Gav's View

I have been a Liberal Democrat Councillor since 17 November 2009 having converted from the Conservatives. I had been a Conservative Councillor for the Buckingham Ward of Adur District Council since the May 2006 elections.

My key political philosophies are:
1) Fairness
2) Individual responsibility
3) The strength of private enterprise
4) Pragmatism

To contact me e-mail:

If you are unable to read graphics because either you are using a screen-reader or because you are amending the text-size through cascading style scripts, you can hear my e-mail address by playing the following MP3 file: E-mail Gavin (audio).

Frequently Asked Questions

You have the England flag on your website a lot, are you an English Nationalist?

No. But rather than go into too much detail here I refer you to the Campaign for an English Parliament of which I am a member.

What’s a ‘liberal Conservative’?

Throughout my blog I have described myself as a ‘liberal Conservative’ — I have included the previous description below in case you came here wondering what that meant from an older post.

Now however, I have no need to describe my political ideology in couched terms — I was previously a liberal Conservative and now I am just a liberal. I have always believed that where appropriate, the government should avoid interaction with peoples’ lives and I used to think the result would be a society of people who take responsibility for their actions and who genuinely work as hard as they can to improve their own life and that of those around them they care most deeply about.

I have since grown-up, however, and I now realise that there’s often a back-story. Bad people were not made bad by molly-coddling of the state, and not because they were born that way (in most cases) but because they have had a bad experience of life so far.

Where previously I limited ‘appropriate’ interference by the state to collecting minimal taxes and funding the police force, I now see a role for the state in providing a framework in which good people can live and in which people who don’t have the same life chances as everyone else are treated with compassion and provided with assistance. Where the Conservatives would have compassion provided by charities, I would have that compassion provided by the most appropriate body in any given situation.

And now, how this question used to be answered:
“I can only speak for myself. A liberal Conservative to me is someone who believes in the principles of libertarianism. I believe in a free market economy and free individuals. Any law that attempts to restrict someone’s freedom or take their money for any reason other than to prevent harm to others is unacceptable.”