news of this case was shared as a result of reporting in the national press. Is this the way to create trust and transparency?
We want integrity from our local leaders, we want to be able to trust that they’re making the right decisions for us, especially those who need our support, compassion and advocacy the most. Do we think this is done by creating cheesy videos for social media? No, of course not! This is done by consistently turning up in and for our communities, having the courage to call out injustice and to demand better.
For the last four years, your Conservative councillors across Hounslow have turned up, writing in this publication, sharing our work, our lives, and our frustrations. We have taken all our experience and distilled it into a plan to Fix Hounslow in the shape of our manifesto. For us, this isn’t just an exercise of “look how good we are”, but a plan to show up for our borough.
We know that the cost of everything has gone up, that what we’re getting in return has reduced. We want and need a local council who doesn’t think that value for money is a slogan. As Conservatives who have run the council, we know how to make the tough decisions that result in low taxation. We launched our manifesto and campaign last Friday in central Hounslow, we’re fielding candidates in all wards, and if elected on the 7th of May will do all we can to represent our communities. As our group leader, Councillor Peter Thompson wrote in the manifesto’s forward: ‘Hounslow is your home. It’s our home too. And it deserves better’.
That will only come with change, and your vote on the 7th of May will be that chance to enact that change. When you’re at the ballot box, a vote for your local Conservative candidates won’t be a wasted vote.
If you want to see real change in Hounslow, you have the ability to make that happen. Be the change you want to see, and you can only do that if you turn out to vote.
