Friday, 19 September 2025

Some thoughts on Godalming Town Council

Image credit: Godalming Town Council

As the local Reform UK campaign manager, when I heard of a by-election for Godalming Town Council, I took the opportunity to look at what the council is doing for (or to) us.

When I took on the campaign manager job, it was for the general election. I was well aware that apart from by-elections, Surrey County Council was the next arena in which we would need to fight, and (at the time) the borough councils were also important. I hadn’t thought much about the town or parish council level, until this week.

Imagine, then, my disgust when I found out just how far down in local government the cancer and corruption, that is politics today, has spread.

The council

Godalming Town Council has only the status of a parish council. But it is unusual in that the councillors all have party affiliations. In Ash and Cranleigh parish councils, for example, most candidates stand as Independents – even if they are Lib Dem SCC councillors!

It has 18 members, elected by five wards of Godalming: Binscombe (3), Central and Ockford (4), Charterhouse (3), Farncombe and Catteshall (4), and Holloway (4). Before the vacancy, the composition of the council was 9 Lib Dems, 4 Greens, 3 Labour and 2 Tories.

The last full election to the town council was held in May 2023. This is the first by-election since. The next full election is expected in May 2027.

Lib Dem Paul Follows has managed to execute a clean sweep, being on the town council, borough council and Surrey County Council simultaneously. Not to mention having been the Lib Dem candidate at the general election. And Paul and Penny Rivers both have two council posts at the same time.

Green councillor Nina Clayton is no longer able to continue, for reasons I haven’t been able to find. The question of whether or not we want to field a one-off candidate in the by-election is under discussion. But we should certainly be looking to compete in the elections in 2027.

The Corporate Plan 2023/7

While familiarizing myself with what the town council does, I discovered a document called “Corporate Plan 2023/7.” It is at [[1]], and dates from November 2023. Here are some of its low-lights. All the items below are introduced by the words “Godalming Town Council will.”

Part One – Democracy, Accountability, Governance and Communications

8. Support and promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

Part Three – Investing in our Community

4. Provide support, grants and promotion for local businesses that are actively working towards becoming carbon neutral.

Part Four – Environmental Protection

A1. Promote at least 10% Biodiversity Net Gain on private land and ensure it on land that we own.

A5. Support measures to improve air quality and water quality across the Godalming Town Council area.

B1. Ensure that Godalming Town Council is carbon neutral across Scope 1 and 2 by 2025 and across all other areas of its own operations by 2030.

B2. Ensure net zero scope 3 emissions by 2030.

B3. Lobby for and, wherever possible, deliver infrastructure for electric vehicles ahead of 2030.

B4. Promote an understanding of the climate and ecological crisis amongst our community and work together on strategies for reduction of individual carbon footprint.

B5. Support divestment in fossil fuels and oppose development of new sources for fossil fuels through ‘fracking,’ ‘acidisation,’ drilling and other unsustainable approaches.

B6. Strive to be a net exporter of renewable energy to the grid by 2030.

D1. Promote the concept of Godalming becoming a zero-waste town by encouraging repair, reuse, and re-fashioning in addition to re-cycling an increasingly wide range of items, diminishing the quantity of residual waste generated across the town.

Part Five – Sustainable Transport

1. Promote opportunities for a balanced, pedestrian and cycle-friendly, sustainable and affordable public transport system.

6. Continue to lobby for the implementation of a 20mph speed limit for the Godalming Town Council area and take action to promote active and sustainable travel.

A Reform UK perspective

There are severe conflicts between this agenda and Reform UK’s relevant policy positions as stated in the “Contract with You.”

Page 4: Reform UK will slash wasteful spending to increase spending for frontline public services and reduce taxes for working people.

Page 8: We must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets.

Page 8: Scrap Net Zero and Related Subsidies.

Page 9: Scrap all Diversity, Equality and Inclusion roles and regulations to stop two-tier policing.

Page 17: Legislate to ban ULEZ Clean Air Zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.

Page 17: Scrapping Net Zero means no more bans on petrol and diesel cars and no legal requirements for manufacturers to sell electric cars.

Page 17: We will keep the speed limit low where safety is critical. Otherwise, 20mph zones will be scrapped.

My personal perspective

In every case, I support Reform UK’s agenda against Godalming Town Council’s. I suspect that Reform’s huge increase in popularity in the last year is in large part due to the negative effects on ordinary people, over many decades, of the agendas of the “uniparty.” This designation includes all four of the parties represented on Godalming Town Council.

