“Right-wing” council candidates cares about over spending on needless bus lanes, cycleways and speedhumps.

The mantra we have seen from “left-wing” Labour has been “nothing is safe, cars need to be gone, slow down everything, spend baby spend”.

When you’re learning about who your candidates are take some time to understand if they’re left or right wing……..and remember, environmentalists actually exist on both sides, they just take different approaches to the same problems. Socialists also exist on both sides. They also just take a different approach to the same things….

As a general rule I think it works like this…

Right-wing – spend it like it’s your own money, look for the best value, look for the best returns in value as they spend your money, and tend not to be alarmist.

Left-wing – spend baby spend, it’s not my money, it’s just money from rich people and we need to spend it quickly while not putting to much focus on how or value or accountability just as long as the money flows…. and tend to be alarmist, “won’t anyone think of the children/ climate/ future”

My view, some days each approach has some value, we have to be careful that the right doesn’t tighten the screws so tight that all we get is low wages, no business profits and stress, but we also have to make sure that the left doesn’t just run up so much debt that in just 3 years rates have to rise, and that everything we just bought was well over priced and all we actually did was fill the pockets of rich company owners with large profits while also driving up market prices.

Let’s not forget that with a $1.5b dollar annual budget our council can and does impact market prices across the country.