NEW YEAR MESSAGE - FAIR AND PRINCIPLED

11.59.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 31st Dec 2007

Exeter's Liberal Democrat PPC Graham Oakes has called for 2008 to be the year where Britain is seen to be principled and fair.

"It is important that people inside and outside Britain view us to be a fair and principled nation."

"Britain needs to be viewed as an independent nation that does not tolerate torture and punishes those that carry it out."

"Britain must be seen as a country where people of all faiths and beliefs are treated equally and the diversity celebrated. We need to ensure people want to come here to work or to visit, not to plant bombs."

"We need to restore the belief of people in this country in the democratic process, in Exeter we need to restore faith in both our City and County Councils which have been damaged by the unitary debacle."

"We need to spend public money wisely, it can not be right to waste billions on introducing ID cards that will not reduce crime and in fact will create a new income flow for organised crime, whilst under funding our local councils."

"I give the Government credit for exceeding inflation in its funding of our local councils over the past 10 years, but why have they never addressed the original under funding they inherited from the Tories, - which they criticised in Opposition. Each year we receive £36M less than similar counties, with the government giving us £100 less per pupil than the national average. How Ben Bradshaw can describe this as "extremely generous" beggars belief, put more accurately his government just do not care about Exeter or Devon."

"All I am asking for is a fair deal for Exeter".