Loanna Morrison
Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate
for Bermondsey & Old Southwark
Local Issues
My Pledges:
Fight for training and opportunities for young people
Help to improve Housing conditions
Help our communities to fight for defensible spaces and the environment.
Fight to reduce our council tax
Fight to increase nursery places
Mending Broken Britain
National issue
Getting us out of Debt
Like all previous Labour Governments, this one is running out of money as it runs out of time. We cannot afford 5 more years of Gordon and his corrupt, power hungry acolytes.Time to get Britain back on its feet before we are all crawling on our knees.
At the British Library today, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne set out the economic benchmarks by which the Conservatives will be judged, should they be in charge of the UK economy after the coming election.
1. Reforming public services to make them efficient - saving money by:
2. Sorting out the Economy by:
3. Protect the environment through:
4.
Council Tax payers in real trouble
New figures this week have revealed the soaring use of court orders and bailiffs to collect council tax. Council tax bills have more than doubled across the country under Labour. In Southwark bills have risen by 63% since 1997 thanks to Liberal Democrats.
England and Wales Number of cases referred to bailiffs to levy distress for council tax 1997-98 - 830,674
2007-08 - 1,393,811
2008-09 - 1,403,573
More from David Cameron on families
A Conservative government will help the poorest families in society
1. we will keep Sure Start
2. We will strengthen it by recruiting 4,200 new Sure Start health visitors to provide universal support to families with children under five.
3. We will improve Sure Start by taking it back to its original purpose of early intervention, increasing its focus on the neediest families, and better involving organisations with a track record in parenting interventions.
4. Drawing on the key principles behind our wider public service reform programme – practicality, independence and accountability – we will create a new kind of Sure Start Childrens Centre to replace failing existing provision.
This is part of our mission to build the strong society based on the values of responsibility and aspiration. For that, we need responsible individuals. We can help people take more responsibility for themselves by focusing on the three areas where character is formed in our early lives – in the family, at school and through the influences of wider society – and take action to ingrain responsibility through each.
OUR NHS
In a speech to us on Monday morning, David Cameron laid out the innovative ideas to be implemented in the NHS should the Conservatives be elected to office this year.
"Today the Conservatives are the party of the NHS. We are the only party committed to protecting NHS spending, but were not just going to pump money in and hope for the best. Were going to change the way the NHS works because it could be so much better."
1. End mixed-sex hospital wards.
2. A plan to with-hold funding from hospitals which infect patients with MRSA.
3. New proposals to give patients detailed information about the quality of treatment from each doctor, hospital or surgery.
4. Patients will also be given more opportunity to manage their own care and could receive treatment for minor ailments at their local pharmacies.
5. A new maternity service giving mothers greater choice.
"Under Labour, the NHS has turned into a giant machine, controlled from above, responding to politicians, bureaucrats and managers. If we win this year's election, we are going to give the NHS back to who it belongs - the people. To the doctors, nurses and professionals who work in it, to the patients who get their care from it, to the families who depend on it. Every policy we put forward, every reform we implement, every change we make will have at its heart this simple idea – we need to give the NHS back to the people".
Labour Can No Longer Fool Us
Because Labour have failed to take the tough decisions on spending before the election, there will be higher taxes and higher interest rates if they win the election.
Now we know the real victims of Gordon Brown's class war - hard working families. The central measure in the Public sector borrowing requirement was a tax on jobs that hits everyone earning over £20,000 - well below the average wage. Of all Labour's tax rises, this will be the one that it is the Conservatives' priority to avoid.
Because Labour are weak, they failed to deal with the £178bn deficit and cancelled the pre-election Comprehensive Spending Review. Instead they have been forced to admit that a Labour victory at the election would mean:
· £7.8 billion higher taxes - £370 more per family - after the election;
· Of this, £6.5 billion - £310 more per family - is a rise in National Insurance, a tax on anyone earning over £20,000;
· Labour's planned tax on jobs is now £200 a year on someone earning £30,000 a year, or £60 on average earnings of around £23,000.
Labour's cynical benefits cuts
When they look at the small print, families and the disabled will be bitterly disappointed that what was presented as a permanent increase in benefits, including child benefit and disability living allowance, in fact turned out to be a temporary rise for the period of the election, followed by a real terms cut. How depressingly cynical - it tells you everything you need to know about how this Government has lost its moral compass.
