Bassetlaw PPC
Gregor Davey

I am originally from Australia and settled in the UK in 1991. I have worked in education and educationally related areas since that time. I taught adult education classes in English and History to start with, qualified as a secondary teacher and taught History and English in a secondary school. I then left to become an academic adviser with the Open University. I completed a PhD at King’s College London in 2015 in History. I went back into adult education teaching for the WEA, City Lit in London, and for various adult education groups until Covid. I then went back into a factory working for Ocado over the Covid period which made me very aware of the problems faced by ordinary people.

I came north to Nottinghamshire in 2020 working as an employability adviser under the Way2Work and Back2Work Schemes. This gave me a real insight into the problems in Bassetlaw and Nottinghamshire more generally in particular the problems faced by people of all ages in obtaining employment and the lack of formal qualifications including basic IT skills of its people. I worked with English people and had special responsibilities for Ukrainians and Hong Kong Chinese.

I decided to ‘go into politics’ because, frankly the world appeared to have turned upside down. There appeared to be little rationality to what was happening and the institutions and so-called leaders appeared to have little grip on reality or on practical action or even how to organise such action but worse they seemed to be cheerfully misrepresenting everything. I have looked at this situation and I think I understand much better what had happened. Huge educational changes had affected our leaders and institutions, new ideologies (including a rejection of rationality itself) had emerged, and politics had moved away from dealing with problems facing us all to those about social division. This was a deliberate policy by certain intellectuals.

What is needed is a coherent approach. We need to look at each problem in context and only then work out a logical policy for dealing with it in a measurable way. We need to stop changing direction every time there is a new political poll and stop trying to do everything at once. That does not mean failing to identify weaknesses in approach and correcting them and in some cases changing directions but that should be the exception rather than the norm if enough thought has gone in in the first place.

Local Level

At a local level there is much to be done. I am concerned that the amalgamation of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire administratively does not simply result in the loss of secure jobs and the sale of county assets.

We need to work on standards in schools and on ensuring that our children have the best opportunities. This includes guiding students towards STEM subjects and emerging technologies whilst not forgetting that every person is different and there are people who are simply not good at such things. There is no useful purpose in not recognising this reality.

We need to continue to work on attracting industry to provide long term jobs in local industries. Lots has been done of course but the problem is really complex and the pressure needs to be kept up.

National Issues

Benefits

Having had some experience of the Department of Work and Pensions and the benefits system, including Universal Credit and PIP I think we need to continue to think about the system carefully. On the one hand the benefits are not high enough to allow people to live in an inflationary environment. On the other there are still some people who do understand how to exploit the system whilst others do not get the support they deserve. The long-term answer is to try to encourage an economic upturn and the creation of more long-term jobs.

At a national level the economy is really important and so is the national debt. The more debt we get into the less money can be spent on useful things. We will pay back nearly £83 billion or 5.2 percent of our national spending on debt interest and repayment. We need to work on lowering the ‘cost of living’ for ordinary people and the cost of energy.

Immigration

Immigration is another issue. Whilst there will always be a need for additional people with special skills in small numbers the current numbers are in my view unsustainable. It creates pressure on housing which is already limited due to changes in things like family structure, and it takes over good agricultural land needed to ensure the highest degree of food security possible.

Because the Home Office management process has been really bad it has allowed a range of people to come some of whom are really good migrants who will contribute to our society but also people who are against our culture, beliefs and social mores. We need to be selective and carefully vet those who come. We also need to be absolutely serious about illegal immigration. If you break our laws to come here you should not be allowed to stay. We also need to clearly define for our own purposes what we mean by ‘asylum ‘as opposed to economic migration. There is nothing wrong with economic migration to improve one’s possibilities but not by exploiting the asylum system.

Energy/Green Issues

We need to look at our implementation of green ideas. Whilst taking advantage of new technologies and continuing to experiment with new ideas we also need to appreciate ‘living’ requires energy use. Net Zero ‘accounting practices‘ need to be looked into to ensure that they are not a way of allowing some people and special interest groups to avoid the cost of the pollution they cause and take advantage of others in society.

Our Young People

We need to exploit the skills and aptitudes of our own youth. One area is medicine where I know personally that more people could be trained to our excellent standards. This would reduce the need for recruiting health professionals from overseas, allow them to help with the problems of their own countries.

Policing

Policing needs to be completely reformed and refocussed. The police service generally has absorbed ideology and is no longer impartial. Training needs complete reform. The legal training of constables needs to be expanded and greatly improved. They need to be clear about what their powers are, and what limitations such powers have. Time spent on political ideology greatly reduced, The College of Policing needs to be disbanded and its guidance to forces removed.

Legislative change needs to occur. In particular the Equality Act needs to be rewritten. The idea of allowing people to ‘self-certify' and thus, to create crimes on the grounds of offence need to be removed and replaced by creating a rational test to determine whether a ‘hate’ crime has been committed.

This rewrite would enable officers to be redeployed from internet surveillance to deal with crimes of violence and against property.

Police officers need to be as impartial as possible and not where symbols of political identity on their uniforms or waste scarce resources on marking equipment to show the forces political ideology. Competence defined by measurable means needs to become the only selection and retention criteria for selection.

Police officers need to be redeployed to deal with street and organised crime and away from so called hate crimes. Where it appears that a genuine case exists we need to use other legislation such as that regarding ‘assault’ and ‘battery’.

‘Non crime hate crime’ records need to be destroyed and police directed not to collect or use the system anymore.

Legal System and Judiciary

The Crown Prosecution Service needs to be reformed and their political ideology changed. At the current time their decisions are frequently biased – recent example is allowing the ‘Nottingham Killer’ to plead man slaughter rather than murder.

Similarly the judicial system needs reform and development. We need to ensure that judges are as impartial as possible and that they focus on ‘justice’ rather than using the law in order to push their political ideology.

Wokeness

Wokery as a political ideology. If we are going to survive as a society we need to work against ‘wokery’ in all its forms. The aim should be to have a society which is colour blind, (on all sides) and based on merit and competency. We need to prevent special interest groups gaining undue influence over government and cultural policy.

Critical theory and Critical Race theory in particular need to be removed from our education and political system. There should be no special rules or privileges for subgroups. We need ‘anti’ woke training explaining where the ideas cam from and why they do not work and consequently have no validity.

Given the way these ideas have penetrated the educational system and political groups, and the civil service and these ideas have been taught to our children these ideas will be extremely difficult to eradicate. We should ensure that primary and secondary teachers do not teach them and that teaching them is a disciplinary issue. This would start to limit the ideas amongst the pupils.

We need to purge the civil service and require their impartiality. This is already a contractual obligation but it needs to be enforced. All Diversity Equality and Inclusivity personnel need to be dismissed and programmes which teach these ideas stopped.