Category: Council and Elections

There are local elections this week, including for a third of the councillors on Cambridge City Council. Here’s a preview for Queen Edith’s.

I presented to the Public Hearing held by the Boundary Commission for England my case that if two Cambridge city wards must be put in the brand new South Cambs constituency, they should be Trumpington and Cherry Hinton.

George Pippas re-elected as a city councillor for the ward After one of the more interesting election campaigns of the past few years in this ward, Liberal Democrat former mayor George Pippas (above right) was tonight elected for a further year as one of Queen Edith’s three city councillors. Independent candidate Sam Davies was runner-up,

I think that a mayor could be a good thing, if we elect the right person. All of our councils have been run forever by a seemingly endless succession of middle-aged white men wearing suits, and it’s been inspiring nobody.

Looking at the numbers, it would appear that Cambridge would make a perfectly sized constituency if it could gain as many people as happen to be in Queen Edith’s.

The Local Government Boundary Commission for England has now decided against the ‘marriage of convenience’ between Queen Edith’s and Trumpington.

Jennifer received 1189 votes in Thursday’s election, a 43% share. This represents a big rise for the Liberal Democrats, reversing a trend and making Queen Edith’s probably the ‘safest’ Lib Dem council seat in Cambridge.

This Thursday, there are two elections taking place, one for the local council and one for the county-wide Police & Crime Commissioner, and I thought I’d preview them both here.

I’m convinced that there’s a much greater interest in the local council election than the fairly low voting turnouts suggest. This week’s hustings event showed that people want to know more. (Warning: contains videos featuring me!)

It’s little wonder that the people who get elected are usually the ones who stuff the most paper through our letterboxes every day in the lead-up to the election. We’d like to start changing things in a very small way, right here.

I don’t publish on this blog often, but we’ve got two news stories on consecutive days! In terms of its representation on Cambridgeshire County Council, Queen Edith’s is to be merged with Trumpington in a double-sized ward (‘division’) with two councillors, it was confirmed today.

You may remember that six months ago, I wrote about a proposal to radically re-shape Queen Edith’s county council ward, as part of a wider council reorganisation. We now have a major update to that, and a final chance to have your say.

At under 34%, George’s vote share was the lowest for the Liberal Democrats for over 20 years, but it was still easily enough to hold off Labour.

Heidi Allen is the new MP for South Cambridgeshire, following yesterday’s election, where she increased her party’s majority from 7,800 to well over 20,000

I don’t have access to any privileged information, but what the heck, let’s take some educated guesses as to what will happen on Thursday.

Matt says the problem with having all councillors from the same party is that if your view differs, you’re at risk of finding yourself without a voice.

Andy is a fan of more strategic approaches to issues. He has made his presence felt at South Area Committee recently, sometimes to considerable effect.

Joel would like to see Queen Edith’s find its identity between the city and the countryside, and see how we can support each other as a community.

A while back, Candido Channell thought that UKIP “seem like real people, like me” – unhappy with how things are but wanting to do something about it.

George Pippas decided to enter local politics for the first time four years ago, and was elected to the city council. He is now standing for re-election.

This could be a more interesting election than it appears. I would not be surprised if we get an interesting result.

Here are the five candidates, from all of the five major parties in England, standing for election as our new MP for South Cambridgeshire.

South Cambridgeshire was only created as a constituency in 1997, so we have just four General Elections to look back on.

Most people in the area assume we’re in Cambridge. But it was decided a few years ago to ‘donate’ Queen Edith’s to the South Cambridgeshire constituency.

The South Cambridgeshire constituency now has a full slate of candidates from the five major political parties for the 2015 General Election. Here they are.

Queen Edith’s has a new councillor, and it’s Viki Sanders of the Liberal Democrats.

By arranging this event, Homerton really showed Cambridge City Council how local democracy could – and should – be brought to the people.

Without rashly predicting who’s going to win, I reckon the winning candidate’s vote share will be low, and the gap between first and third places smaller than it’s been for years.

I’ve compiled a short guide to the details of our forthcoming byelection, including a list of candidates and links to their websites.

A short article looking at forthcoming local and national elections, discussing which parties might be most sympathetic to those wishing to reduce or prevent Green Belt development.