Alison Bennett's Monday Mail - A cuppa and a chat

Welcome to my Monday Mail for 22 April 2024, as I share a few of the things I've been doing and thinking about this past week, including conversations with local residents and potholes.

A cuppa and a chat

One of the privileges of being a parliamentary candidate is that people want to talk to me and share the issues that are really important to them. 

I had two coffee shop meetings in Burgess Hill with local people this week, and those conversations illustrate the wide variety of issues that matter to people. 

One meeting was about everything to do with Burgess Hill: from the situation in the town centre, to developer contributions to support the impact of new housing via car parking, potholes and what local councillors actually do. 

The other was about changing the law on assisted dying. This is something that the Liberal Democrats debated at our Conference in 2021. You can read the policy that the Party passed here.

Both people raised really important issues and both have given me pause for thought. I hope that the people I met thought it was time well spent for them.

Why do politicians always talk about potholes?

I had an entertaining email this week from an occasional correspondent who is annoyed that one of my opponents is overly focussed on the potholed roads of Mid Sussex. My correspondent then listed off 19 things that are more important than potholes for an aspiring MP.

I am as guilty as the next person of talking about potholes. 

Why? 

Because when you knock on doors it's one thing that residents raise with me again and again. More fundamentally, I think that crumbling roads are a visible indicator of the broader decline of the public realm. I think that the headline of this New Statesman article from 2018 hits the nail on the head:

Crumbling Britain: the UK’s pothole plague is a sign of national decline 

So, please tell me ONE thing that is more important to you than potholes

No need to share 19 things, one is enough in this short survey.

Best wishes,

Cllr Alison Bennett
Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
Mid Sussex Liberal Democrats

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