"The term compensation culture is a toxic one in our country" (DC)
There is a growing sense that too many areas of our life are governed by petty rules, regulations and tick box bureaucracy that fly in the face of common sense, undermine discretion and prevent us from getting on with our lives. Conservatives will reduce the burden and impact of health and safety legislation in a responsible way. We will bring an end to the culture of excessive litigation, while at the same time giving legal safeguards to those who need them most. David Cameron warns that people have to accept that life involves some risks and that there is now a perception that someone is personally responsible for every accident. We know what has gone wrong. Excessive rules have given the impression that we have a right to a risk-free lifeand that impression has been exacerbated by prominent claims and pay-outs.
Giving local people Greater power
The Conservatives have set out plans to give local people, power over their built environment by introducing the idea of
Community ownership.
This means that when a community asset closes - a village hall, post office, pub, swimming pool, library - it should be easier for the local community to rescue it. The Community Right to Buy will give community groups first refusal to buy such assets.
It will apply to those assets owned by Quangos and central Government as well as local councils. The same principle will apply to commercial owned assets.
The radical 'Community Right to Buy' will also allow community groups first refusal to take over and run commercially-owned community assets that are closing, - for example those post offices, pubs and shops whose continued survival is of genuine importance to the local community
In the last decade we've seen nearly 5,500 post offices shut and 3,500 pubs call time for the last time. Under Conservative plans, community groups, such as schools, churches or voluntary groups, will be able to bid to take over the running of publicly owned community assets, if they can manage the facility more efficiently and effectively than the state.
These new powers will help protect thousands of buildings and resources including libraries, lidos, playgrounds, parks, schools and sports facilities. They will give public-spirited community groups the chance to battle on a level playing field when it comes to saving facilities they value.
So the Conservative message to local people is that they will have the power to protect those community assets which matter to them and to support and improve their neighbourhoods.
RAISE THE ROOF: Government needs to increase the tax-free allowance given to people who rent a room to a lodger as the allowance has remained static for over a decade.
The £4,250 annual threshold below which you pay no tax has been in place since 1997.
Campaigners say in that time typical rents have risen by 113%.
This means far more will have to pay tax on their rental income.
With fall in the housing market and many becoming unemployed, a large number of people have no choice but to take in lodgers.
The website, Spareroom.co.uk, which is spearheading the campaign, wants the limit raised to £:9,000.
It says almost 60% of people who rent out a room in their home receive income above £4,250. In London it is 91%.
All of this Government's policies were made under a presumption that there would be a permanent boom in the housing market. But we all know now, this is not the case. This would be one way of helping people to keep their homes.
Letter from David
Dear Loanna,
This week the failures of this Labour Government were exposed across three major fronts: society, the military, and the economy.
First, society. New figures have shown that many poor families are actually better off on benefits than in work. What kind of signal does this send about what society expects of people? "Don't strive for independence, don't try to provide for your family, don't try and do the responsible thing". It's a crazy situation to be in, so on Tuesday I announced a new policy initiative to look into the best way of tackling it.
Second, the military. As you might remember from my email two weeks ago we've been pushing hard against deep cuts in training for army reservists. Thankfully, we've now succeeded in getting these cuts stopped. On Wednesday I asked the Prime Minister to tell us what on earth he was thinking of when he proposed to cut this training when the country is at war. As ever, I didn't get an answer.
Third, the economy. Whilst Britain now finds itself in the longest and deepest recession since records began, we learned on Thursday that the US has now joined all the other major economies in climbing out of recession and into recovery.
Gordon Brown's claims that we were somehow the "best placed" country to weather the recession have been completely blown out of the water by the fact we were one of the first into recession, and are now the last out. Our economy desperately needs an injection of credit and confidence - and we're only going to get that with fresh economic leadership.
David Cameron
The Lisbon Treaty
The Lisbon Treaty would be bad for Britain and bad for Europe. Instead of making the EU more accountable it would make it more centralised. That is why the Conservative Party opposes the Treaty.
Every major party promised the British people a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty - the renamed EU Constitution - at the last general election. Labour and the Lib Dems' efforts to deny the British people any say at all on it is a gross breach of trust with voters. It is absurd that the Irish were asked twice when the British people have not even been asked once.
So if the Treaty is not yet in force at the time of the next general election, and a Conservative Government is elected, we would suspend Britain's ratification and hold a referendum, recommending its rejection.
Ready For Change!
To give people hope for the future, the country needs to change direction. Conservatives are honest, united, determined and ready to deliver the tough and radical change Britain needs to rebuild our broken economy, mend our broken society and fix our broken politics.
