Also, display this poster in your car or house window:

On a recent trip to Paris, my architect friend showed me the Loisirs Sports Urbains swimming pool and leisure centre in Paris that had recently been completed with public money. Why is England so incapable of similar projects?

The UK Independence Party, for example, is supposedly a libertarian party which also believes in withdrawing from the EU. The Liberal Democrats, apparently, are a partially libertarian party that believes in social justice and support EU membership with mild reform.

The Conservatives believe in many things being a broad-[cough] church but mostly it is the free market and (currently, in any case) liberal attitudes to how people live their private lives. And the Labour party traditionally believes that the solution to everything that needs a solution is to take state control.

But these descriptions — which may be debated, I admit — do not tell the full story. For example, the local Liberal Democrats here in Lancing and Shoreham-by-Sea appear to err when it comes to telling the truth (Beach Green, Adur and Worthing Council Services) and appear not to have any opinions on anything else (at least not cogent opinions that they feel able to debate in meetings).

The UK Independence Party locally fielded a candidate at the 2005 elections whose performance at a hustings would have marked him as a BNP candidate if it wasn’t for the ‘UKIP’ sign in front of him.

And the Labour party… well, they actually have a man who stands by his convictions locally and means what he says even if, inevitably, I don’t agree with him most of the time.

So the local parties and members do not reflect the nation-wide parties and what they claim to stand for. Rather than being about politics, actually, local party membership appears to be tribal and party-preference down to the party their friends and family belong to. It is, if you like, as if everyone whose Dad supported Manchester United supports Manchester United despite preferring everything about Manchester City.

I like to think I have thought deeply about my political convictions not only in the last three years as a Councillor, but also before-hand when I chose to join the Conservative Party in 1996.

But since 1996 I have changed my convictions quite strongly. In 1996 you would have spoken to a bigoted and not-entirely, but mostly, unpleasant (politically) Gavin. It is curious to me now that I had such strong opinions that I believed I could defend with argument. And it is mostly by argument and debate (with myself and with others) that I believe my opinions have softened and become, as a friend said earlier of me, “wetter”.

But some things do not change. Take, for example, Scotland’s preferential treatment by the British Parliament. Today four stories were pointed out to me:

• More clarity over free elderly-care in Scotland
• Free prescriptions in Scotland
• Scottish crime scenes clean-up funding
• British government rejects EU subsidies for England

In all these cases English taxpayers have either lost out or not gained to the same extent as Scottish taxpayers.

For some reason, when I mention this topic, I always have to make a disclaimer as I get attacked by an offended Scot. To be clear, I don’t blame the Scots as a group or, with the exception of Gordon Brown, as individuals. Scotland benefits from devolution not because the Scots have done something wrong, rather because the English do not have devolution and no-one actually sees fit to offer them a referendum on the subject.

Now nationally David Cameron has not endeared himself to supporters of an English Parliament but he has at least indicated that the Barnett Formula would go. The Liberal Democrats, with many seats in southern England, are currently taking a great risk by continuing to ignore the problem in favour of the status quo plus English Regional Assemblies. The UK Independence Party solution is interesting but I doubt practicable.

And Labour’s opinions are not really in doubt: the Labour Party do not support an English Parliament because they would be unlikely to run it and, more importantly, it can be supported as a solution using logic.

The bottom line is that the Conservatives retained all their seats and with the postal votes counted it’s a reasonable turn-out and satisfying majorities in every ward.

Congratulations to the successful candidates and thanks to the electorate for not subjecting us to nuisance politics.

The numbers in Worthing are similarly reassuring with the Conservatives picking up one seat and the Lib Dems retaining their tally.

That said, I’m sure that Debbie Kennard has won Buckingham Ward in Shoreham. Based on our canvas data, though, there was an interesting stat I’d like to share.

Unfortunately Debbie wasn’t able to canvas the whole area due to a combination of factors including getting less help from people like me! Apologies Deb if you’re reading this.

But of the two-thirds of homes that were canvassed, over 20% turn-out was experienced, while the third that was not canvassed only showed a 10% turn-out. And our canvas records show that the turn-out was slightly higher among Conservative pledged voters who were canvassed than ‘Againsts’.

So this is a lesson to us all. Canvassing definitely helps increase turn-out!