Almost everyone now knows that Labour and Tories are both bad, albeit in different ways. And the Greens are even worse. Most people don’t yet realize that the Lib Dems are just as bad as the Greens. But they will, once they see the quotes above from the Corporate Plan.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

From my perspective, “DEI” is a collectivist project, that seeks to forcibly promote certain sectors of the population above others, with quotas and the like, based on characteristics such as race or gender. My own view is diametrically opposed, and can be paraphrased as “It isn’t who you are that matters, only what you do.”

I quote from paragraph 2.5 of Reform UK’s constitution. “The Party shall conduct itself and its affairs in such a way that it does not discriminate against or in favour of any person on the grounds of their race, religion, gender, ethnic origin, education, beliefs, sexual orientation, class, social status, sectarianism or any other basis prescribed by law.” Amen!

I think Reform should be seeking to eliminate DEI, not just in the police, but in government as a whole.

Nett Zero

As an evidence-based person, I have searched for evidence that emissions of CO2 from human civilization have been proven to cause bad effects to the planet or to our civilization. I have found many such claims, but I have never found any hard evidence for them.

I consider the “climate crisis” caboodle to be a total scam. I have gone so far as to pen a science-based de-bunk of the whole idea, and got it published at “the world’s most viewed website on global warming and climate change.” Here: [[2]].

I take very seriously indeed the right of every human being to the presumption of innocence until proved guilty. Therefore, I regard all policies that require me or anyone else to sacrifice ourselves to the god of nett zero as immoral, destructive and criminal.

Moreover, we know that the United Nations has, ever since 1970, been the primary driver of the green agenda, and thus of nett zero. Indeed, I have documented the history of the agenda in three essays on our Reform branch website: [[3]], [[4]], [[5]].

To paraphrase that history: At Rio in 1992, our “representatives” signed us up to a whole raft of commitments, that they must surely have known were utterly opposed to the interests of those they were supposed to represent and serve. So, they set us the people of the UK, without any chance to object, on a course that would inevitably lead to us losing our prosperity, rights and freedoms. They did it gladly! And now, they are basking in success.

This process has been pushed along by the UN and its IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC, being a UN organization, is seriously biased in favour of the green agenda. But the agenda has also been supported by the uniparty of mainstream UK political parties. Only Reform offers any hope of escape from green despotism.

Those that push and have pushed the green and nett zero agenda are dishonest, deceitful and reckless towards us the people. They have sought to sideline objective science. They have fabricated “evidence” to suit policy. They have failed to do any proper cost-benefit analysis on green policies. Indeed, they have sought to prevent any such thing being done! And they have suppressed the voices of us skeptics.

All this is enshrined in Agenda 2030, agreed at the UN in 2015. And without us, the people, ever having been allowed a chance to object.

Indeed, the UN’s concept of “sustainable development” has become an idol. We are to be expected to make huge sacrifices for the sake of future generations. Yet it is we, not they, who have paid the taxes. So, we are the ones who deserve to reap the benefits. This is a scam.

One part of the story, which I did not cover in the three essays because I intend to write it up separately, is the perversion of the precautionary principle. The original principle, “Look before you leap,” discourages action unless you are fairly sure the consequences will be nett positive. But this principle has been perverted and, indeed, all but inverted. It has become, in effect: “If in doubt about a risk, government must act to prevent it.” No matter how small or unlikely that risk.

Using this perverted precautionary principle, successive UK governments have collaborated with the UN and EU to impose on us all a tyrannical culture of safety at any cost, and arbitrary, often collective, ever tightening targets and limits. Which, so they plan, will continue to be tightened for ever.

And now, I find that the UN, the EU, and the “uniparty” that supports them in the UK, have extended the tentacles of this giant scam all the way down to Godalming Town Council.

Biodiversity

I have a few green-ish friends, and I have often asked them a question. “Name one species to whose extinction I have contributed, and say what I did, and roughly when, to contribute to that extinction.” I have never received a direct answer. So, I conclude that I cannot be guilty of endangering biodiversity. And so, “biodiversity net gain” is irrelevant to me. And I surely don’t want to pay for it.

I also ask: How could any human being put the interests of other species above the interests of their own? And most of all, someone in government? After all, government is supposed to be for the benefit of the people. People are human beings, no? And wildlife don’t pay taxes.

In short, absent hard evidence of a real biodiversity problem caused by my actions, I regard the touted “ecological crisis” as a scam.

Air quality

We all want clean air, don’t we? But there are questions on this subject which aren’t asked, and should be. First, isn’t the air in the UK clean enough already? And if not, why not?

Second, if the costs to the people of a reduction in air pollution are greater than the benefits, why should we do it? I think we should not. For government is supposed to be, in everything it does, a nett benefit to the governed. And so, any policy that imposes more costs on the people, or on groups or individuals among them, than the benefits those same people, groups or individuals receive as a result, should not be implemented.