Conservatives have bold plans to deal with the big problems the country faces. To deal with Labour's Jobs Crisis we have published our detailed plan to Get Britain Working. Labour are now the party of unemployment - we are the party of new jobs and new opportunities. To deal with Labour's Debt Crisis we have been honest with the British people about the tough decisions we need to take. We are all in this together. Unlike Gordon Brown we will be straight with people, and not treat the British people like fools.
A letter from David Cameron
This week MPs returned to a Parliament still engulfed in the expenses crisis. My message to Conservative MPs was clear: money has got to be paid back, and everyone has to abide by the eventual decision on how much they should pay. To me, that's the least we can do to try and sort out the problems of the past, before going on into the future.
As an Opposition, we've still got an important job to do of holding this Government to account. That's why I made it clear to the Prime Minister this week that it's unforgivable that the training budget of our Reserve Forces is being cut. It's crazy that a government which was willing to waste £12 billion on a pointless VAT cut won't spend £20 million on making sure that the Territorial Army is kept ready and prepared.
The Prime Minister later sent me a letter insisting that reservists will still get their standard pre-deployment training. But that's like telling professional football players to rely on pre-match warm-up sessions before going onto the football pitch. The only difference is that we're talking about volunteer soldiers here - and their football pitch is Afghanistan.
I know how fed up people are with all the things that have been going wrong in our Parliament. But these cuts in the TA show only too clearly that until people finally have a chance to pass their judgments at a General Election, we've got to focus on the job we've all been elected to do.
Equality laws could 'backfire' on women
For some time now, the Conservatives have been calling on the Government to change the law around maternity leave to make it flexible. Our flexible parental leave policy would mean that, after the first 13 weeks, parents could share their remaining leave and could take some of it simultaneously. Changing maternity leave to flexible parental leave will do more to encourage equality in the work place than any of Harriett Harman's fine words, and will help ensure that we come out of the recession with a stronger and more family-friendly.
My best bit from David Cameron's conference speech
"Labour still have the arrogance to think that they are the ones who will fight poverty and deprivation. On Monday, when we announced our plan to Get Britain Working you know what Labour called it? Callous. Excuse me? Who made the poorest poorer? Who left youth unemployment higher? Who made inequality greater? No, not the wicked Tories you, Labour: you're the ones that did this to our society. So dont you dare lecture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the modern Conservative Party to fight for the poorest who you have let down."
What the Conservatives will do:
Southwark Council has culled the youth budget by £385,000 this year, despite the area having the highest percentage of NEETS (Not in Employment, Education or Training) in the country.
The Conservatives will on average provide 50,000 places a year for young people, assigning them to sole traders for six months of mentoring and work experience.
Conservatives will provide 100,000 additional apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships by offering SME (Small to Medium Enterprises) incentives to take them on through a simpler system.
The Conservatives will help Further Education Colleges to provide 50,000 additional training places per year for young people who have been on JSA (Jobseekers Allowance) for six months or more.
The Conservatives will expand the Young Apprenticeships scheme, offering vocational training for 14-16 year olds.
Southwark Snippets
Trees gone from Rotherhithe
C10 Improvements
Southwark fails 56,000 Jobless
Housing Benefit Waste
Salmon Youth Centre
Rogue Clampers
Planning Blunders
More Taxes on Families
Students lose under LibDems
Crime Top issue for Residents
Saving money and the planet
Prior to setting up her own business she enjoyed a 20-year career in journalism, writing for national and international newspapers. She has also worked as a producer and researcher in television on programmes including Sky News.
As an experienced campaigner she is concerned about the rise of bureaucracy on small businesses across Southwark and Bermondsey and strongly believes policing should be targeted in conjunction with residents rather than be based on top down targets.
Her spare time is taken up by Pilates, expanding her jazz collection and completing her final year BA in Social Sciences with the Open University. Specialising in 'Cities' she is all too aware of the problems millions of people face every day in urban environments.
Loanna Morrison is the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the constituency of Bermondsey & Old Southwark.
Like many local long-term residents, Loanna had a cosmopolitan childhood. Born in Jamaica, she spent her childhood growing up in Italy before eventually moving to London.
She comes from a family who believe in taking an active role in the local community. Her mother worked for the Southwark Council as a warden in sheltered housing for more than 15 years. Loanna, as a single Mum brought up two children on her own. She takes great pride in her children's successful careers in the Army Air Corps and HM Revenue and Customs.
Loanna mentors teenagers from troubled backgrounds in South London and is in the process of developing The Urban Academy of Music and Performing Arts in conjunction with the charity Kid's Company. She says, "Yes, I know it's a stereotype that black people excel in music; but if learning an instrument scoops boys off the streets and helps them acquire a valuable discipline then in this case let's encourage them."
