Archives for Politics
Council Launches New Sports and Leisure Funding Grants
Hastings Borough Council has unveiled a £700,000 grants scheme to help community groups, sports clubs, charities and CICs upgrade leisure and physical activity facilities across the town. The two-year funding…
Polanski Fires Up Green Supporters Despite Reform UK Hecklers
Green Party Leader Zak Polanski gave a rousing speech to a packed crowd at the Courtyard on Hastings seafront on Thursday afternoon (30 April) as part of a final push…
Reform UK Tops the Poll in East Sussex
Reform UK has won the East Sussex County Council (ESCC) by-election held in Ashdown and Conquest on Thursday 20 November. Aidan Fisher was elected with 32% (797) of the vote,…
Becca Horn: a seasoned Green campaigner
In the third of our series of interviews with the prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) of the main political parties ahead of the next general election, PAUL McLAUGHLIN talks to Becca…
Sally-Ann Hart
Paul McLaughlin The marginal parliamentary constituency of Hastings and Rye is a bellwether seat, which tends to elect an MP from the party that goes on to form the government.…
Tory Councillor Jumps Ship
Paul McLaughlin John Rankin John Rankin has resigned from the Conservative Party group on Hastings Borough Council and will now sit as an independent. He will continue to represent the…
Hart goes for Growth – but has Hastings been left behind?
The Growth Plan announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng on 23 September involving tax cuts, energy price caps and huge government borrowing came under immediate and sustained…
People’s Assembly to Debate Cost of Living and Climate Issues
By Charmian Kenner A People’s Assembly on the cost of living crisis is to be held in central Hastings on Saturday 20 August from It will take place outdoors in…
Council Renews Role as Public Housing Landlord
Hastings Borough Council’s coalition cabinet of Labour and Green party councillors agreed unanimously last week to renew its role as a direct provider of affordable social housing. Since 1996, when…
Fairlight sees off development plan – for now
Residents of Fairlight Cove were toasting Rother District Council and a public planning inspector last week when the news came through. The appeal by developers against refusal of their application…
Hart endorses Sunak
Sally-Ann Hart, MP for Hastings & Rye, has broken her silence on the Conservative leadership contest, endorsing Rishi Sunak as prospective successor to Boris Johnson. She issued a statement on…
Candidate selection process lambasted
Helena Dollimore, a 28-year-old Oxford graduate who works as a senior manager at Unilever (in its Global Sustainability arm), has been selected as prospective Labour Party candidate for the parliamentary…
Party Politics Get Personal Internal turmoil for both Labour and Tories
Following on from our lead report in HIP 204 that Cllr Maya Evans has been excluded from a “long list” of prospective Labour party candidates for the next parliamentary election…
Union rally
A rally held at East Sussex College last Thursday evening by Hastings & District Trades Union Council underthe slogan Hastings Demands Better attracted a cast of prominent local speakers, including…
Disability And The Minimum Wage
What Was Actually Said The following exchanges – extracted and distorted across the national media – took place at the HIP Hastings Hustings at East Sussex College last Thursday evening…
Precarity In The System
We are now at the end of one of the most vicious, divisive and short-lived general elections for a generation. This has been determined in part by two conflicting and…
GE2019
As the General Election approaches, the hustings are bustling, sleigh-bells ring in the distance, and spectres of Christmas past, present and future loom long over the upcoming winter - the…
GE2019: Under Starter’s Orders
Tory Candidate Named As Campaign Rother councillor Sally-Ann Hart has been selected by the Hastings & Rye Conservative Association to represent them in the general election scheduled for 12th December.…
GE2019: Paul Crosland
Targeting 365 Votes Amber Rudd’s majority over Labour candidate Peter Chowney at the 2017 general election was just 346. The three other candidates, Nick Perry of the Liberal Democrats, Michael…
GE2019: Sally-Ann Hart
