Barton Link Road UPDATE Mark Bhagwandin your Conservative candidate working for you all year round Time for Change Is Labour on your side? Dear Residents, I want to thank everyone who I have met so far on the doorstep and who have contacted me with issues that needed resolving, for taking the time to do so. Despite the fact that I am not yet your Councillor, I have managed to resolve some issues and ensure action is taken on others. I will continue to work with you in the coming months as I have done for the last three years to ensure our voice is heard in Headington Hill and Northway. Thank you to everyone who completed the residents’ survey. It was very interesting to see in the surveys that many people had no idea who their local councillors are. Seven out of ten respondents said they did not think their local representatives were doing a good job. It is not good enough for candidates from any political party to show up only at election time expecting to be voted back in simply because they belong to a particular party. Local politics should be about community engagement and representation all year round. Although I lost to Labour in 2014, resulting in the ward now having two Labour councillors, I have stayed working alongside you and have had the pleasure of getting to know many of you quite well. In the surveys, many of you raised the issue of speeding, which I have raised with the Police and the county council and will I follow up to ensure there is action. More than half of you were unhappy with the City Council’s plans to go through rubbish to check you’ve recycled. I believe there are better, less intrusive ways for us to encourage recycling. On council tax and the cost of council services, nearly 70% of you said you were not happy with the high cost of renting and living in the city. As many of you know already and have seen in the press, I have taken a stand against waste and high costs imposed by Oxford City Council on taxpayers (Oxford has the 9th highest council tax in South East England). We must come together on May 5 to change the status quo. Let us vote for strong representation in the interest of this community and to oppose the bullyism that has come to characterise the treatment of residents by the Labour- dominated City Council. Lets vote for change. Mark Bhagwandin Under the Labour Administration at the City Council: ► Elderly pensioners at Plowman’s Tower who own their flats have been slapped with £50,000 bills to “improve” the tower. ► Beggars have been threatened with £100 fines. ► £30,000 of taxpayers money have been spent on expensive legal representation to fight Northway residents trying to stop a road being forcibly put through their community. ► Residents are being spied on to see what they put in their bins. ► Motorists are being spied on by a £30,000 City Council specialised vehicle to see if they are overstaying their time at the city’s car parks, like the ones in Headington. ► Nine top managers at the city council earn a total of more than £1M in salaries and pensions with the Chief Executive leading the way with £173,000. ► Oxford City Council has the highest council tax of all the district councils in Oxfordshire. Its double that of the other four Conservative controlled district councils. Thank you to everyone who came out to the protest I and a few well known activists in Northway organised in December against a link road being brought through Northway as a shortcut to the JR Hospital. The Labour City Council and the developers continue to forcibly press ahead with the road despite the pleas and challenges from residents of Northway. They have ignored peoples concerns about the danger of demolishing the fence to the A40, chopped down trees during the nesting season, and dug up the green space as helpless residents look on. I want to make a few points clear No one is opposed to new housing I have spoken to many people over this issue and I am yet to meet a single person who is opposed to new housing in Barton. No amount of calling people “nimbys” will change this fact. The Barton link road is not necessary for the new development. A road system already exists to allow access to and from Barton Park. The link road will pose a significant safety risk The stretch of the A40 between Headington Roundabout and Cutteslowe Roundabout has accounted for at least 27 serious accidents in the last 10 years, 2 of them fatal. The removal of the trees and the metal fences means there is now the possibility of people, especially children using the playground, to get on to this dangerous A40 road. Does reducing speed to 50mph make the A40 safer? Well the 50mph limit didn’t prevent the pedestrian death on the A40 near Risinghurst just three years ago. On that stretch of road they actually closed off vehicular access to and from Risinghurst, across the A40. So on one section of the A40, they have closed off traffic crossing the road because it is too dangerous and on another section, equally dangerous, they are swiftly opening it up to vehicular traffic. It is inconsistent and ridiculous. I use the A40 near Risinghurst regularly and often see people dicing with death running across the road. I hope we don’t see this situation at Northway now. Additionally, emergency vehicles speeding through the narrow and bending streets of Northway will pose a significant safety hazard. A speeding car on Saxon Way recently ran over a cat as it came around a bend, resulting in desperate residents scrawling “SLOW” across the road. Residents there are concerned about speeding vehicles. So what does the council recommend? Give them some more. The absence of a Barton link road will not risk lives I seriously doubt residents of the current Barton area are dying because they can’t get to the hospital on time. Like so many other arguments used by Labour councillors this is a manufactured and spurious argument designed to make residents opposed to the road appear inconsiderate. The bullying tactics used against residents, the £30,000 of taxpayers money used to fight them and the constant ridiculing of voices raised in protest does not speak well of the Labour council in Oxford. They should be ashamed of themselves over the way they have treated residents on this issue. December 5 protest against the Barton Link Road