Loanna is currently the Executive Editor of WiPP, a magazine for women in public policy - one of the publications produced by her own publishing company. Her magazine provides a forum for women influencing and setting public and government agenda.
July 2009
January 2010
February 2010
August 2009
March 2010
News and Events
This page provides links to news and events which Loanna has been involved in as part of her campaign to win the hearts and minds of the voters of Bermondsey & Old Southwark.
To navigate the page please click on the appropriate month which can be found on the blue buttons on the left of this page. If you click a month that is not current or past you will not be redirected anywhere.
If you would like to contribute to the news and events page please send your news to Loanna. It would be excellent if you could provide a photograph to accompany the news.
Please add this website to your favourites list or bookmark it, because the Campaign News section will continue to grow.
September 2009
April 2010
October 2009
May 2010
November 2009
June 2010
December 2009
Often people want to support their political party and their parliamentary candidates, but may not have the time or desire to actively help in a campaign, which I completely understand. Regardless of what form your support comes, I appreciate it all.Running a successful political campaign can be expensive and we try to raise funds through many methods, such as holding quiz nights, dinner parties, and bingo nights. If you can attend one of these events it will be fantastic to meet you, but if you cannot get to an event and you would still like to support me and my teams efforts by making a small donation, it would be greatly appreciated. Please don't feel a small donation will be of little help, because that simply isn't true. If 1,000 supporters gave just one pound each, then we would have enough money to have more literature printed. Loanna
Often people want to support their political party and their parliamentary candidates, but may not have the time or desire to actively help in a campaign, which I completely understand. Regardless of what form your support comes, I appreciate it all.
Running a successful political campaign can be expensive and we try to raise funds through many methods, such as holding quiz nights, dinner parties, and bingo nights. If you can attend one of these events it will be fantastic to meet you, but if you cannot get to an event and you would still like to support me and my teams efforts by making a small donation, it would be greatly appreciated. Please don't feel a small donation will be of little help, because that simply isn't true. If 1,000 supporters gave just one pound each, then we would have enough money to have more literature printed.
Loanna
Click here to donate
You may not be aware
We receive no financial assistance from the Conservative Party for our general election campaign in this seat. All funding comes from our own fund raising activities, from the generous donations of private individuals who are on the UK Electoral Roll and from supportive UK companies.
Making a difference
Your donation will make a difference, no matter how much you might be able to offer. £5 buys a ream of paper, £50 replaces a colour toner cartridge and £500 produces 30,000 double sided A4 colour leaflets. £5,000 gets a personal 4 page A3 colour newspaper to every home in the constituency, with a bit to spare.
Your donation
We needs funds for many different purposes, including the design and printing of literature, posters and boards, purchasing stationery, maintaining computers and software, paying for phone calls and so on.
Conservatives
The Jam Factory
Canada Water Campaign
Crunch
Southwark Conservatives
Time & Talent
BRDP
The Joint Team
City Hall
Loanna on FACEBOOK
Transforming Conflict
Boris Johnson
Southwark Mind
Syed Kamall
Camberwell & Peckham
Riverside Parents
Surrey Quays Leisure
Dulwich & West Norwood
Links disclaimer
Through this website you are able to link to other websites which are not under the control of Loanna Morrison. We have no control over the nature, content and availability of those sites. The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.
Government & Economy
Crime
Education & Youth
"It is the highest impertinence and presumption in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrift in society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs.
If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will".
(Adam Smith Wealth of Nations Bk 1v)
This is as prescriptive as it is timely. This Government has taken our once prosperous economy into the largest debt in our entire history. They never cease to remind us how they are 'doing the right thing'. This is such a presumptuous statement if ever there was one. The right thing for whom? Certainly, not for our children and grandchildren and definitely not for our economy. Again, what is Labour's answer? More regulation, more constraints and more we know best.
State bureaucracy and quangos need to be reduced which would cut government spending considerably and the Conservatives intend to do this. All government departments, like the Home Office should be broken down into manageable sizes as they were before. This would provide more effective accountability, which increases efficiency. Control of the banks should be returned to the Bank of England and banks should also be broken up into smaller institutions.
Financial services should be returned where they were - with the insurance companies. The best financial regulation we could have is one that stops monopolies and mergers being created (why have we heard nothing from the monopolies and mergers commission during this crisis? Oh of course it is now the Competition commission and banks are no longer part of its remit). Only the size of the banks should be regulated. Small banks are unlikely to be able to pay huge bonuses. This will create a more competitive environment and if a bank gets into trouble, there will be less need to drown them with taxpayers money. If one fails, it will not have a deleterious effect on the rest of the industry.