The Magisterial Candidate The newly selected Conservative candidate for Hastings & Rye is chairman (sic) of Bexhill and Battle Conservative Association and has represented the ward of Eastern Rother (the…
Perry Sauce
If you’ve paid close attention to the past elections in Hastings and Rye you may have noticed the recurring appearance of Liberal Democrat candidate Nick Perry. He’s the one that…
To Tell You The Truth, It’s Always Political
By Julia Kotziamani By defining themselves as ‘beyond politics’, the justice is missing from the Extinction Rebellion (XR) discourse surrounding global climate ; Some recent XR events have been fundamentally…
Chowney Appears In Perry’s Scope As The First Pre-Election Torpedoes Are Fired
In an article printed in Hastings in Focus, Hastings and Rye Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, Nick Perry, cited indices where areas of Hastings are highlighted as suffering from deprivation. He…
Climate Justice and Modern Slavery
By Maya Evans “Slavery is the culture in other countries,” said Tory Cllr Mike Edwards during a full council motion discussing modern-day slavery in Britain. Actually, climate change is a…
The Insider
Miko Peled was part of Israel’s elite: his grandfather signed the ‘Declaration of Independence’ and his father was a general in the Israel Defence Force, yet Miko (and his father)…
Message From A Prison Cell To October Rebels
By Roger Hallam, Co-founder of Extinction Rebellion I have been here for several weeks and may be here for some time longer. But please remember to do this: Take all…
Miko Peled
Transcript of speech delivered in HastingsSaturday 5 October 2019 The story that I tell comes from a rather strange or unique place because I come from this very Zionist, very…
Trust The People
There was a noticeable silence at the anti-Brexit march in Brighton over the Labour Party’s conference weekend. All the commotion was at the front headed by prominent Remain supporting MPs,…
The Space Between Us
By Patsy Solankski Regarding Leave versus Remain, I don’t think that insulting someone’s IQ or calling them stupid helps one iota. A very clever, emotive and devious propaganda machine was…
The Rights That We Secure For Ourselves
By David Francis No. This Supreme Court Judgement does not restore hope. It does not fill me with optimism. I’m not complaining about the spectacle of our Etonian overlords being…
Mann, Oh Man
David Francis reacts to news that former Labour MP John Mann has resigned from the commons to work as an ‘antisemitism Tsar’ for the government and been made a Lord.…
Ruddiculous
Amber Rudd quit the government late on a Saturday evening, in a dramatic and carefully choreographed move with an exclusive for the Sunday Times. Rudd said, “I no longer believe…
The Great Dictator
On the 28th of August, Boris Johnson announced his intention to prorogue parliament from the 9th September until the 14th October, shortly after parliament was due to resume from summer…
The Amazon in Flames
By Ana Luiza Bussolotti & Danny Diskin “If I take over,” promised Jair Bolsonaro in the run-up to the Brazilian presidential election last year, “Indians will not get one centimetre more…
Say No More
Amber Rudd, MP for Hasting & Rye, on the suspension of Parliament 6th June 2019 to a number of reportersI think it’s outrageous to consider proroguing Parliament – we are not…
Axe the PM?
Kent Barker wonders if Boris Johnson shouldn’t turn the pages of his history book back to the 17th century if he wants to keep a head. Pity poor John Ashburnham…
Leaving the EU: In the interests of remaining neutral
Paul Steerwood’s response to HIP he didn’t think we’d publish I don’t normally read this newspaper but happened to glance through it whilst working for a client. On the day…
COMMENT: A Woman For All Seasons?
One wonders if, after politics, Amber Rudd might consider joining the Church and seeking a living in the parish of Bray? She’d be ideally suited to follow in the footsteps…
Victory To The Anti-Racist Occupation At Goldsmiths
By Charlie Crabb Last week, after 137 long, arduous days of occupation, the student-led political organisation ‘Goldsmiths Anti-Racist Action’ (GARA) ended its occupation of Deptford Town Hall in New Cross,…
Cliff Notes for Fascism
By Gregory Chatfield To provide an early warning system for fascism, we follow the antics of world leaders seemingly immune to truth and pressing the same emotive buttons as 20th…