News
The residents of Caddington can rightly be proud of themselves and their councillors (both parish and central Beds) for the impressive way they have dealt with the utilities cuts of the last week.
Only a few people remain cut off due to the fact that they are not currenty in residents and I hope therefore that most residents are now enjoying the holiday period.
The challenge now will be the truly massive clear up operation.
Certainly from what I have seen over the last few days, the clean up will take a lot of time and money. Local Councillor Richard Stay estimates will cost several million pounds. Read his detailed commentary on the recent events by clicking here.
The community response has been fantastic - and I know that the local Conservative Councillors Stay and Ruth Gammons are on the ball to make sure that the utility companies and Council do everything they can - morally as well as legally - to ensure that the financial impact and inconenience of the clean up does not unfairly fall on local residents.
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My family and I would like to take the opportunity to wish Happy Holidays to all our friends and supporters.
It has been an honour to be the Conservative Parliamentary candidate since 2007 and I hope that in 2010 I can - with your help - finish the deal at the General Election and have the honour of serving you as the MP for Luton South.
It has been a tough year for many people in the Luton area, but I hope and believe 2010 will turn out to be far more positive for most.
My thoughts are particularly with the residents of Caddington who have shown amazing community spirit over the last few days dealing with the problems resulting from the burst water mains that meant many families had their gas supply cut off and were unable to spend Christmas in their own homes. I sincerely hope that now power has been restored to all but a few homes, those impacted can enjoy the rest of the holiday period in peace.
As we enter the new year, the threat to the green belt around Luton remains a real one.
Bloor Homes have submitted yet another plan for a smaller development of 1,000 homes to the East of Luton (as opposed the original plans for 5,500 homes) which I have told them is still unacceptable to the residents of Wigmore, Stopsley and North Herts. Peter Lilley MP has delivered a similar message on behalf of the residents of his constituency.
I will continue to fight unwanted development around Luton while aggressively supporting building on brownfield and derelict sites in central Luton that - bizarrely - sit empty and are crying out for redevelopment. A Conservative government would provide financial incentives that would encourage wanted development while giving powers to local authorities to block unwanted development.
While the fight to save the Green Belt around Luton from unwanted destruction has recently received cross party support, there can be no denying the reality that it is the Conservative Party who offer the best hope to Save Our Green Belt as we are the only ones offering a credible policy alternative with any chance of being implemented.
David Cameron has commmitted to scrapping Labour's central government imposed housing targets if we win power, and put power over housing back in the hands of local people and local councils.
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Nigel Huddleston came under cyber-attack recently, as the campaign for this pivotal marginal seat hots up.
Last month Nigel Huddleston’s Facebook site ‘Nigel Huddleston for Luton South’ mysteriously disappeared while at about the same time someone pretending to be Nigel Huddleston and using the username ‘conshuddleston’ set up a twitter feed and then sent ‘tweets’ to neighbouring MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, Peter Lilley, and Conservative blogger, Guido Fawkes, saying that ‘I may stand down at the next Election in Luton South’.
In order to ‘stand down’ one has to be the MP in the first place, so the twitterer’s odd wording led several actual friends of Nigel Huddleston who had become followers of this ‘conshuddleston’ twitterer to contact Nigel asking if he really was ‘standing down’ and alerting him to the possibility of online impersonation.
Realising he was under cyber-attack, Nigel Huddleston asked Twitter and Facebook to investigate. The fake ‘conshuddleston’ twitter site is now inactive and is being investigated by Twitter customer support. Nigel’s Facebook site was quickly reinstated by Facebook after they investigated. Nigel does not know who is behind either of these cyber-attacks.
Nigel Huddleston said:
“The taking down of my Facebook site was inconvenient as I was using it to help co-ordinate a campaign action day and promote fundraising events, but while it was down I relied on my other sites and more traditional communication tools instead. There is no substitute for face to face campaigning and I only use new media tools to supplement my off-line campaigning activities not instead of them.
I’m taking the whole episode as a compliment. People don’t go to such lengths to disrupt and confuse the campaign of someone who they don’t think can win. As the bookies favourtite to win I can anticipate further dirty tricks as we get closer to the election. But as they say, imitation is the greatest form of flattery.”