The Morriston Liberal Democrats have welcomed the consideration of their online petition in the National Assembly for Wales regarding the dangerous junction between Vicarage Road and Clasemont Road in central Morriston. The petition, stating the belief that urgent work is needed to install traffic lights at the junction, was reviewed on June 25th, with the committee deciding to forward the matter to the relevant Minister.
The junction became an election issue when the Lib Dem team revealed that Labour councillors for Morriston had been sent a Council report but had failed to act on it. Labour have subsequently contradicted one another, with one councillor admitting during a local meeting on April 5th that he had seen the report, and another denying that any of the councillors had seen it in the Evening Post story of April 17th (see earlier post).
We hope that the review of our petition will put things back on track, and the issue isn’t forgotten about. The Morriston Lib Dem team have been proactive on this issue, setting up this petition, contacting council officers, and seeking the opinions of local schools. We are glad that our hard work is producing results.
June 11th 2008 will go down as a bad day for Morriston, as not one but two of its elected representatives (and residents) made voting decisions affecting the future of residents:
- In Westminster, Sian James MP decided to vote for plans to extend the pre-charge detention of terrorist suspects to 42 days, plans which she had described earlier that day to the Evening Post as "intrinsically wrong". To use her own words: "The choice appears to be between voting to save civil liberties or to save Gordon Brown".
- In the Assembly, Val Lloyd AM decided to vote against a proposal to allow powers for the Assembly to determine the electoral arrangements for local Councils in Wales. The Labour party effectively decided not to give Wales powers to decide its own fate! The current voting system can unfairly reward a political party with all of the council seats in a ward even with the minority of votes, as has happened in Morriston at the last two local elections. In 2004 and 2008, Labour received less than half of all votes cast, but held all five council seats. In contrast, your Lib Dem team received around a third of all votes cast in each election, yet gained no council seats!
As previously reported by the Morriston Lib Dem team, a review of the dangerous junction between Clasemont Road and Vicarage Road seems to have been held up by inaction of the local Labour councillors. Our story was published in the Evening Post on April 17th, with a comment from a Labour councillor saying:
"I have spoken to the four other Morriston councillors and not one of us knows anything of what they are talking about. There's no report we have seen or sat on."
But at the April 5th meeting of the Morriston Residents’ Association, a Labour councillor confirmed that he had received the report!
Your Lib Dem team have set up an online petition on the Welsh Assembly website, and the issue will now be reviewed by the Assembly Petitions Committee on June 25th.