Now, watch the first half of that video (and don’t get suckered in — religion and politics are separate things and I cannot condone the Christian parties that are united behind this candidate) and tell me whether you see anything offensive. I don’t.

Now, back on message:

Vote Boris in London
Vote Kennard in Buckingham Ward
Vote Conservative in Adur

So just a quick note: I am going into town later to do some shopping. I am literally a two minute walk from the railway station and, for all my differences of opinion with left-wing environmentalists, I do care about the ability of this planet to support humanity. I therefore decided to get the train in.

But then I was reminded that I have to go over to Ditchling tonight — I may have time to come back but I may not. Once again the lack of a genuinely available public transport system has caused me to burn unnecessary carbon. It is the responsibility of all of us to do what we can to protect the environment, but some of “all” of us have more capabilities to do that. Central government needs to make strong, clear policy announcements on public transport, and especially the railways, in the South East generally, and in the countryside specifically.

There are clearly not enough tracks between Brighton and London (fast trains must go sufficiently after a so-called slow-train that it does not catch the other train up — how pointless is that?) and there are absolutely no tracks (or buses in most cases) between rural towns and villages in Sussex.

On Monday I attended a party committee which concerns itself with the organisation at a very local level of the party machine. The people who do all the work to support the three of us at that meeting who are elected by the general public (two District Councillors – Debbie Kennard and myself – and the County Councillor – Clive Williams).

Tuesday was a Council committee meeting of the Housing and Central Services committee. And an entirely frustrating rubber-stamping exercise it was. All of the decisions we had to make were no-brainers: Increase Council home rents because the government’s slapping us with a negative subsidy or (you’ll love this) burn our reserves and increase them by even more next year? I think you’ll agree there’s no choice.

And the same was true of all the other agenda items – we had a choice but it was a non-choice.

But the variance came into play tonight with two of Adur District’s and Worthing Borough’s joint committees meeting one after the other. At these meetings we discussed the budget for the shared services (the refuse and recycling collection service and the joint management structure) as well as a report on coastal erosion.

The first item was great news. The Councils have saved, already, £67,000 through being able to buy fewer vehicles because of shared efficiency and we effectively did not have to pay for the new bins because of savings due to economies of scale in the procurement process as well. We have also saved £32,000 in the nine months to the end of the financial year that the service has been running just because of the increased quantities of recycling that are now being collected!

But I cannot be all positive. There was something much more important that came out of this evening’s meetings. The first meeting was of the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee and the Worthing Liberal Democrat members did not have a single negative comment to make about the services or the savings. They did, momentarily, suggest that Worthing’s Council tax payers are being subsidised by Adur (which isn’t true), but they could not see anything wrong with the savings etc. being made.

It didn’t stop them making a fuss though. And when it came to voting on the recommendation before them, they decided to abstain even though they did not disagree with the recommendation and, as I say, could not find anything negative to say at all.

As a result of this experience I want to make a plea to the residents of Adur and Worthing who may be reading this: Please don’t vote Lib Dem in May – if they win seats the members elected will just be a nuisance and if they win one of the Councils they won’t do a better job because they cannot see anything being done that they would do differently!

Vote Conservative at the local elections in May 2008 and ensure that your Councils continue to run smoothly and efficiently despite the government’s obsession with attempting to run the country’s Councils remotely.

As I am on the planning committee, and because I received a written invitation, I took a trip along there and I must say the plans look very interesting. We must wait, now, and see how the application that is finally submitted responds to the public’s comments.

My thoughts focussed on accessibility for pedestrians but it appears M&S have some draconian ideas about how to free up parking spaces currently used by employees of M&S. I shall be attempting to help M&S employees not to be forced into parking in surrounding areas or, worse, into using public transport which is woeful in Shoreham.

If you find your favourite project has been dropped or had its funding cut, write to the Prime Minister and copy in your local Councillor and explain that the burdens on Council Tax in the south of England imposed by central government are making life unreasonably difficult for Councils, for tax payers and for those who rely on assistance from the local Council.

The minutes of the meeting will show which projects did not make the cut and which projects have had their funding modified (reduced). In the meantime, you can see the choices we had to make in Annex 2 (the last page) of Agenda Item 5 of the meeting on 4 December 2007: Policy and Strategy reports and minutes