In two articles from 2017 and 2018 Mike Swadling writes in the Croydon Citizen – What has Croydon’s Labour council actually achieved? and sets out his priorities for next year’s local elections.
Potholes and pointless art
“The Fairfield Halls redevelopment has closed off a major car park and our main cultural venue. This has resulted in a corner of the town that is covered in graffiti (sorry, ‘street art’), and in which businesses keep closing down”
“To top all of this, Westfield hasn’t discernibly progressed. As I have written before, trade in Surrey Street has dropped despite – or maybe because of – council investment”
“In Barcelona, they have been building the Sagrada Família for over one hundred years. Maybe Croydon will become the Barcelona of northern Europe with – at four years and counting – not a single house having been delivered by Brick by Brick”
As elections loom, what kind of Croydon do you want?
“The Conservatives took steps to reduced stop and search in 2010, and are cutting police numbers. Labour supports reduced stop and search. Neither propose any action beyond soft words to stop knife crime”
“Both the Conservatives and Labour support green taxes on landfill. They have slowly reduced and made more complex our dustbin collections. Now you need permits to enter the council tips, and yet they all feign surprise we have rampant fly tipping across the borough”
“Stop this folly of green taxes reducing the quality or people’s lives. Locally asking for new refuse collection contracts to simplify the service”
Full article: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20190509170115/https://thecroydoncitizen.com/politics-society/kind-croydon-want/