Freshers

Today was Freshers' Fair at the University of Chester, and what a success we had.

Our stall was inundated with politically interested students and over 50 have signed up to join. Who says young people are not interested in politics or the Conservatives?

One thing that we noted were the audacious and blatant lies from the Lib Dems. They displayed a poster saying they were 100% committed to free education. When challenged about their graduation tax and the fact that they would charge students at the end of their course with fees than are even larger than Labour's - they didn’t care. Just another example of how they will say anything and openly lie in an attempt to get a vote: Shameful but not surprising.

Back to the Conservatives and therefore honesty and positive messages: "To our 50 new members, welcome and thank-you."

'Special' Announcement

Chester Conservatives have put together a policy proposal that could significantly increase the number of Special Constables on our streets, for very little cost.

Specials are volunteers and unlike Community Wardens, they DO have the power of arrest, so they can be very effective in tackling anti-social behaviour within local communities. Being volunteers they cannot receive payment, but under Local Government legislation they can be given a 50% discount off their Council Tax by the Local Authority.

In Cheshire we have half of the number of Specials that we had in 1997 and less than half of the number that the Police Authority want, so the Conservatives are asking the ruling Lib Dem and Labour administration to back our call to offer this discount to all successful applicants.

I'll keep you posted and in the meantime, put pressure on your local authority to do the same.

Lib Dem Drug Madness

Everyone expects the Lib Dems to come up with some rather whacky policy ideas, but there is a difference between whacky and damn right naive and dangerous and during their conference the Lib Dems reaffirmed they are the latter. The North West's Lib Dem MEP has called for all drugs to be legalised, with heroin, cocaine and ecstasy to be sold over the counter in local chemists.

I have found syringes discarded in Chester's streets; spoken to parents who fear that their children have too easy access to drugs already and have seen the devastation addiction can bring to a whole family, not just the drug user. 80% of theft is to feed a drug habit and that will still be the case even if the sale was legalised.

We need to protect people from the dangers of drugs, not make it easy for them to get hooked. Easy access to drugs is not part of the solution; it is part of the cause. This just goes to show that despite their rhetoric, the Lib Dems are as daft and as dangerous as ever.

Back on the Blog

I had experienced major technical difficulties trying to link this Blog into my web site pauloffer.co.uk, but everything is resolved, thanks to David at digitallight.co.uk.

So keep checking this page regularly to read my Blogs giving my thoughts on national and local Chester news and events.

Regards.

Paul