Local volunteer & business owner 🙌 Conservative Councillor in Herne Bay 💙 Group Leader 🗳️ Free marketeer and environmentalist
Whitstable
Joined November 2010
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Promoted by Dan Watkins of Herne Bay and Sandwich Conservatives, 215A Canterbury Rd, Birchington CT7 9AH
I set out to Cabinet how we can affordably freeze council tax next year, but our Labour-led Council prefers to pump even more money into a disfunctional waste & street-cleaning service (Canenco) 🧐
On behalf of residents, we shall keep pushing 👊
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
Planning meetings are already being cancelled across the country.
Labour's new rules mean your councillor can no longer call in planning applications for you, and decisions on what gets built near you are handed to officials.
Local planning should be decided by the councillors you elect.
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
BREAKING: Bank raises interest rate to 4%, the first rise in over three years with inflation above target ever since Labour came to office.
2.3 million households remortgage next year, with markets braced for more rises.
Labour’s choices, hitting your mortgage bill.
Only the Conservatives have a plan to get borrowing down.
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
Labour’s Treasury Minister admitted she doesn’t think employers are working people.
No wonder. The entire Cabinet has less private-sector experience combined than our Shadow Chancellor.
They’re no longer the Labour Party. They’re the Welfare Party.
Spot on from Kemi 💪
The Budget has failed to make any of the big decisions needed on defence, on welfare and on the economy. Leaving Britain less secure, with its finances failing.
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
Labour talk about giving people "breathing space”.
The truth is they are the ones choking the economy.
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
Healey pledges to bring down the UK’s welfare bill “in a Labour way” - which based on all available evidence actually means it will go up
Nothing for nature, nothing for farmers, nothing for energy security.
A woefully inadequate Budget for the environment
The Budget was all mouth and no trousers on energy and offered nothing for our countryside.
CEN's Acting Executive Director @johnflesher90 full response 👇
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
Is that it?
John Healey had a big job to do cleaning up Labour’s mess. This Budget fails to do it.
Britain is overspent, overborrowed and overtaxed. This Budget does not come close to meeting the moment.
My full response👇
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
FYI, talking about Brexit yesterday, Angela Rayner claimed that...
“The evidence is really clear in terms of 20% down in exports to the EU, 16,000 businesses no longer exporting to the EU, it has been the red tape on the EU deal we got, has been damaging to the economy”.
But if this is indeed the evidence, it really is not clear!
Let's unpick it... 🧵
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
Burnham and Healey are gambling that they will get another chance to do a big budget. But they may look back on this as the best opportunity they had.
There are, to my mind, three possible explanations for their approach.
One is that they would rather not level with their MPs and the country now. The argument goes that they will be in a better place to confront the trade-offs next autumn. But political capital is a depreciating asset.
The second is that they are doing a Mr Micawber, hoping something will turn up to improve the public finances. That could be faster-than-expected growth or a big reduction in government borrowing costs. Either is always possible, but look around the world and you will see the opposite is expected.
The other possibility is that they are planning an early election. That would push the reckoning beyond polling day, giving them more flexibility. As I know all too well, elections are never risk-free.
The problem is that Wednesday’s budget, and the IMF’s praise for Britain, are founded on fantasy - the idea that the Labour Party will accept the tight spending limits that are meant to kick in as the next election approaches.
My preference would be for a budget that cut spending, reduced business taxes and enacted growth-enhancing supply-side reform. Yet with his party in no mood for cuts, you can see why Healey is likely to avoid doing anything too bold on Wednesday.
They will never have more room for manoeuvre than now. I know, having done both jobs, that you regret the decisions you don’t take far more than the ones you do.
More on the budget in my @thetimes column today 👇
thetimes.com/comment/columni…
Good news that most types of crime continue to fall, per the long-term trend.
But shoplifting keeps rising, and this is where more police and security officers can make a big difference.
We have had success locally on this front and will keep funding it as a reident priority 💪
UK crime was four times higher when Oasis first played Knebworth than at last year’s reunion gigs.
The collapse of crime and safer streets is one of the biggest stories of our time.
But one almost never told - or believed.
My take on today’s figures: comment.press/lawless
First outing as Group Leader in the Chamber, and it was a great collective effort from our @Conservatives team 🙌
Under sustained questioning, Labour finally admitted it had overseen a collapse in recycling rates and a loss of £300k in council income.
Residents deserve better!
Dan Watkins 🇺🇦 🇬🇧 retweeted
From Yorkshire to Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire to Worcestershire, Conservatives won ALL of last night’s council by-elections in England 💙
Three gains and a hold, beating Labour, the Greens and Reform:
🌳 Cllr Amanda Carter, Calverley & Farsley, Leeds. GAIN from Labour
🌳 Cllr Rosemary Bolton, Hertford Kingsmead, East Hertfordshire. GAIN from Green
🌳 Cllr Ben Lavender, Grantham St Wulfram’s, South Kesteven. GAIN from Independent
🌳 Cllr Tony Miller, Hartlebury, Wychavon. HOLD
