I'm pleased to report the TPA had an excellent action day on Saturday in Tynemouth, North Tyneside. Thanks to an eager band of supporters who gave up a couple of hours of their time, we blitzed Tynemouth Market to great effect. Until we were thrown out by an overzealous (and dare I say biased?) official who seemed to disapprove of the low council tax petition we were gathering signatures for.
That minor obstacle notwithstanding, we continued to gather signatures around Tynemouth village and got an excellent response, signing up 350 supporters in a relatively short time. Encouragingly, people are not only aware of the TPA, but they are well informed about the waste that goes on in their council and are understandably annoyed by it.
I had the opportunity to present the petition to Cllr Linda Arkley (below), the Leader of the local Conservatives, and we'll send the petition to the Labour Mayor and the Leader of the North Tyneside Lib Dems, too. We'll have to wait to find out their views on council tax, but from the reaction we got the feelings of people in North Tyneside couldn't be clearer - cut our council tax!