I have documented the “clean air” scam in a series of essays about anti-car policies in the UK. Here they are, for those who have time to read up on the details: [[6]], [[7]], [[8]], [[9]], [[10]], [[11]].

I intend in the future to write a potted summary of these essays for our Reform branch website. So, I won’t go into any more detail here, except to point out the similarities between what has happened over clean air and anti-car policies, and what has happened over nett zero. Though it is the World Health Organization (WHO), rather than the IPCC, that has been active on the UN side in these matters.

Electric vehicles

I don’t want an EV. I can’t afford an EV. In this, I think I share the views of many older or poorer people in the area. At 72, I will never be able to afford to buy another car of any kind. So, all I want to do is carry on running my 14-year-old diesel car until either it dies, or I am no longer physically able to drive. And to be able to afford to do so.

Where I live, the parking is underneath the flats. If someone parked an EV down there, it would be seen as a fire hazard. I also resent public parking spaces being taken away, and converted to EV chargers that are almost never used.

Fossil fuels

In our current state of technology, fossil fuels are essential for the large-scale, reliable, dispatchable, cost-effective energy we need to power our civilization. Yes, we’ll have to move on eventually, but we’ll still need base load electricity (probably mainly nuclear) and fuels with high power density for transport (probably synthetic). For the medium term, we’ve got plenty of gas. So, let’s use it.

Because they are intermittent, neither wind nor solar power can generate the base load we need. And the idea that renewables are cheaper than gas is false; the price of electricity relative to gas has increased steadily, as more and more renewables have come on line. The renewable energy caboodle is, in my view, both a scam and a dead end.

Moreover, anyone that wants to stop other people using fossil fuels, while they are cheaper, more convenient or more reliable than other forms of energy, I see as a traitor to human civilization. They deserve to be made to live in an enclave, where they may not use any fossil fuels or products made using them. Let’s see how sustainable their economy would be!

Zero waste

I’d love to see a zero-waste council. Not one that forces us to re-cycle just about everything, but one where every penny people pay it is used for the benefit of the people who paid those pennies.

Indeed, my definition of a sustainable economy is one from which no wealth is lost. Where those, who fairly earn wealth, are able to spend it on goods and services from people like themselves. And to keep it away from dishonest politicians, bureaucrats, political activists and the like. That would mean that all local councils should be zero-waste, in my sense.

Reform will seek, through its DOGE program, to apply this kind of zero-waste approach to every part of government it controls.

Public transport

Public transport in the Godalming area is very poor, apart from the railway line. Only two bus services go anywhere except Guildford or Haslemere/Midhurst. The 46 is the only bus which stops within half a mile of my home. It only runs hourly, finishes at or before 7pm, and doesn’t run at all on Sundays. And it’s slow.

If you really want people to use public transport, you must make it frequent, convenient, and with good connections throughout the day. Everywhere. That simply isn’t economically feasible in a place like Godalming. So, a car is an essential for anyone who lives, or needs to go, anywhere off the beaten track of the Guildford/Haslemere corridor. (Example: I live near Charterhouse, and used to work in Tongham.)

20mph speed limits

No-one, except busybodies that get their kicks out of controlling people, likes 20mph speed limits. Ask the Welsh! Yet the council seem to want a 20mph limit even on the A3100 north of Meadrow, currently 40mph.

Personally, I have driven for 55 years, with only one accident above walking pace. And that didn’t injure anyone. So, why do I deserve to suffer restrictions, that aren’t going to improve anything for anybody?

This is another facet of the “safety at any cost” culture pushed by the UN and EU. This bad culture is one of the main reasons I supported Brexit in the first place, and later joined Reform. It is suffocating us, and we need to get rid of it.

Active travel

I used to be a very active traveller. In 1989 I bicycled coast-to-coast across North America, and in 1994 I walked all the way from Calais to le Havre. I still walk a lot, though no more than a few miles at a time these days. But active travel in the sense the politicians mean it isn’t something that is appropriate for a 72-year-old. And I live at the top of a hill, 170 feet above the town! Sorry, but I still need my car.

To sum up

Godalming Town Council is not, in my opinion, what a town council should be. Its function ought to be to make the town a good place to live, and to supply local services cost-effectively.

Instead, it is seeking to impose on the people of the town and its suburbs an agenda that is undemocratically being pushed by the UN and EU. This agenda is a scam, based on lies, scares and bad “science.” And it goes seriously against the interests of very many of the people of Godalming. Including me.

Reform UK will need to consider very seriously what our strategy should be for the May 2027 elections to Godalming Town Council and other councils of similar stripes.

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