The Labour government obviously likes to provide work for our police forces, which might explain why they have created 3,600 new criminal offences since 1997. The result? Our prisons are so full, there are not enough prisons places for real criminals. How many stories have we read about the horrific crimes prisoners have committed on release? Labours only answer appears to lie in CCTV's and control. Controlling the majority in order to control a minority. Starting from birth, they intend to hold our childrens details on massive databases as well as issuing us all with ID cards. But this actually makes the assumption that all are guilty until proven innocent.
This would be catastrophic for our children and their future prospects. It also suggests a determination that we must never make mistakes, and fails to realise, criminals will find their way around that system, so I wouldn't be surprised if the next step is to stamp us with a barcode!
The police and governments need to concentrate on devising methods to deal with us in our local environments in every town and village.
This is why we urgently need conservative thinking that stresses local solutions to local problems. Put back the police on the beat. Currently their presence is only visible in response to a crime, usually arriving long after the act. Police were not trained to sit in offices filling out forms. Freeing them up to do what they have been trained to do would create a good opportunity to give those jobs to unemployed civilians.
Education is the bedrock of any civilized society and the last ten years have produced a lot of uncivilized elements in our society. Children stabbing children, others committing mass suicide, gangs trawling the streets demanding respect and being territorially terrifying. The highest numbers of unemployed and untrained people are below the age of 24. They are our next generation. Among other things, they will inherit huge debts, unemployment, lack of skills, 24 hour drinking and a total mistrust of adults.
Most of this can be remedied by improving the education system. We need to go back to proven ways of educating pupils and in subjects, which give them core grounding for the future. For example, geography is essential in this increasingly global world. History helps to improve the future and sport is a panacea for a whole number of things. Boys especially, learn many life lessons from sport. Releasing their innate aggression, sport instills discipline and regularizes any gang mentality through team involvement.
More male teachers are needed, not just for being male, but also as reflection and example on a day-to-day basis. If he is missing at home it becomes doubly important that he is part of the schooling.
More competiveness should be introduced across all schools, in them as well as between them to reflect the world we live in. In real life there are losers and the earlier children understand this the more time they have for remedial action. One size does not fit all. Also there should be scholarships and celebration and recognition of childrens achievements on a national scale.
We should also have vocational colleges. Children could sign up to learn something practical if they show an aptitude or perhaps they are failing academically. A college that teaches plumbing, electrician, carpentry, these are skills that will never fail to give them an income for life. Bring back grammar schools as well. Why should this government be the last to get a free and decent education? Schools should arrange classes by ability otherwise it is unfair to the child who is not keeping up, and the one who is far ahead. Those arrangements would quickly show who may need help.
Change is not progress especially when that change adopts the lowest common denominator rather than the highest. We do a disservice to children when we teach them to be losers.
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Contact Loanna
If you need help:If you have any issues that you would like to discuss with me, if there is a problem you would like advice on, or anything in your ward or area you wish to highlight, please contact me. If you would like to help by: 1) Volunteering to deliver leaflets/surveys2) Creating attractive events in the constituency and fundraising3) Research and Analysis of data4) Driving5) Targeting, designing and printing literature6) Shadowing the candidate7) Generating helpers8) Managing wards9) Becoming council candidates10) Dealing with constituency issuesor simply giving new ideas and innovative ways to reach and inspire our voters.
If you need help:
If you have any issues that you would like to discuss with me, if there is a problem you would like advice on, or anything in your ward or area you wish to highlight, please contact me.
If you would like to help by:
1) Volunteering to deliver leaflets/surveys
2) Creating attractive events in the constituency and fundraising
3) Research and Analysis of data
4) Driving
5) Targeting, designing and printing literature
6) Shadowing the candidate
7) Generating helpers
8) Managing wards
9) Becoming council candidates
10) Dealing with constituency issues
or simply giving new ideas and innovative ways to reach and inspire our voters.
Loanna on
www.southwarkconservatives.com
Phone: 07500582126Address: 25 Oxford Drive - London SE1 2FBEmail: loanna.for.southwark_gmail.com
Phone: 07500582126
Address: 25 Oxford Drive - London SE1 2FB
Email: loanna.for.southwark_gmail.com
© 2009 | All rights reserved - Website designed by Gary Bland
Promoted by David C. Rolls on behalf of Loanna Morrison both at 25 Oxford Drive London SE1 2FB
